[1240] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Chronicle Article
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Public-Access Computer Systems For)
Thu Sep 17 13:50:58 1992
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1992 12:42:07 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
From: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <LIBPACS%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
6 Messages, 172 Lines
*-----
From: "Peter Graham, Rutgers U., (908) 932-2741" <GRAHAM@ZODIAC.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Chronicle Article
From: Peter Graham, Rutgers Univ.
Oh come now, Lee, "information bully"? With inadequate resources for decades
libraries have been trying their best to get the stuff out and available for
people. Sure we've failed in spots, and maybe the technological changes are
causing perceived semi-failures; but that's different from the intent to
hide information or make its use difficult.
What is an information bully, anyway? Someone who beats you over the head
with a rolled-up copy of BIP? Someone who ties you down and forces you to
look at census data? "No no--not PsychLit! Anything but that!"
"Ah haaa, me proud beauty, no one ever surprises the Information Bully...."
Bemusedly,
--pg
*-----
From: Elizabeth Lane <ELANE3@UA1VM>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Chronicle Article
On Wed, 16 Sep 1992 12:16:19 CDT Lee Jaffe, Microcomputer & Network Services sai
>and they're certainly not going to let us make the decisions about how to
>set it up and run it. It isn't a question of truth, beauty or any of those
>high ideals, but a matter of the library being seen, realistically or not,
>as an information bully for all these years. -- Lee Jaffe, UC Santa Cruz
Or that a new "information bully," in the form of computing centers, has
arrived on the scene. I'm disturbed by what I see happening with tools like
Gopher, that are being used to set up information resources that are poorly
organized and thought through. These are the kinds of things that librarians
are best at, but aren't tapped for the job. In many cases it's not that
we're seen as impediments...it's that we've done our jobs *too* well, and
we've become invisible. Our contribution to the organization of information
towards a goal of better access isn't obvious, and thus doesn't get drawn
upon as computer based resources are "designed" and made available.
I don't mean to open up another war on "computer types" versus "librarian
types"; I know I've drawn simplistic lines here, and that many of us span
the boundaries just fine. But I do see this as the bigger issue. We don't
have the money to pay the piper, because the rest of the world doesn't know
that we know the names of all the tunes... (stretched that metaphor a bit
too thin, I think. :-) )
---
*----------------------------------------------------------------*
| Elizabeth Lane Internet: elane3@ua1vm.ua.edu |
| University of Alabama BITNET: ELANE3@UA1VM |
*----------------------------------------------------------------*
*-----
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com>
Subject: Re: Re: Fwd: Chronicle Article
> From: Gregory.A.Finnegan@Dartmouth.EDU
> All this to underscore what I posted earlier: librarians have the best
> perspective on information resources for the population(s) they serve, and
> others, who Arms rightly notes can now 'get into' the info biz much more
> easily, have neither the training, the experience, or, frequently(?), the
> desire, to manage resources for general use.
The others may have very little interest in "general use"; they are
interested in maximizing their own use. It is not improper that they
should do so, even with funds granted by the university. Departments
don't make their typewriters available for general use, nor do they
buy copiers capable of serving the university as a whole.
I used to work in a research lab where each scientist had a private
library, the department had a library, and the institute had one
as well. We could also tap city and university libraries. My
experience was that only the personal collections were much used
by the researchers. If one needed a fact, one went to the person
who might know -- and who would know which book to pull off the
shelf and which page to turn to. This was living knowledge,
whereas the collective library down the hall could only offer
dead knowledge, carefully indexed and filed like a Smithsonian
insect collection.
Progressive librarians should accept the fact of distributed
libraries under heterogeneous control, and should strive to
help the users make the most of such chaos.
Perhaps the day will come when most books and materials are
distributed to users, and are picked up and delivered by
"librarians" only when a transfer of posession is advantageous.
More likely, though, electronic information will eliminate
the need for most physical transfers.
-- Ken Laws
-------
*-----
From: ses@cmns-sun.think.com (Simon Edward Spero)
Subject: Re: Fwd: Chronicle Article
Flame-bait: If the role of the library is simply to provide access to old
collections for the humanities and social sciences, why do we need librarians
to server as warehousemen. Why can't the library be merged with central
stores, who are a lot, lot cheaper. What makes first edition of Proust so
different from a 50Kg bag of mouse food?
Simon
[quick point about locating resources in a vast number of distributed databases
- one technique under investigation is the use of a hierachical network of
centroids and meta-centroids, clustered by some non-content based criteria]
--
-----
Guest account at TMC | Just Another WAIS Hacker | DOD# 0612
*-----
From: <KINGH@SNYSYRV1>
Subject: RE: Fwd: Chronicle Article
Here's another scenario of the future:
Libraries continue to cut subscriptions. Their campuses or adminis-
trations continue to underfund and understaff libraries while publishers
continue to increase prices, frequency of publication, and page numbers.
More and more libraries offer limited and slow ILL or doc delivery free of
charge to patrons and enhance, quicker access either for a fee or through
a commercial provider which charges the patron directly.
Research funding continues to be cut. Corporations continue to
experience sluggish growth, stagnation, or debilitation. Middle management
goes. Workload increases on those remaining. Budget tightening continues.
Money and time for information searching and retrieval by end-users drastically
decreases. Endusers begin to realize that they are paying exorbitant fees
for information that does not appear to be leading to greater productivity,
increased profitability, or increased competitiveness. They buy less
information and are more likely to want to avoid information overload than
be sure they've covered every last detail of a particular research issue.
Publishers and vendors investing heavily in enduser searching, document
delivery, and other information services begin to understand that information
services are not a lucrative market. They begin to realize that the
cost of information creation, processing, dissemination, storage, and retrieval
is to high for either individuals or single institutions. And that is why
the cost must be subsidized ... and that is why there are public institutions
or services, called libraries, to provide affordable information products
and services to the public.
Hannah King
SUNY HSC Library at Syracuse
kingh@snysyrv1
kingh@vax.cs.hscsyr.edu
*-----
From: john@math.nwu.edu (John Franks)
Subject: Re: Re: Arms Clarification
In article <1992Sep16.021047.4922@news.acns.nwu.edu>, John Franks
<john@hopf.math.nwu.edu> writes:
> ... electronic publishers are trying very hard to keep a rigid control
> over the distribution of their products -- even to such an extent, in
> my opinion, that they sometimes cripple their sales. Insofar as
> publishers retain this control there will continue to be economic
> forces to centralize information and share it among a "community."
When I wrote this I neglected to mention one thing that electronic
publishers are doing which greatly promotes *decentralization*. When
a library purchases at book the size of the library (i.e. the number
of potential readers) does not affect the price of the book. However,
when an electronic publisher licenses access to some information to
be made available over a local network the price depends heavily on
the number of potential users. In an academic environment this will
result in departments licensing information for use by their members
rather than central libraries licensing it for the general university
community. I think the price differences can be dramatic. If this
sort of pricing becomes the norm, it may be a potent force for information
decentralization.
--
John Franks Dept of Math. Northwestern University
john@math.nwu.edu
