The Future of Electronic Text in research Libraries

Information in electronic form is rapidly becoming the preferred method of information exchange for many scholars. All types of information providers, especially university research libraries, are aware of this and are searching for ways to take part in this shift from paper to computer files. While I believe it will be a very long time before electronic information replaces printed materials (assuming that this ever happens), research libraries should prepare themselves for what this shift may bring, both in how it affects the scholars who use it, and the librarians who provide it.

Electronic Information and the Scholar

There are numerous predictions about how electronic information will affect the way scholarly research is done in the future. These can be summarized as follows:

• Increased access to obscure information.
  For a long time, it has been necessary for scholars to explore many resources in order to obtain needed information. A scholar would either have to travel a great distance, pay large fees for interlibrary loan and fax services, or worst of all, do without. If electronic information resources become the dominant information media as many predict, it will be possible for a scholar to obtain most (if not all) needed materials by using the global information network. Obscure or rare materials could become just as accessible as any of the widely distributed printed sources.

  Two examples of how this could work are:

  • English Poetry, at the UVA Electronic Text Center.
  • The Louvre on the World Wide Web: artwork and commentaries.

• Easier tracking of citations via hyperlinks.
  Because of the way hypertext allows context-sensitive linking of different electronic documents, it will be possible for a scholar to find not only another research work, but the sources that went into its production. If any of these source documents are available on the global network, a scholar will be able to reference them by using a variation of conventional footnotes. When a user reads an article and examines a footnote, the user may find not only the citation for the cited work, but a hyperlink to the work itself. This will make it possible to see all the works used in the process of producing the final work. For an example of how this might look, the HTML+ (Hypertext markup format) guidelines have a fully hyperlinked bibliography that looks like a conventional printed bibliography. Another example is a hypertext adaptation of the King James Bible, which has links to the individual verses and connections to an on-line Concordant.

• Less dependence on the Library as a physical location.
  As more and more electronic information resources become available, and libraries share more of these resources, scholars will start to see the research library as less of a repository and more of a gateway: a facility from which resources can be found. From the point of view of the user, all of the resources on the global network as just as accessible as those on the local system. One example of this type of networking is the University of Virginia's Electronic Text Center. A more specialized example is the "Online resources For Earth Scientists (ORES)," a document that refers users to a wide variety of items from all over the world.

• Changes in Types of Research.
  As electronic resources are shared by more and more libraries, it will become easier for scholars to explore materials that used to be very difficult to obtain. Traditional fields of research will expand and new fields may even emerge. In the near future, changes in the humanities and social sciences should become very obvious. The effect of electronic information on the applied sciences has already been demonstrated. There has been an increase in co-operation between scholars from different geographic areas, not to mention an increase in output. We can expect this trend to continue.

  Perhaps the best example of a center for exchanging and distributing scholarly texts is the The Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities at Rutgers. An example in the sciences is the Cornell Computer Science Technical Reports, a hypertext series of reports.

• Changes in traditional research skills.
  As electronic indexes and citation methods become more and more common, there should be a change in the use of traditional research skills involving printed materials. For example, scholars will be less likely to translate materials from different languages, unless they are in linguistics, because software is available to do this for them. Another example is of a change in research skills is in the field of legal research. Currently, legal research is very time consuming and requires working with several printed sources. If these sources are stored electronically, it should become easier and will certainly become faster. These trends will lead to the development of new research skills that specialize in the use of electronic indexing systems.

Electronic Information and the Librarian

As with the scholar, there are also numerous predictions about how electronic information will effect the way librarians work. Some skeptics predict that electronic information will ultimately make librarians obsolete. I believe that electronic information will change the way librarians work, but it won't make them obsolete.

• Administration.
  The basic function of the library administrator won't change, but the issues dealt with will. The administrator must be aware of the need for current information technology and keeping their staff trained in the use of this technology. They must also keep looking for opportunities to apply and expand this technology. Current concerns, such as shelf space, will be replaced by concern for acquiring and maintaining computer hardware, and making certain that their staff can use it.

