Moving information from paper to a worldwide network of computers promises to dramatically change how archivists, librarians, scholars, and publishers interact with documents and one another. From the limited perspective of the archivist and librarian, I will discuss both the challenges and the opportunities presented by this information transformation.
In 1968, Patrick Wilson, in a philosophical evaluation of the nature of information titled Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control, observed that "the world is full of writings." In fact it is now much, much fuller than it was in 1968. To Wilson's list of "libraries, archives, offices, and attic trunks" we can now add computer servers large and small. As daunting as this ever growing plenitude of writings has become in the digital age, archivists and librarians can take comfort from Wilson's assertion that: "Most [information objects] are only of passing interest to anyone, despite their being records or traces of human activity; not all of our history is worth remembering." Archivists and librarians are only responsible for that portion of the total judged worthy of being remembered.
Note: It is worth noting, especially within the context of this workshop, that Patrick Wilson is here using the word "remembered" in its historical and interpretive sense, and not in the sense of "computing memory and storage," as the first is a fundamentally and irreducibly human activity, while the latter is merely mechanical.
As comforting as it is to invoke this traditionalist's rationale, it is only momentarily so, because the complex system of interaction of archivists, librarians, scholars, collectors, creators, and publishers that results in the worthy being discovered and preserved does not yet exist in the digital information world. Important components of this system -- Copyright and licensing; cost recovery; secure mechanisms for commercial exchanges; clear, rational access and navigation; refereed peer review; authentication; and preservation -- all currently lack accepted, effective systems in the digital world. It is the lack of accepted, effective systems for these and other culturally critical functions in this transformed information environment that presents us with challenges.
In the paper-based information environment the book, journal issue, or manuscript is the "place" where the archivists, librarians, scholars, and publishers bring their respective contributions and expertise, and where they interact with one another. The physical object has been the focus or object of our activities. As such, it is the object of the differing kinds of control that each interested party brings to the paper based information culture. In the networked digital world, information is no longer embodied in a physical object that must accompany it in order for it to be displayed and read. Though the information is physically stored on a physical medium at one or more locations on the network, in principle it can be displayed and read anywhere, by anyone, night or day, and at one and the same time. Networked digital information is thus not bound by space and time. The information is virtually omnipresent. It is this convenience, the total portability, the virtual omnipresence, that renders obsolete the mechanisms of control that supported the print Gutenberg culture.
>From this follows the uncertainty and anxiety that we witness among publishers and librarians and scholars when they meet to discuss the future. How does one protect the rights of owners of information when it is so easy and simple to copy and distribute information? How does the librarian distinguish valuable information from information of only passing interest when all of the mechanisms upon which we depend for selecting have no analogues in the digital network environment? The contemporary paper culture, with its complicated system of checks and balances representing the culmination of over 500 years of adaptation to changing social, political, economic, and technological forces, has no analogue in the still largely uncivilized digital information wilderness. This wilderness favors frontierpersons and rugged individualists.
The ease with which digital information can be copied and transported has disrupted the order of things, and has thereby disoriented the participants. This disruption presents a challenge that must be met if we are to satisfy traditional real world expectations and obligations (for example, some semblance of copyright, fair remuneration for creators and those who add value to information, and the academic reward system). The technology has enabled a shift in power and control to the creators of information; anyone can instantly publish their own work to the world without recourse to the authorities and controlling mediation outlined above.
While this new found freedom may offer many new and wonderful possibilities, it threatens to undermine the communities that have recognized and rewarded the creators, and ensured broad based and enduring access to their creations through high quality cataloging and preservation. To meet the challenge, we need to create an orderly, structured digital environment that enables the various participants to interact with one another and to maintain control over those aspects of the environment and the interaction that enable them to contribute and be rewarded. We need an orderly digital community space that replaces the physical object as the common focus and control mechanism.
This new community space will necessarily have to employ interactive and shared or at least overlapping mechanisms of control. The interaction also will need to involve mutually accepted rules and regulations that will ensure that the participants can fulfill their professional obligations and responsibilities and that their rights, including the right to fair remuneration, are protected. This space will involve explicitly or implicitly social, political, and economic institutions erected on a strong technological foundation that gives each of the players the control he or she needs.
I would like to suggest that the catalog, and special structured documents linked to it, represent the axis of the new digital world order, or, using an architectural metaphor, represent the foundation of a digital academic, educational, and research community.The modern online catalog represents a civilized digital world in which the various interested parties from within the library and from without can meet and conduct their business.
A little over ten years ago, the archival world began to use bibliographic catalogs to provide access not to discrete information objects, but to collections of archive and manuscript materials. The development of the MARC Archive and Manuscript Control format enabled this new use of the catalog. In this approach, instead of providing item-level cataloging, a collection of related materials is subsumed under a category or organizing principle shared by all, and treated as an integral object.
