Changes & trends in the broad arena of
digital libraries during the past decade:
Reflections from the conference Libraries
in the Digital Age (LIDA) 2000-2009
Tefko Saracevic, PhD
School of Communication & Information
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey USA
http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~tefko
Tefko Saracevic
1
Old Queens
where
Rutgers
University
started as
Queens
College
in 1766
Tefko Saracevic
2
How thinking about trends is established
From: Robert B. Cialdini (1993). Influence: the psychology of persuasion
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The big picture
In the first decade of the new century digital
libraries exhibited a continuing, even
accelerating growth and changes in many
dimensions
The phenomenon is global
Many changes and advances are
evolutionary, some even revolutionary
Among others:
Tefko Saracevic
4
The big picture - Among others:
New players,
stakeholders, fields,
and institutions joined
the realm of digital
libraries
Position of digital
libraries in the
networked environment
as exhibited by their
reach, access and
diversity expanded
significantly
Tefko Saracevic
Research community
grew and research
diversified
Curricula and
professional
competencies changed
to accommodate a
variety of
organizational, service
and technological needs
5
The big picture - Among others
Economic investments
in and expenditures for
digital libraries
increased significantly
Numerous social,
managerial, legal, and
ethical issues and
effects became more
pronounced
Tefko Saracevic
(cont.)
Manifold issues about
the evident impact of
digital libraries on
scholarship, education,
society, and culture are
being raised and
explored
6
Ten years of LIDA 2000-2009
Purpose: to address the changing and
challenging environment for libraries and
information systems in the digital world
Each year a different and ‘hot’ theme was
addressed, divided in two parts:


the first part covering research and development and
the second part addressing advances in applications
and practice
Most of the topics from “the big picture” were
addressed - variety of viewpoints
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7
LIDA themes
2000:
Positioning libraries on the
Internet.
Using Internet in libraries
2001:
The Internet: ethics and legal
issues.
Information services - practice and
research
2002:
Integrating information seeking
and information retrieval (IR).
Information services in digital
environments - practice and
research.
Tefko Saracevic
2003:
WWW and information retrieval.
WWW and libraries
2004:
Human information behavior and
digital libraries.
Competences for digital libraries
2005:
What can digital libraries do that
traditional libraries cannot? Or do
in addition? Achievements and
prospects.
Building a small digital library and
digital library network
8
Themes …
2006:
Cultural, social and institutional
effects and place of digital
libraries
Building a digital library for children
and young adults
2007:
Users and use of digital libraries.
Economics and digital libraries
2008:
Education and training in digital
libraries.
Reference in digital environments
Tefko Saracevic
2009:
Reflections: changes brought by
and in digital libraries in the last
decade.
Heritage & digital libraries digitization, preservation,
access
2010:
?????????
9
LIDA Guests of Honor
2004
Eugene Garfield
2005
Robert Hayes
2006
Jack Meadows
2008
Peter Ingwersen
2009
Michael Buckland
2010
shall we vote?
2007
Christine Borgman
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LIDA themes reflected …
Development: building digital
libraries ; d-lib research
(LIDA 2005/II; 2006/II)
Practice: diversity, growth,
digital libraries & the
networked environment
(LIDA 2000/parts I; 2003/I & II)
Services: variety of services
provided
(LIDA 2001/II; 2002/II; 2005/I;
2008/II)
Users & use: using digital
libraries; human information
behavior& information
seeking in digital libraries
(LIDA 2000/II; 2002/I; 2004/I;
2007/I)
Professional: education for
digital librarians,
competencies needed;
ethical concerns
(LIDA 2001/I; 2004/II; 2008/I)
Social: digital libraries and
social, cultural, and
institutional effects
(LIDA 2006/I; 2007/II; 2009/II)
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Here, for review of trends grouped in
nine overreaching effects
D-libs are affected by
trends in:






proliferation of digital
information
changes in needs for &
role of d-information
increased diversity &
competition
new or improved
services
search for measuring,
justification
cooperative activities
Tefko Saracevic
Plus they are affected by
changes in their:




immediate institutional
or community
environment
users & use
technology
developments
policy, legal, and
political contexts
12
Graphically:
General trends & mutual effects
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Graphically:
Plus changes in environments
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Effects on d-libs of
D-information is growing exponentially

