Role of librarians

[Tony Barry]

At 1:59 PM 18/10/95, weibel at oclc.org wrote:

>There will be more intellectual artifacts on the net, but NOT
>necessarily more intellectual value.

Too true.

>someone's time to craft a reasoned position.  The Web DOES increase the
>importance of so-called grey literature...

Yep.

>Indexing is valuable in inverse proportion to the size and diversity of
>the collection.

Agree completely.

>   Automated
>indexing can be made better, but will not replace cataloging and
>classification.

But becuse of relative costs we may be more selective about where we put
the effort and if we can use mechanisms like harvest
<URL:http://harvest.cs.colorado.edu/> to focus the automated collection in
more focussed areas automated methods will work better.  Particularly if
linked with its abiity to enable the publisher to craft the indexing
information retrieved - but then we start getting back to manual indexing
and cataloguing.


>What about description of encoding format of the resource, resources
>necessary to view or execute? provenance of the object? terms and
>conditions of use?  Number of bytes? Sounds like descriptive cataloging
>to me.  May or may not be done by librarians.  Publishers have always
>had the opportunity to provide cataloging for thier publications, but
>the incentives were (are) not their to do so.

This sort of information now becomes part of the promotion of the document.
Publishers have an increased incentive to provide it.

>There is absolutely no decline in the cost of publishing on the net
>versus paper at this time... this MAY change, though its not obvious
>that it will.

It seems to me that if I can get a globasl audience for something I write
direct from my desk without involving a publisher at all i'm ahead.  I've
saved a heap of hassle and time - but then I have absolutely no interest in
selling what I write at the stage.

> The cost of supporting and testing high quality display
>of information on a variety of hardware and software platforms dwarfs
>the savings of paper, unless you limit yourself to lowest common
>denominator formats or (ugh) formats such as Postscript.

HTML 3 will have more than I need.

>Many resources will be dynamic, and the description of such resources
>must account for this.  On the other hand, there must be means to fix
>the record in a permanent way... scholarship cannot proceed without a
>stable (and citable)  intellectual record.

I did believe this but I am becoming increasingly unsure as to its truth in
an absulute sense.  Sure, _some_ material needs to stay - but all?  I
suspect we could throw away over 90% of the journal literature after a few
years and never miss it.  But that is getting off the point.

Tony

__________________________________________________________________________
Tony Barry                  URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html
Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also
Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information  fone  +61 6 249 4632
Australian National University Library                phax  +61 6 279 8120
Canberra  A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA                      tony at info.anu.edu.au