Re: Issues and recommendations

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 09:27:04AM -0700, Karen Coyle wrote:
> We also want to make clear that our use of the word "library" does not  
> limit the report to formal institutions with "library" in their name,  
> but anyone providing library-like services. Thus, a definition is  
> needed, and we propose for discussion:
> 
> "Library in this report refers to a collection of information  
> resources curated for a designated community and providing services  
> around those resources. In this definition, libraries may be public or  
> private, large or small, and are not limited to any particular types  
> of resources."

>From Wikipedia [1]:

    A library is a collection of sources, resources, and
    services, and the structure in which it is housed; it
    is organized for use and maintained by a public body,
    an institution, or a private individual. In the more
    traditional sense, a library is a collection of books. It
    can mean the collection itself, the building or room that
    houses such a collection, or both. The term "library"
    has itself acquired a secondary meaning: "a collection
    of useful material for common use." This sense is used in
    fields such as computer science, mathematics, statistics,
    electronics and biology. It can also be used by publishers
    in naming series of related books, e.g. The Library of
    Anglo-Catholic Theology.

For the purposes of the LLD XG report, I'm wondering if it's
problematic to define libraries in terms of "service".  While
the notion of service may be central to the missions defined
for most of the libraries we have in mind in preparing this
report, I see their service function as somewhat tangential
to the provision of a curated collection as linked data --
unless one were to extend the notion of "service" to include
things like the preparation of metadata and provision of
"servers" that "serve" the information :-)

I'm thinking specifically of "digital libraries" -- a concept
which, like "libraries without walls", burst onto the scene in
the early 1990s (the NSF Digital Library Initiative started
in 1994).  According to NSF, "the notion of a 'digital
library' is a metaphor for thinking about data collections
in a networked world" [2].

We should perhaps distinguish between the TARGET AUDIENCE of
this report -- existing libraries in the service-oriented,
brick-and-mortar sense -- and INSTITUTIONS THAT MIGHT
FOLLOW ITS RECOMMENDATIONS.  We should perhaps not assume
that existing libraries will always be the institutions best
suited to publish "library data" in the linked data space.
We should perhaps leave room for "libraries" in the more
metaphorical sense, to include "digital libraries" optimized
for curating and serving up collections of digital resources,
perhaps in the context of institutions yet to be invented.

As I see it, we are concerned here about the culturally
significant data held by libraries and about the application
of the "library ethos" to its curation, structured access,
long-term preservation, and more specifically to its provision
as linked data.  We could define libraries as the "target
audience" of the report while remaining agnostic about whether
existing libraries can or should be the ones to carry out
all of its recommendations.

Tom

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library
[2] http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/cyber/digitallibraries.jsp

-- 
Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>

Received on Thursday, 14 April 2011 16:24:02 UTC