everything about digital information follows Moore’s
law (which is not about information but computer
hardware: capacity of chips doubles every two years)
Information explosion is continuing unabated

now including the web
Publishing & distribution migrated to digital
Many implications for d-libs

in every aspect: selection, acquisition/licensing,
organization, access provision, rights management,
preservation ….
© 2008 Tefko Saracevic
15
… effects of proliferation (cont.)
As budgets of libraries are not increasing,
higher & higher proportions are going for
digital resources & services



necessitating cuts for others
& changes in professional deployment of librarians
somebody has to run and manage these things
Collections are increasingly digital
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Example: Rutgers University Libraries –
electronic subscriptions
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… effects of proliferation (cont.)
Many libraries are increasing own digitization
& playing an active role in proliferation


digitization of heritage (old stuff) & outputs of
own institutions (new stuff) is increasing
born digital from libraries is going up as well
Many libraries are joining & even leading in
preservation of digital records

Tefko Saracevic
& with it libraries are becoming an important
social & cultural player in information society
18
… effects of proliferation (cont.)
In turn these trends are creating needs for
properly educated and trained digital
librarians



curricula, distant education, workshops … are
adjusting to those needs & will adjust even more
professional life-long learning becomes imperative
professionally: a constant need to change &
increase professional competencies
 this is a 100% sure trend
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Effects on d-libs of
Digital information is also distributed (role of the
internet) and accessed & used in a number of
differing ways (role of the web)

plus creation became relatively easy & sharable
All continue to affect what information is
needed and how it is used


the study of these needs & uses are proliferating in
many fields & commercially
important for finding ways & means to satisfy
changing needs & uses
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… effects of changing use, needs (cont.)
D-libs are being accessed & used by users that
are never setting a foot in the library physically,
only virtually – access by fingers not feet



inspiring studies (or guessing) of needs and access
ways of these virtual users
users studies of digital libraries & resources are on
the rise & more are under way
involvement of librarians in such studies and in
interpretation & translation of findings should become
a trend
 (but will it?)

to translate into appropriate responses
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Effects on d-libs of
Many institutions, in addition to libraries, are
into digital libraries

museums, archives, historical societies, professional
organizations, academic fields, institutions, schools,
governments, commercial enterprises … you name it
Diversity is growing


users do not care
libraries do – how to use this array? how to
distinguish themselves?
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Also: Competition in information
economy
A number of players got involved in digital
information taking advantage of technology



many new ones (Google, Amazon…) many old
ones reconfigured (publishers e.g. Elsevier)
stakes are enormous & increasing
a major & rapidly growing industry
Competition is cutthroat


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national & global
with strategic significance for all
23
… effects of competition (cont.)
Libraries are finding themselves in unfamiliar
territory – never had such competition


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positive trend: increasingly searching for and
defining a constructive (and winning) role in that
environment
e.g. in commercial enterprises they are re-defining
themselves into competitive intelligence services
24
… effects of competition (cont.)
Negative contrast: gloomy pronouncements
on increased irrelevance of libraries (or
books, or print, or newspapers, or …)
 percent of people reading any book or newspapers a
year is falling – one trend
 yet more books and a variety of magazines are made
and sold per year then ever before – another trend
Talking about books (one of the mainstreams
of libraries)
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Are books under siege?
A lot of stuff is read now from the screen


so far books not that much
paper for books (i.e. analog) is still the king
However, will that change?




with a lot of digitization – ever more books are
digital – effect of scale & variety
with new digital reader technology – ever more user
friendly (e.g. Amazon’s Kindle)
with new downloading & charging methods à la iPod
with new, wired, screen-oriented generation
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Effects: New digital book & libraries
Doomsday scenario:


users will bypass libraries in getting books
libraries will slowly get irrelevant as book holders
Rethinking doomsday scenario:


libraries will adjust digital collections & services & offer
“circulation” of digital books in new ways – value is
added
services are free to own patrons – others are not
Libraries will get a new and different life

if they adjust
© 2008 Tefko Saracevic
27
Effects on d-libs
of development of
On the web-based new services, capabilities,
products related to d-information are
mushrooming
Even established ones are improving &
evolving in new directions

Tefko Saracevic
just think of paths taken by digitization of books
by Google & others
28
… effects of new services (cont.)
Libraries are participating in a number of new
web services


e.g. Google book digitization involves many
libraries, even national ones … going up & up
library catalogs & circulations are becoming a part
of search engines
 getting integrated into the online search experiences
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… effects of new services (cont.)
Also developing own new services, e.g.


e-reference: ask-a-librarian; chat reference
searching: incorporation of cross-database
searching; filter options for refining searches;
advanced searching by place, time, broad subject,
& category; recommender services
 geared toward “Less Searching, More Finding.”


