LIBRARIES AND THE NII

                                    

                           Summary of Comments



              Committee On Applications and Technology

                Information Infrastructure Task Force

                            September 8, 1994







                              Herb Becker



                           Library of Congress





Following is a summary of the comments received for the "Libraries and

the NII" section of Putting the Information Infrastructure to Work:

Report of the Information Infrastructure Task Force Committee on

Applications and Technology Report of the Information Infrastructure

Task Force Committee on Applications and Technology. Comments have

been arranged according to the section of the draft paper to which

they are applicable.







PART I: What Is the Application Arena?







  DESCRIPTION OF LIBRARIES

  





The Role of Libraries in the NII. The definition of libraries should

include the following: A library includes the selection of materials,

organization, preservation, and service to a named constituency. Key

to the concept of "library" is a service goal and an ongoing

responsibility to a set of users. The physical distribution of

materials is not relevant. Library, therefore, is not an accurate term

for a database site or gateway. A database is not a library.







The role of libraries as agents of democratic and equal access to

information must continue. It must be recognized that libraries and

librarians train the public, aid businesses in their economic

development, support health care and education--all of the other areas

discussed in the first set of IITF papers.







The library community brings to the information infrastructure the

perspective of information professionals from politically neutral

institutions charged with ensuring public access to diverse

information sources and viewpoints, regardless of a user's economic

status or information seeking skills, and regardless of information

format. In the emerging electronic age, this requires equal, ready,

and equitable access to the nation's telecommunications infrastructure

to avoid widening the gulf between the information rich and poor.







By serving as a common repository from which businesses, schools, and

households draw and share information, libraries reduce the need for

individual business, schools, and households to spend resources for

duplicate information resources that are shareable.







Libraries are already beginning to fulfill the role of network guide

for those who do not lack equipment but rather need guidance about

what can be retrieved. Similarly,libraries provide efficiency of

access--not all homes are likely to have the full set of technology

required to access and receive all of the various types of information

projected to be available in the next ten years.







The role of special libraries and librarians and research and

university libraries and librarians are major constituencies which

must not be forgotten as the NII looks for links to the world of

users.







Caution is advised in defining the role of the public library :

those who can afford to pay for information will do so; the vision of

the NII is that everyone else will be brought to the door of the

public library, which is already underfunded and understaffed.







The Role of Librarians. Librarians are information leaders. Because

of this expertise they are crucial to the future of the NII.

Librarians have spent centuries refining knowledge about storage and

retrieval of information. From the clay tablet to the digital world,

this knowledge has and will continue to be crucial.







The Application. Libraries are a central node in the country's

educational system. Additionally, they provide access to information

which is vital to the community and economic development.







Benefits of Applications in This Arena







The NII should assure that government information is more accessible.

Library as physical repository should diminish as libraries become

electronic gateways to information resources.







PART II: Where Are We Now?







Funding: Footnote 6 is important. Start-up costs for implementation

of government databases are likely to be significant and budgets must

help support the development of electronic databases.







Research and Development. Public libraries may be at a disadvantage

in applying for grants or responding to proposals due to limited

resources. Smaller libraries, if they are to have a role in the NII,

should be targeted by programs. If libraries are necessary to assure

equitable access to NII information, then specific government programs

should be implemented to encourage both connectivity and education of

existing staff.







Cryptography, Security and Privacy. The confidentiality of library

circulation records must continue. In the network environment, the

possibility of tracking readership patterns at the level of the

individual could have chilling repercussions on the perception of

individual freedom and privacy with negative impacts on the use of

network information. Additionally, electronic signatures must be

developed. The ability of librarians and the public to cite electronic

sources as "official" through an electronic signature would allow

libraries to increasingly rely on electronic information.







PART III



No comments were received for this section.











PART IV: How Are We Going to Get There?







The Government's Role





Funding. Governments at all levels must help fund those areas that

are not being addressed by the marketplace, but which nonetheless

provide an overall social benefit. This would include, but not be

limited to, the digitizing of certain collections, the provision and

maintenance of access through libraries, and the education of and

provision of access to underserved groups.







Facilitation of Standards Development. As a community interested in

technical standards, should there be a lead agency for NII

library-useful standards?







Providing a Testbed: Depository Library Program. The Depository

Libraries are an excellent test group for government information

projects. They provide a testbed for intergovernmental information for

state, local, regional and federal databases as depository librarians

already deal with multiple levels of government and its information.







Policy Setting: Copyright. The discussion of intellectual property

is excessively focused on the print model. A broader discussion of the

issues and trends would have been useful. For example, the trend to

licensing rather than sale of digital material is important in this

area even any conclusions may be premature.







