[WEB4LIB] Re: Coughing up Coffman

[Sebastian Hammer]

Hi,

I actually think that in many cases, the response is not silence, and
neither is it despair. It's more like "hey, what do you think we have been
trying to do for the past 30 years?"

I saw nothing new in Coffman's article, but there was a lot of gumption
there, and a provocative, down-to-earth language which may do the cause
good and raise some attention. But again, nothing new. Go to your favorite
web search engine and fire off a search on "digital libraries", Z39.50,
automated interlibrary loan.... you'll come across lots of people who are
chewing away at the same problem from many different corners. They're
chewing away at it as opposed to just solving it with one deft stroke
because the problem space is huge - and a lot more complex than Coffman has
space to acknowledge in his piece. They're chewing away at it slowly, in
part because libraries are not a high-visibility, big-money type of
business domain.

But please, credit where credit was due. Libraries were dealing in things
like "metadata" literally centuries before it became a buzzword on the
Internet. They were also some of the first groups to implement computerized
information retrieval systems dealing with structured metadata. That's
good, because it means there's a lot of practical experience to draw on.
That is sometimes a hassle because some of our user interface paradigms
show their age and could use an update - but that is a cosmetic issue, not
a structural one.

In my work, I see a lot of individual libraries and organisations very
busily re-orienting themselves towards an information world that revolves
in part around the Internet and related services, and a world, perhaps,
where some of the traditional functions of libraries are handled by big
bookstore chains (eg. providing a space for people to hang out around
books). Different regions and countries will progress this at different
paces, but the infrastructure for the universal library (online and
offline) is slowly coming together, and heck, some days I think it may just
give Amazon.com a run for its money. Meanwhile, it's up to patrons as well
as librarians to make demands on funding and coordinating agencies *as
well* as system vendors.

--Sebastian
--
Sebastian Hammer        <quinn at indexdata.dk>            Index Data ApS
Ph.: +45 3536 3672    <http://www.indexdata.dk>    Fax: +45 3536 0449
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