• Reference and Bibliographic Instruction.
  Reference and Bibliographic Instruction librarians will increasingly find themselves directing users to electronic sources and spending less time referring users to printed sources. They will also maintain proficiency in the use of these technologies and constantly be aware of changes, since they will be the first ones to instruct patrons in their use. For example, the Rochester Institute of Technology has implemented an "electronic reference desk" that uses electronic mail and gopher links to direct patrons to reference sources on the Internet.

• Collection Development.
  Collection Development librarians will find their responsibilities increasing in both quantity and difficulty. Because the amount of electronic information available both on the Internet and through commercial services is both vast and often confusing, people in these fields will have to sort through several electronic repositories to find relevant materials.

• Circulation.
  The traditional concerns like checking out books will gradually be replaced by concerns of access to the materials on the library computer cluster. Circulation librarians will find themselves making certain that electronic resources are where they are supposed to be, and that users can reach them. There will be an overlap with systems in this respect as they assist in troubleshooting problems of access.

• Acquisitions.
  As electronic materials become more common, the cost of library materials won't be as much of a concern as it is now because most electronic materials are cheaper than their printed counterparts. The concern won't vanish completely, because there will still be the concern over materials that are sold as CD-ROMs. Emphasis may shift to initial quality control over the content of the collection, giving acquisitions librarians a greater role in collection development. Acquisition librarians may also find themselves responsible for maintaining access to commercial or proprietary information systems such as Dialog. Robert D. Cameron's article,"To Link or To Copy?" address several issues specifically related to Acquisitions.

• Cataloging.
  Of all the traditional library services, cataloging can expect more changes than many of the others. As more and more of the technical indexing becomes automated, future catalogers will spend less time working with specific details and spending more time on subject and content analysis, abstracting, bibliographic development (in co-operation with Collection development), and citation consistency (in co-operation with Bibliographic Instruction). The Text Encoding Initiative guidelines for the encoding and markup of electronic texts examines many issues relating cataloging to electronic information.

• Systems.
  Systems librarians can expect increasing demand on their skills. As electronic information becomes more common, there will be increasing concern for the performance of the library computer system. For example, the various details of bibliographic control, currently handled by catalogers, will be handled by computer programs, and it will be the responsibility of the systems librarian to keep these programs functioning and up to date.

• Archives & Special Collections.
  With the increase in shared information, libraries can devote more internal resources to materials of local interest and their various specialized collections. Electronic media provides a new way of distributing specialized materials without endangering the original artifact. For example, The CLASS Project at Cornell University is making available, in the form of computer images, a large collection of old textbooks in mathematics. For current security reasons, this collection isn't yet available outside of Cornell, but Cornell does plan to make it available to the Internet in time. This accessibility seems likely to become commonplace in the future. A functioning prototype of an electronic special collection is The National Engineering Education Delivery System,: a multimedia catalog of Internet-based educational materials.

• Preservation.
  The current duties of preservation will remain the same so long as libraries are keeping printed sources. With the advent of electronic information, however, a new specialization may emerge within preservation that is responsible for keeping electronic materials accessible. As computer systems change, these new preservationists will be responsible for taking resources that were developed using older systems and transferring the information onto whatever the current technological standard is. My home town of Homer, New York is currently facing this problem. Several town records from the mid-1970's were stored on seven and nine inch floppy disks, which at the time were the industry standard. Today, this information can not be used because the hardware needed to read these disks is no longer manufactured. If this information were to somehow be transferred to the contemporary 3.5" disk, then the information could be used.

For more information about how research libraries are currently using electronic resources, I would encourage you to investigate the resources I indicate above.

Thank you for your time.

Richard J. Pugh, May 26, 1995.
This document was designed as part of a presentation, delivered at the University of Pittsburgh on May 26, 1995. Only the hyperlinks have been updated since the time of this presentation. Clearly this report should be considered historical by current users. I find it interesting that some of my predictions that were considered unlikely (such as digital preservation librarians) are now becomming a reality. Vindication feels good.