Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day…Digital Libraries Won’t Be Either!
I can honestly say, “I Love Libraries.” When I was in elementary school, library day was by far my favorite day of the week (recess day doesn’t count because every day involved some kind of recess). Music day was a drag because I couldn’t read a note or carry a tune; art day was the worst because I had no artistic skills and I used to have to give this girl Meghan my leftover lunch money to draw my pictures for me. But library day…library day was great. In fact, my friends and I even had a “Ghost Bookclub.” Every week we would read different scary books about witches, vampires and other undead creatures, and then skulk around the library looking for abnormal things (Jimmy, the only boy in the club, swore the library was haunted). However, my love for the library slowly but surely disappeared when I reached high school thanks to an anal English teacher who could only be compared to Satan and my lack of free time to go there anyway. I probably only visited the library a handful of times in high school. But thanks to late hours, Starbucks and nice comfy couches to take naps on, my love affair with the library was rekindled in 2005 when I started college at the University of Pittsburgh. I mean, what was there not to love about the library? There was always someone to talk to, always someone cute to stare at, always someone I didn’t particularly like to talk about, and always someone to take a smoke break with. So when I hear that academics and librarians are fearful that “digital libraries” may replace “physical libraries” I have to admit, I get a little sad and rather nostalgic.
I am not, however, naïve. I completely understand we live in a world where our technology changes on a daily basis. I understand we live hectic, busy lives and technology helps to make our lives just a little bit easier. I mean, in today’s current economic crisis, who doesn’t use their computer or their cell phone to check their stock quotes, visit CNN.com to see the late breaking news regarding Wall Street, or find out the latest idiotic thing Sarah Palin and John “the Maverick” McCain have proposed to fix the sub prime mortgage mess? Maybe we don’t all do it, but a lot of us do. And for those who don’t feel the need to constantly have technology at their fingertips, they certainly understand that option is available to them if they want it do be. So if technology can help to make our lives easier, why are so many librarians and historians fearful of “digitizing the past?” We’ve heard the arguments; Cohen and Rosensweig point out in Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web, as does Marilyn Deegan and Simon Tanner in, Conversion of Primary Sources, digitization is not always as simple as scanning a book. In fact, the digitization process can be lengthy and very expensive. High end scanners or fiber optic cameras that are needed to digitize rare and fragile documents could run thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Optical Character Recognition Software (OCR), which is used to convert letters and words into machine readable text (machine readable text is text that can be searched by doing a keyword search), can not only be expensive, but it can also be riddled with mistakes. If the machine readable text needs to be perfect, then it may be in the best interest of the organization or the company who is digitizing the materials to hire someone to just retype the text. And that can certainly take a long time and cost a lot of money. Not to mention, certain aspects of the materials being digitized may be lost in the analog to digital conversion. What about the look and feel of the original document? What about the page layout or any handwritten notes in the margin? Could a lot of these important aspects be lost?
I totally understand why librarians and historians are worried. In order to best understand the meaning of a historical text, object, etc… it is best to look at the original first hand, not a scanned copy on the computer. But I think what is gained is so much greater than what is lost. As Howard Besser points out in The Past, Present & Future of Digital Libraries, researchers can utilize the internet as an important research tool to consult “rare works residing in a host of different institutions without having to visit each one.” He does argue, however, that in order for a “digital library” to be successful, it must employ the same characteristics and standards of traditional libraries. Digital libraries must remain stewards over their collections; the digital library must guarantee access to the general public; digital libraries must have a strong service component; digital libraries must be sustainable. I completely agree with Besser. Digital libraries must possess the same general components of traditional libraries. And I also understand we are not quite there yet. But that is not to say we will not get there. The library I used when I was in elementary school is much different than the library I use now. It is called progress. And progress takes time. We cannot expect digital libraries to equal their physical counterparts in just a few years. Not when we have been perfecting the physical library for thousands of years. I mean, the Dewey Decimal system, which is used by most libraries when classifying books, has only been around for about 150 years. Is that to say that before the Dewey Decimal System, books were just stuck on shelves and anyone visiting the library would just have to wander aimlessly until they found what they were looking for? NO! There was just another system, and a system before that, and a system before that. Again, it is called progress. The digital information that is available to us online is not perfect. But it will continue to get better. And better. We need to embrace its potential, not hide from it because it is “not quite perfect yet.” Librarians and academics should understand this. Think about how much easier the lives of anyone writing a book has gotten over the last twenty or thirty years. Oh the joys of word processing! But word processing was not always perfect either. Should we say, “lets just keep using our pencil and paper because the computer crashed?” Absolutely not. As Michael Jon Johnson says in, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Climate Change & the Scholarly Ecosystem, the nature or “ecosystem” of libraries and books has changed. He argues that is the “designers,” the publishers and librarians need to enhance access and readability of important materials and to improve comprehensibility and organization of books, manuscripts, papers, journals, etc. That is their jobs. But what if people are turning somewhere else to get their information? Should the libraries and the scholars not adapt? If people are turning to the web for information, which makes complete and total sense in today’s busy world, isn’t it the job of those scholars and librarians to adapt to change, and get the information out there in a form that is easily accessible? Like Johnson says, the job of the librarian and the scholar in this new “ecosystem” will not be less important; it will just be different. Again, it is called “change” or “progress.” If librarians and scholars truly want to fulfill their obligations of disseminators of information in the 21st century, they need to acknowledge that people are getting their information in different ways. And they need to recognize that “different” does not mean “bad” or “inferior.”
There are librarians and academics who are doing this. According to Richard Cox in Machines in the Archives: Technology and the Coming Transformation of Archival reference, many librarians and archivists are utilizing the power of email, blogs and instant messaging to answer general research questions. This saves people from having to come to the library, or gives them a place to start when they arrive. Cox also points out that many archivists and librarians are using high end scanners and digital cameras to preserve their collections. If so many libraries, museums, archives, etc. are already utilizing this technology for preservation purposes anyway, why are so many scholars and librarians still so scared of making it available over the internet? Copyright Issues? Distorting the images? I am sure there are a whole host of answers. And like I said, I completely get it. It is new. It is unfamiliar. It is not perfect. Then lets keep working at it. Rome wasn’t built in a day. We cannot expect digital libraries to be built overnight either.
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