Industry Regulation. It is recommended that the federal government

be responsible for assuring free public access to government

information. The Depository Library Program should be key in promoting

and providing public access to government information.







Education. University libraries should be added to the statement on

education. The term "primitive" should be removed from the statement

on access. For the NII to be a successful component of education,

schools and libraries must be equal to other entities in accessing

information.







Digital Conversion







It is critically important to focus on content. Access to a vast and

diverse array of resources supports education, protects productivity

and competition, stimulates R&D, and public awareness. Availability of

such resources will make connectivity meaningful and is key to the

vision of the NII.







It is not enough to convert and collect electronic material, however.

The issues of access, organization, and preservation must also be

considered. It is important that the various projects listed in the

report be coordinated, information shared, and considered as a whole

so that progress towards the digital library can be made efficiently

and in the most timely manner. One model to build on is the National

Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) 20-year plan to preserve three

million brittle books. The NEHprogram has established a collaborative,

multi-institutional program that includes standards development,

selection of resources, training in preservation and technology,

preparation and conversion of resources, and maintenance and provision

of access to these resources.







In any effort as major as the conversion of core materials for the

NII, no single institution should be expected to take on an effort of

this scope. Such an effort should be a cooperative effort involving

many institutions.







                             OTHER COMMENTS

                                    

The remainder of this summary discusses comments received that were

not directly related to the draft, but still considered important by

reviewers.





Additional Issues Which Must be Addressed.







Civil Liberties. Intellectual freedom, censorship, and privacy

issues are important issues not fully treated in the document.

Resolution of these issues could fundamentally impact the content of

the NII.







Semantic Gateways. Whether manually created or digitally generated,

semantic gateways will be a necessity in the world of massive

databases being discussed in conjunction with the NII digital

libraries.







Organization of Data. Similarly, the role of organization of data

for successful retrieval must not be ignored. Only 7 percent of the

data on the Internet today is text; the remaining data are graphics,

multimedia, and computer programs. These latter types of data do not

self-identify as easily as text and, therefore, some type of

searchable organizations must be imposed before retrieval can take

place.







Preservation. Digitization is not a panacea for preservation.

Digital technologies are changing rapidly; materials stored on a

digital medium today may not be readable by the equipment used even

five years from today. Digitization for preservation requires a

program that guarantees migration of the digitized materials to new

technologies on a continuing basis.







Other Industry Players. The expanding role of electric utility

companies should not be overlooked and should be added to the list of

"key industries."







Equity of Access. What does equity of access really mean. What kind

of investment are we talking about for the nation? What is feasible?

Further equity of access studies must be undertaken if the goal of

equity of access to information is to be achieved. Those studies

underway should be coordinated and the data shared with any studies

which follow.







All Digital? It would be a mistake to assume that the goal of

libraries is to become entirely digital. Most users continue to show a

preference for paper particularly when reading long documents but also

for short ones. It may be appropriate to digitize factual material,

but leisure reading material is likely to continue to be delivered

inpaper for sometime.







Library as Publishers? Similarly, it would be inefficient to assume

that libraries will become printers or publishers for any information

but low use materials.







Algorithmic Retrieval. The probability of purely algorithmic

retrieval for most formats may be simple in the near term. For text,

such indexing and retrieval may be possible before the end of the

century. For image, audio, video materials, such capability is

unlikely. It must be assumed, therefore, that some human intervention

for identification and organization of such materials will be a

necessary, if costly, alternative for some time.







Are Libraries Facing an Identity Crisis. Libraries are suffering

from an identity crisis. There are disparate views of the future role

of libraries and librarians. The demographic and economic factors that

shaped the public library movement in the nineteenth century U.S. are

gone. The invention and widespread use of telecommunication

systems--telephones, televisions, computer data networks--make

libraries appear less useful. Libraries are facing

competition--competition in conjunction with private investment are

the underpinnings of the Administration's NII program.







Questions We must Ask.







What are libraries roles by sector? Should libraries divide between

public and private sector? Should the library community divide itself

along public and private spheres or should it serve both spheres? What

does competition mean for libraries in the NII? Should libraries

retreat from areas in which the private sector declares it intends to

serve?







Does the growth of unpublished and unauthenticated materials on the

network suggest that the role of libraries is diminishing or becoming

more targeted as part of the general, interdependent evolution of

libraries, information services, publishers, and navigation and

information services? Does this suggest that the role of libraries,

particularly public, will be primarily as information providers for

the information poor?

.