Tefko Saracevic
offering access to bibliography management
software (e.g. RefWorks at many libraries )
providing webcasts of events in the library
30
Service: Searching
End user searching increased dramatically
Professional searching in many institutions
declined, even disappeared
Reference transactions declined dramatically
Digital resources for searching are a major &
growing component & expenditure in libraries
From searching move toward information
literacy
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Service: Information literacy
Knowledge how to find, evaluate and
process information
Involves




tutorials for a field
or for specific courses
information guides for given fields, areas
conduct if inf. literacy courses or modules
 including in distance education

orientation for students
D-libs moving into education
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But, major service: access
Networked, distributed access still major goal


but ways & means changing
also involves management of digital resources &
their access
Development of portals – never ending
Mega-portals e.g.


Europeana- across countries & institutions
American Memory – across heritage records, media
Increasingly, local libraries are also becoming
portals for all kinds of local information
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Effects on d-libs of
increased focus on
For commercial organizations measuring exchange
value fairly straight forward: Return on investment
(ROI), profits

even willing to take long term gamble, losses
But indicators of use value new & in flux



tracking online visits: clicks, what words, phrases used
most, (“bangs for the buck”), from where use came
(addresses…); ranks in visits …
instead of subscriptions measure downloads
use of tracking tools on the rise to justify value
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… effects of measuring (cont.)
Measuring & interpreting access & use in digital
libraries is complex

standards slowly developing
 ROI & value in exchange not appropriate
Use measures are often equated with value in
use – similarly as circulation measures

statistics measures used as performance measures
 e.g.: visits; fill rate; downloads; percent of population
(students, patrons) actually using; use level for titles
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… effects of measuring (cont.)
New measures of value are constantly sought

some are user-centric
 e.g. experiences; outcomes - what did the user get out of
the service; impact; scorecards

some within broader economic theory
 considering libraries as social capital

some with arguments of value added by libraries to
information & inf. objects
Pressure to justify is rising & rising


Tefko Saracevic
yet actually finding ways to do so is not
what would be loss in terminating a library?
36
Effects on d-libs of
Connectivity coupled with cooperation becoming
a major aspect of d-information

benefit of feedback & contributions from a community
- “wisdom-of-the-crowds”
Besides blogs & Wikipedia many examples


recent- aimed at scientist: 2collab
bookmarks with folksonomy: del.icio.us
 e.g. their entry for digital libraries

study of cooperation in Cooperation Commons
(CoCo)
 of course there should be cooperation in study of
cooperation
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… effects of cooperation (cont.)
Libraries have a long history of cooperation
– continues in d-libraries


e.g. cataloging, consortia, OCLC, networks
cooperation on the rise because of necessity
But there is also library type cooperation
aimed at general public

all about books: cataloging your books,
recommendations … LibraryThing
 e.g. their entry for Librarians who LibraryThing
More like that will appear

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has commercial value as well
38
Digital libraries & changes
in their environments
Role of changes in immediate context
 institution or community
 users & use
 technology
 legal, policy, politics
Several large gravitational hubs of
information infrastructure dominate
 Google, Amazon, Yahoo…
Trends in these environments impact digital
libraries a lot
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Effects on d-libs of
Educational institutions

trend: searching for role in digital environment
 e.g. online offerings, open course materials (MIT)
Public communities & governments

trend: e-government, e-communication
Commercial organization

trend: increased participation in digital anything
Libraries are trying to increase their
participation in new or changing aspects of their
institution, organization, community

if not they face being irrelevant to new directions
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Effects on d-libs of
In many areas substantive changes

public is more & more on the net for all kinds of
things
Open access movement continues to gain
ground – but not without struggle

significant support but also opposition rising
Social connections on the Web – big (for now)

but also individualization - myXXXX
This keeps effecting d-libraries

expectations & requirement of users changing
 e.g. full texts required & expected
© 2008 Tefko Saracevic
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Changes in scholarship
“Scholarly practices across
an astoundingly wide
range of disciplines
have become
profoundly and
irrevocably changed by
the application of
advanced information
technology.”
Clifford Lynch (2008) in The
Institutional Challenges
of Cyberinfrastructure and
E-Research
Tefko Saracevic


