Digital Libraries
Most worthwhile endeavors are challenging and fraught with hurdles, creating the ideal resource access repository is probably no different. With so much effort from so many quarters the digital research environment can only get better, maybe not perfect, but definitely better.
Dewey meets Turing
An interesting insight into the still developing but permanent relationship between the fields of Librarianship and Computer science and the influence each one is having on the other. That the contemporary librarian has to straddle some of the roles of the computer savvy has added a new dimension to the perception of what librarianship now entails and has, no doubt, removed layers of dust from our collective image.
Institutional Repositories
The move away from traditional scholarly publishing avenues has come about for a variety of reasons. That educational institutions have undertaken the task seems to be a move in the right direction since it affords greater control of the entire process. But what are the long term implications for ensuring its continuance and persistence; will the task become too burdensome financially and technologically? What happens then, to decades of intellectual property that mankind can ill afford to lose?
Regarding your notes on the first article, about how things can only get better, I have a question: better for whom? For librarians? Users? Publishers? Content creators?
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily think that things can get better for all those groups simultaneously, and I think that right now the balance is heavily shifted toward publishers and content creators. It's never been easier to get digital content hosted, but as that part of the equation balloons, the task for librarians and responsible researchers becomes ever more difficult.
Do you think that there's a balance to be achieved that would maximize the benefits to every group? What would it take on the part of each group to get there?
"That the contemporary librarian has to straddle some of the roles of the computer savvy has added a new dimension to the perception of what librarianship now entails and has, no doubt, removed layers of dust from our collective image."
ReplyDeleteI love the visual this sentence provides! I have had so many people tell me that being a librarian must be so much different that it used to be. I want to tell them that they have no idea.
I'm thinking about collaboration when I say that things should get better, hopefully some measure of shared vision will jolt all three participants into the realisation that they need to work out the differences and handle the situation collectively in order for all to persist.
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