All materials from the workshop, including background paper and participants' discussion papers, are available at http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL/
Using the following as background, the session discussion will center around three questions that are listed at the end of this handout.
As a National Challenge Project under the NII/IITA, Digital Libraries represent a set of significant societal problems that require human and technological resources to solve.
Digital libraries represent two complementary ideas:
The first idea emphasizes the fact that digital libraries are tangible entities constructed for people to use. The second emphasizes the fact that the construction of digital libraries must be based on the real tasks and activities that people engage in with respect to information resources. While it is possible to build systems independent of human activities that will satisfy technical specifications, systems that work for people must be based on analyses of real work, learning, leisure, and other activities. To be effective systems that people will use, they must be adapted to human needs, capabilities, and interests. Systems are being constructed by the research and development community on behalf of users and by users on their own behalf. In the latter case, the research and development communities must create the functional capabilities and tools that enable people to construct and tailor digital libraries to their own circumstances.
A knowledge base about human information-related behavior exists, but is spread across multiple disciplines that study individuals, groups, organizations, and society. A knowledge base about technology for managing information objects exists, but is spread across yet another array of disciplines. We need to converge these bodies of work to build real systems for real people.
An invitational workshop was held at UCLA, February 15-17, 1996; 32 researchers, developers, and practitioners, 9 UCLA faculty facilitators, and 6 UCLA graduate research assistants participated. All materials from the workshop, including schedule and agenda, list of participants, participants' discussion papers and biographical statements, and summary reports presented at the meeting are available on the web site http://www.gslis.ucla.edu/DL/.
We selected two research areas with three sub-topics each as focal points for the two-day workshop:
Information Needs: Identifying individual and social information needs and developing digital libraries to meet those needs.
End User Searching and Filtering: Designing digital libraries in which it is possible to find the right information in a glut of information.
Though we limited the scope of the workshop as a means for framing discussion and selecting participants, they quickly expanded our original boundaries in several directions:
The boundaries expanded in several directions:
A. Level of Analysis: Our approach, as stated in the background paper (see web site), focused on the needs and activities of the individual user. While important, we realized that individuals do not work with information resources apart from their communities. They act in the context of work teams, classrooms, and other social settings. Many activities occur in group contexts; we must consider CSCW and collaboratory environments as well. Therefore, multiple levels of analysis are required.
B. Scope of Analysis: Our scope statement addressed information searching and retrieval processes. Yet these must be framed in the context of a more comprehensive cycle of information creation, discovery, and utilization. People who create information in digitized form for digital libraries need tools and functional capabilities for doing so. They will search for information created by others, and for purposes other than those intended by the creators, and so will require a whole repetoire of searching functions. When the sought-after information is found, people incorporate it into other products and processes in the life-cycle. We need consistent means to organize, describe, represent, and dispose of information throughout these activities and processes.
C. Content vs. Process: Our charge also visualized digital libraries as a set of digitized resources and associated technical capabilities for information searching, which is roughly the vision defined in the digital libraries initiative. However, such a scenario does not recognize the social processes in which digital libraries are situated -- the "library" in digital libraries. We need to address both, and therefore made the distinction in the second definition at the beginning of this report.
In order to present a research agenda that encompasses both definitions of digital libraries stated above, we propose a model of the life cycle of information and information processes (see figure 1).
The Information Life Cycle is a schematic attempt to represent the genesis, movement, evaluation, use, and disposition of information in a given social system. The outer ring indicates the life cycle stages for a particular type of information (such as business records, artworks, documents, or scientific data), superimposed on six steps of information handling or use (shaded circle). The steps are further divided into three major "domains" or phases: information creation, searching, and utilization. The alignment of the cycle stages with the steps of information handling and process phases may vary according to the particular social or institutional context of the people involved.
Though this figure shows only a single round of the cycle, it is important to note that cycles may intersect, overlap or "stack" as information moves across social settings. For example, personal correspondence between two individuals may be created -- written, sent, received, and responded to, back and forth -- in the context of their interpersonal relationship. That relationship can be visualized as an ongoing information cycle with its own timing and order of steps. In the course of their relationship, the correspondents may collect and keep each others' notes over a long period of time. If they are particularly notable people, historians may later become interested in the correspondence. They would seek, discover, evaluate and use the letters in a new and different cycle, possibly creating new information (biographies, historical accounts) in the process.
This is a very simple example, but it demonstrates the divergent information needs and uses that various actors might have with respect to the same information, and the different means of preservation, organization, access, and handling that they would require, respectively. Some examples, of course, would be far more complex, involving many overlapping or recursive cycles; and with increasing complexity, the technical systems for handling information must become increasingly flexible and sophisticated.
Also, the figure indicates that information may be discarded in the course of the cycle. For the sake of simplicity we have only shown one "discard" point; however, information may be disposed of or leave the cycle at a number of points. Furthermore, disposition does not necessarily imply that information is destroyed; alternatively, it may be "warehoused" for later use by others in different circumstances, set aside, or otherwise continue to exist.
In addition, while social context is not explicitly represented in the figure, it can be thought of as affecting the cycle at every stage: every aspect of information creation, seeking and use is a socially-situated human activity. The "types of information" noted above imply that different people, in different contexts, have been involved in its creation, organization, description, and representation. Therefore, we have chosen not to show "social context" coming into the figure discretely as arrows at particular points, and instead consider it to be environmental and pervasive throughout the cycle.
Based on our model, we have formulated three "families" of questions/issues about digital libraries for today's presentation that need further discussion and elaboration:
(Presenter and moderator: Gregory Leazer, UCLA)
(Presenter and moderator: Ann Bishop, University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign)
(Presenter and moderator: Edward Fox, Virginia Tech)
We appreciate your comments and suggestions. Please send them (by April 1, if possible) to:
Dr. Christine Borgman, Professor & Chair
Dept of Library and Information Science
2320A Moore Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521
Tel: 1-310-825-6164; Fax: 1-310-206-3076
cborgman@ucla.edu