Academic & research
institutions are
adjusting & creating
own infrastructure
In various ways
libraries play a role in
that infrastructure – still
evolving
 incorporating growing
no. of databases, dresources, web sources,
access mechanisms, inf.
literacy & assistance
42
Effects on d-libs of
Technologies have reconstructed or changed
social structures including institutions – libraries
as well

& have a potential to do so further
In turn, social structures shape how we think
about & use technology – digital libraries are a
part of that as well
Technologies change stuff & the changed stuff
affects how we use & consider technology
 derived somewhat from Giddens' structuration theory
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Effects on d-libs of technology (cont.)
Constant appearance of new technologies –
hardware & software – is a constant trend
D-libraries are totally technology dependent &
their users are becoming so

and will constantly keep chasing it
 interaction with technology suppliers particularly of
integrative & advanced software is becoming more
sophisticated & knowledgeable on part of libraries

new access methods, hardware on the horizon
 libraries & iPods or some such & users will probably
expect that they can get to library that way
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Technical problems
Substantial - larger & more complex than
anticipated e.g.:

representing, storing & retrieving of library objects
 particularly if originally designed to be printed & then digitized


operationally managing large collections - issues of scale
dealing with diverse & distributed collections
 interoperability; federated searching


assuring preservation & persistence
incorporating rights management
Also affected research agendas & directions
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Research issues
starting from technical, but expanding …

understanding objects in DL
 representing in many formats







metadata, automating representation
conversion, digitization
organizing large collections
managing collections, scaling
preservation, archiving
interoperability, standardization
accessing, using, searching
 federated searching of distributed collections

Tefko Saracevic
evaluation of digital libraries
46
Effects on d-libs of
D-libs, as most public institutions, depend on
policies, laws of their governments

from economic sustenance, to research, to intellectual
freedom, to professional recognition …
Changes in policies = often changes in fortune
Changes in governments = often changes in
policies
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D-lib research policies
In the US, UK,
European Union strong
support for d-lib
research starting in mid
1990’s – many projects
Most such research was
technology oriented
Created strong d-lib
research communities
world wide
Tefko Saracevic
But by 2009 d-lib
research support
ceased – no more

to some extend it shifted
to other areas
It will have negative
effect on d-lib research


larger projects cannot
not be sustained without
govermental support
move to institutional
support
48
Legally, politically …
New forms of intellectual property rights for
emergent information architectures of the
21st century are needed & sought
Significant asymmetries in access to
information have socioeconomic
consequences – remedies are sought
D-libraries (as libraries in general) will
continue to try to affect these changes

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voicing through a number of channels
49
Back to big picture
Conclusions
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Digital libraries contribution
Affected handling of information in society
Penetrated many fields & human activities
Started on developing an organized body of
knowledge & professional competencies
Applied interdisciplinarity
Reaching late adolescence - toward maturity
Stressed HUMAN in human-computer
interaction
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Challenges
Adjust to the growing & changing social &
organizational role of inf. & related inf.
infrastructure
Play a positive role in globalization of
information
Respond to technological imperative in
human terms
Join competition with quality – d-libraries are
value added
Join DIGITAL with LIBRARIES
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Juncture
Libraries are at a critical juncture in their evolution –
digital components are revolutionizing their roles
Many fields, groups ... moving into digital libraries



big competition
entrance of powerful players
fight for stakes
Need to keep progressing in its:




research & development
professional competencies
educational efforts
interdisciplinary relations
And demonstrating their value to society
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Conclusion for d-libs A proper borrowing on how to act
“Think globally, act locally.”


Tefko Saracevic
an environmentalist slogan
coined by David Brower, founder of Friends of the
Earth
54
Giuseppe
Arcimboldo
(1527-1593):
The Librarian
circa 1570
see his other pictures at
http://nanimots.canalblog.com/
How will a digital
librarian look like?
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My favorite LIDA picture
Tefko Saracevic
(LIDA 2006, Mljet)
56
This is how I looked when LIDA
started (I wish)
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Tefko Saracevic
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