In the hierarchical structure of archival information access and retrieval, the collection-level catalog record leads to the finding aid, and the finding aid leads in and around and sometimes directly to the items comprising the collection. Using the online catalog as a foundation, we can extend and enhance it by linking structured machine-readable finding aids directly to the collection-level records. Users, having identified a collection of interest, will be able to invoke a machine-readable finding aid by clicking on "hot text" or an icon located in the catalog record. They will then be able to navigate through the more detailed description of the collection found in the finding aid. Further, we can use the text in the finding aid to refer to and, if necessary, control other text, and to refer to and control digital representations or surrogates of primary source materials existing in a variety of native formats: photographs, sound motion pictures, drawings, paintings, audio recordings, maps, manuscripts, typescripts, printed pages, and more. In fact, anything that can be digitally captured and subsequently re-presented on demand in an intelligible form can be controlled by the finding aid, which will provide access to what it controls when one clicks on hot-text, a thumbnail,or an icon. Using structured finding aids, we can thus extend the catalog to provide direct access and navigation of digital representations of the primary source materials themselves.
Over and above this structured database of catalog records, finding aids, and digital representations of primary source materials, it will be possible to create both private and public information spaces that reference the materials. In his or her private space, it will be possible for the individual researcher to attach notes and annotations to selected items in collections, and to establish and document relations between items and collections not made in the catalog and finding aids. Literary manuscripts might be evaluated. The notes and annotations might offer tentative interpretations and logical arrangements of the materials, perhaps even incorporated into an historical narrative. When the scholar wants to discuss his tentative evaluations or interpretations with his or her peers, he or she would be able to make the private space public, or at least available to selected individuals, who would be able to annotate the sources, evaluations, or interpretations with comments, alternative interpretations, suggestions, and the like. The scholar might permit view-only access to everyone, but limit those who can deposit comments and further annotations. Such a private space might also be established by a closed community that shares control and governance, with all members having the same rights and responsibilities. Many configurations are possible.
Regardless of the configuration, two features are critical. First, the structured underlying database built by the library and archival community provides access to a rich, relatively stable and therefore reasonably predictable storehouse of primary source materials upon which scholars can confidently build their intellectual structures. Second, the archival and library community, and the research community each maintains control over those portions of the information space essential to their respective missions.
Although scholars work and communicate informally while they are engaged in their research, current intellectual and cultural fashion requires that they formally interact with the academic and publishing communities, negotiating recognition of the value of their creative works, and ultimately passing custody and control over it to others. The communities that play different roles in the comprehensive and complex process of creating, evaluating, canonizing, disseminating, utilizing, organizing, and preserving the human record require that new research, if it is to become part of the record, must be objectively established, captured and fixed in a stable, identifiable, verifiable form.
Typically faculty submit the results of their research and work to their peers for evaluation. The refereeing process is commonly managed by publishers functioning as disinterested third parties ensuring fairness and objectivity. Scholarly associations and societies also can and do frequently fulfill this function, as well as other roles commonly associated with publishers. Once the work has been judged worthy, the publisher must embody the work in an unchanging form the enduring authenticity of which it can guarantee, and make it formally, publicly available. The academic review committee that considers a scholar for tenure or advancement through the institutional hierarchy generally looks at his or her publications. They must be confident that the published works submitted by the person are the same as those judged intellectually meritorious by his or her peers. It is also necessary for a work to remain constant if it itself becomes an object of study and evaluation by other scholars.
Publishers also have needs. They need to generate funds to finance their contribution to the knowledge culture. To do this, they need to be able to publicize the availability of new works, making people aware of their existence, and thereby creating a market. They also need to be able to control and monitor access and use in order to negotiate payment.
At the same time, the market for an electronic work will be of limited duration, and we are probably safe in assuming that publishers will not want to bear the cost of storing and maintaining publications when the costs of doing so exceed the revenue being generated by access and use of them. Therefore mechanisms must be in place to trigger transfer of control and custody of the information from the publisher or scholarly society to the archive and library community to ensure that the intellectual value is preserved after the economic value is exhausted.
Clearly, if these complex intellectual, social, and political interactions are to take place successfully in the digital network environment, the various participants will need to have a structured information space within which they can communicate with one another while each maintains the form of control essential to his or her relation to the shared information. What in the world of digital information will replace the printed book as the domain over which the various interested parties will exercise their shared dominion? I believe that the online catalog and the electronic version of the archival access and control model we have been exploring in the Encoded Archival Description Project -- the extension of the catalog through structured finding aids linked to digital surrogates of primary source materials -- forms the foundation of such an interactive place for the community of scholarship, and further, it suggests the direction to be taken to constitute a complete system that will fully accommodate everyone interested in producing and controlling research in the new world of networked, digital information.