Library Issues for the Joint Initiative Digital Library Projects

Submitted by Rebecca Lasher October 11, 1994

Introduction

This list of issues is written without the benefit of complete understanding of the Joint Initiative Digital Libraries Projects. So the list is more of a guess of what the issues may be depending upon the individual projects. The list also assumes that by the end of the project some if not all of the testbeds will evolve into products that will continue to be used.

I. Processing

• A. Linking the Joint Initiative Digital Library projects together.
  1. Will the Digital Library projects be linked to local and distributed bibliographic databases? If so, how? Will the projects be linked to each other? If so, how and for what purpose?
  2. Will the Digital Library projects use URLs, URNs, or URCs? Will some mechanism need to be built to map URNs to URLs? What components of the URL or URN can be automatically assigned? Or might some new mechanism for identifying documents also be employed?
  3. What kind of access can each of the projects expect from the other projects? Will access require particular software or hardware? What about access to the results of the research and implementation?
• B. Scanning, image and multimedia
  1. What quality assurance systems are under consideration? The goal is to avoid, as much as possible, extensive handling and editing of the media. Will these quality assurance systems scale?
  2. How do we make sure that institutions don't duplicate effort by scanning something more than once?
  3. What standards will be used for scanning? The 300 dpi, monochrome image will look poor in the future; we need to target an optimum completeness/usability point; one that we can use now, but which will be improved as display technologies improve.
  4. Staff, location, work flow at each site. What can we learn from each other?

II. Services

• A. Delivery and Presentation to Users
  1. What is the vision/goals for users of the Digital system? Does the vision change as the project moves from research to operations?
  2. What clients are participants using?
  3. Z39.50? What role does it play for each system?
  4. What do we know about browsing images, and page image delivery - send page by page or send whole document?
  5. Can the technology deliver the right image format to the right client on the right platform?
  6. Who is evaluating the interface?
  7. How can we work out arrangements with publishers to try to get the biggest, most diverse user base possible? More users help us learn about different kinds of user needs and preferences, but rights holders and commercial services are naturally uneasy about letting too many people have access to their property.
  8. Should we be designing for the future, using what is currently high end hardware and software? Or does that raise concerns about equity of access in the near term?
• B. Service integration
  1. How will this system fit with the Institution's other electronic services?
  2. How will this system be integrated into the Institution's array of supported services?
  3. What is the implementation plan? Will there be a prototype period, moving from research to operations?
  4. What publicity, training, feedback is planned for the system when it is ready for use?
  5. How do we handle security?
  6. How should the projects record and evaluate the kind of support required?
  7. How, in general, do new kinds of services to (potentially) new kinds of users affect organizational policies and practices? How are staff affected? Does the role of the research library within its parent institution change substantially? How does use of digital resources affect use of paper resources? Can networked digital libraries actually change the degree and nature of services offered so that libraries are better meeting user needs?
• C. Intellectual Property
  1. How wide is the variance in each institution's approach to receiving permissions from the copyright owners? Is this just an awareness issue or one which requires an effort to resolve? Are our differences of enough variety to constitute a reasonable testbed for a virtual library environment where diverse policies and responsibilities apply?
  2. Do the Institution's providing the Digital Library service have any obligations for copyright compliance by their users beyond the standard Title 17, US Code postings around our copy machines?
  3. How might we utilize this application in a document delivery environment?
  4. How do we handle fair use in the electronic environment? How do we control it? How do we interface fair use with for-fee document delivery?
  5. What are the economic issues? Are there common issues that we can share?
  6. What are our responsibilities after the project ends, and we expand the service beyond the project and we integrate the service with other information services? Are those responsibilities different because of scale and operations from the responsibilities we have during the research and development phase?
• D. Relationships into the future.
  1. Do we expect to continue to cooperate after the project funding ends? If so, what mechanisms could or should be put in place to assure continuation at particular institutions or through transfer to other (commercial?) spheres?
• E. Evaluation and Project Results
  1. What will be evaluated:
     a. System design
     b. System content
     c. System presentation
     d. User satisfaction
     e. Scalability
     f. Extent and nature of use.
     
  2. How will we evaluate the service?
     a. System designers
     b. Library staff
     c. System users
     d. Non-users
     
  3. Can we measure system efficiency, effectiveness, and impact?
  4. How will we describe the project to others?
     a. Reports
     b. Publications
     c. Presentations
     d. Conferences
     
  5. What new techniques can be developed for collecting data in an online networked environment? What new ethical concerns arise and how will they be dealt with? Will it be possible to perform some kind of meta-analysis of evaluation results? And maintain an archive of evaluation data that other researchers could study?