ILI2005 - Tuesday 11th - Living with Google: New roles for libraries

Living with Google: New roles for libraries
Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard
Danish State and University libraries
(Statsbiblioteket)

try to understand libraries and technological change

Apply -> Integrate -> Infuse and Diffuse

books & journals - catalogue cards
then online catalogue
then e-journals, databases with metadata, cross search

How do libraries enter this third stage

"We have to be where the user is" (citing Lorcan Dempsey)

* Presence in user environment
* New paradigms for search and presentation
* New paradigms for communication and publication
* New roles
- service infrastructure (webservices, AAI, SOA)
- authenticity and permanent access
* New economical models

Focus: Search and presentation - The dynamic catalogue
* Web - from portals to services
- Danish example: Netlibrary/My library
* New types of roles

(Scholarly) Communication
* library used to be a communication channel
* New forms
- living reviews
- databases - with incremental results
- blogs
* integration into production process
- discussion fora
- chat
- gaming
- holistic view on institutional repositories
- Flickr etc.

(paraphrase) If you can provide customized, relevant info to users, you can provide an additional role that Google cannot always provide.  e.g. Amazon provides a lot of info on top of just a book, whereas Google just provides straight search results

discussion of search engine perspective

[diagram of visual cluster display]

They have asked for Google Scholar as a webservice, but Google won't provide it - due to need for ads.

[slide of combined results displayed together in a table]

The dynamic library card: Project involving 7 public libraries - Netlibrary "My Library"

Future: Integrated on-line services, independent of organisations - the customer should be the centre, not the organisation.  Collaboratively provide Web Services.
www.vtu.dk/fsk/publ/2003/Hvidbog/index.htm

Slide on first round of web portal
* literature page
- author portraits
- recommendations
* author web
* Net music

Portal to service

Instead of user going to a portal, EMBED the information into the catalogue... (paraphrase) built by querying various web services and integrating the results

Why not put it in the catalogue?
- this is a changing world, the catalogue should just contain the bare biblio info, everything else dynamic should be outside the catalogue

[Diagram of Web Services (SOAP/HTTP)]

example: embedded service (I think) "people who borrowed this book also borrowed..."

They are looking at issues around personalization for services, ways to manage the results from services so that the user doesn't get overwhelmed with information.

Webservices: Recommender, Material match, Journals, Aggregator, Netmusik

In the future: some libraries might just be service aggregators, some might focus on a particular service for data, etc.  Roles: data service, service provider, aggregator, customer support...

A Fundamental Paradigm Shift
* From economy of scarcity to one of abundance
* From owning to licensing
* Changing nature of content
* Democratic publishing opporuntiies
* New forms of research, preservation, teaching

My Summary: As I saw at the previous Info Grid conference in Denmark, I think the Danish are very much advanced in using Web Services within a Service-Oriented Architecture for libraries.  I think they are creating a model that we should build on and borrow from.

Comments

[Marydee]

I absolutely concur with your conclusion that Denmark is very far ahead, technologically, in the library and information sector.