Transcript information industry and information science

LIS510 lecture 7
Thomas Krichel
2006-11-01
structure
• something about values in libraries from
Rubin chapter 7
• overview of Rubin chapter 1
mission & future of the library
• Rubin claims that libraries depends on
public attitudes to
– government agencies
– education
– serving all segments of society
– importance of reading
– learning
– technology
values in libraries
• What do libraries think they are there for?
• In a survey in 2003 among 1000 librarians,
“service to the patron” came out as the
overriding value.
• Also mentioned were
– intellectual freedom
– information literacy
– equal access
ALA statement on values, 2000
• Prepared by a task force on core values:
– connection of people to ideas
– assurance of free and open access to recorded
knowledge, information, and creative works.
– commitment to literacy and learning
– respect for individuality and diversity of all
people
– freedom for all people to form, to hold, and to
express their believe
ALA statement on values, 2000
• and that’s not all
– preservation of the human record
– excellence in professional service to our
communities
– formation of strategic partnerships to advance
these values
• Buschmann has dissmissed the list as a
“bland homogenization of euphemisms”.
Ranganathan’s 1931 values
• Ranganathan proposed “five laws of library
science.
– Books are for use.
– Books are for all.
– Every book its reader
– Save the time of the reader
– The library is a growing organism
Gorman 1995 additions
• Gorman proposed five new laws
– Libraries serve humanity
– Respect all forms by which knowledge is
communicated
– Use technology intelligently to enhance service
– Protect free access to knowledge
– Honor the past and create the future
information infrastructure
• The amount of information grows over time.
• We live in the information age.
• Rubin claims a sense of unease.
– information explosion
– flood of information
– bombarded by information
– information overload (most widely used)
• Is that true?
IMHO: all wrong
• We can talk about an overload of data.
– WWW
– advertising, esp. spam
– traffic signs
– background music in shopping malls
• These things become information when
they are relevant to you.
• Are you well-informed?
information needs
• Does your spouse love you?
• Were there ever weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq?
• Did God create the world in 7 days?
• Is there a history of heart disease in your
family?
• When is the last train before Xmas between
Woodside and Brentwood that takes a
bicycle?
access to information
• First there has to be data that encodes the
information.
• There there has to be some way that the
person with the information need finds the
data if they need it.
• And has be some way a person is made
aware of the data if there is reason to
believe that it will be information to her/him.
• All of these are jobs of and for information
professionals.
libraries
• they are a part of the information
infrastructure that connect people with
data/information.
• Rubin examines the place of the library in
the information structure. This is matter in
itself and does not need to be introduced by
the debate on information overload.
information cycle
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information is created
it is distributed
it is disseminated
it is used
– end-use
– intermediate use
• new information is created from old
• two ways to look at it
– actors
– channels
creators of information
• Rubin:
– authors
– artists/musicians
– database producers
• Thomas:
– archivists
– educators
– financial industry
products
• Rubin:
– books
– magazines
– databases
– web pages
• Thomas:
– music files
– records of any kind
– services where information is key
product/service
• digital technology detaches the information
from its physical container
• information becomes a service, rather than
a product.
• this is a tax-relevant distinction
– in Europe, there is a low VAT rate for
books/journals
– but electronic journals are a considered a
service and get full VAT.
"servicification" of information
• Information is moving from product to
service.
• To update a book
– you have to print all copies anew
– replace all old copies
• To update a web site is much easier but the
web site is expected to be up-to-date.
• This has great potential for the information
professional.
distributors
• Rubin:
– publishers
– vendors (?)
• can be anything
– Internet service providers (?)
• really only arrange for transport, like pizza delivery
man
• at most as disseminator
disseminator
• Rubin:
– educational institutions
– libraries
– museums
– business & government (anybody?)
• Thomas:
– remove business, replace by advertising
– leave government agencies
users
• This is all the rest of the community.
• Users may be end-consumers.
• Users may be authors.
disintermediation
• The web has brought about a possibility to
dis-intermediate.
• Authors can directly bring content to users
without the use of distributors or
disseminators.
• However this is potential and has not been
widely adopted.
• Good example: academic author.
• Bad example: real estate sales.
networks and devices
• Rubin examines networks and devices as
an illustration of the scope taken by the
information infrastructure.
• This is useful to get an idea, but it can not
be taken as a classification or analysis of
the information infrastructure.
Rubin's networks
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Internet
• Financial networks
Telephone network • Online services
Public data network • Power networks
Cellular networks
• Broadcast TV
Satellite networks • Power networks
Radio networks
• Transportation
Cable TV network • Public Safety networks
Direct Broadcast satellite
use of information "outlets"
• Overall trends by Rubin
– Television viewing is up
• broadcast television is going down
• cable television is going up
– Video watching up
– Internet usage is up strongly
– Usage of print media is declining
• I saw a pew Internet study showing that
Internet use mainly comes at cost of
television watching.
print industry
• (Rubin probably means the contents
industry)
• Book and e-book market is growing, but
reading time remains constant.
• Periodicals remains steady.
• Printed newspaper reading is declining.
databases
• Database numbers are growing
• There is a tendency to disintermediation in
vending.
• There is tendency away from metadata only
databases towards full-text databases
• This implies a fuzzy border with the "print"
industry
• If you count database purely as abstracting
services they are probably declining
libraries
• Rubin has listed them last, and does not
much have to say about them, just to say
that they are evolving
• He has some statistics
– 94,345 school libraries and media centers
– 10,452 special libraries
– 9,445 public libraries
– 3,480 academic libraries
– 1,326 government libraries
• Number of non-school libraries are falling.
Internet email and WWW
• They have been fastest growing media
• There are digital divides by race, age,
income.
• Email has the biggest individual share, the
rest are various uses of the WWW. IP
phone is small but growing.
• Internet use is 44% from home,20% from
work, 12 from school, 5% from libraries.
• Libraries play an important role to reduce
the digital divide.
telephone system
• It has a dual role as
– end medium
– carrier of computer network traffic
• Cell phone usage is still growing strongly in
the US.
• The industry as a whole still suffers from an
overexpansion in the 90s
artificial intelligence
• This has been around for a while.
• The field has developed a number of
theoretical tools
• Some of them are being used in practice
now. Things like RDF, the Resource
Description Framework, are based on
artificial intelligence theory. It is a tool to
aggregate knowledge from web resource.
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
Thank you for your attention!