The Impact of the Internet upon the Information Services

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(1)1. "The Impact of the Internet upon the Information Services",. paper presented at the Workshop on Internet Resources and. Technology Applications, September 8-20, 1997, Taipei,. National Science Council.. The Impact of the Internet upon. Information Services:. An Overview and Future Prospect. Mei-hwa Yang. Professor & Director. Graduate Institute of Library and Information Science. National Chengchi University. 12-1. .89.

(2) Contents. I.. Introduction. '". ,. II.. Organizing Internet Resources. ". 12-3. ~. 12-3. III. Information Searching... ...... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 12-4. IV. The Design of WWW Homepage. '". 12-4. V.. Copyright in the Electronic Environment... ... ... .. 12-5. VI.. Resource Sharing and Document Delivery. 12-6. VII. Digital Library... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. 12-6. VIII. Problems in the Electronic Information Age. , .. 12-7. IX. Implications for Information Centers. 12-8. X.. 12-12. Conclusion. 12-2.

(3) I. Introduction Articles about reforming, rethinking, and restructuring information centers are not uncommon.. Information profession is caught in a dynamic and changing world. where an established culture of permanence, perfection and control is giving way to uncertainty, contingency, and transformation.. In this revolutionary era of the. twentieth century, the Internet has become a source for gathering timely information at a faster rate for many institutes and individuals. The Internet certainly has affected the management of Sci-Tech Information Center in many ways.. The information world is undergoing a paradigm shift.. II. Organizing Internet Resources Long time ago, Shera had said that: The responsibility of the librarian is "to maximize the flow of communication across the barriers of time, space, language, and patterns of thought." ,. Facing the internet resources, the impact upon cataloging practices is. as follows:. 1. The cataloging practice has following changes: i. Catalog's function: from finding and gathering to identifying, access and directory gateway. ii. Cataloging scope: from local and physical to global and virtual. iii. Data: from single medium to multimedia, from linear to hyperlink. iv. Retrieval result: from bibliographic and holding record to full text.. 2. The concept of Metadata - Dublin Core In March 1995, the OCLC and NCSA co-sponsored the Metadata Workshop and convened 52 selected researchers and professionals from librarianship, computer science, text encoding, and related areas to develop the resource description records for networked electronic information objects.. I. Jesse H. Shera, "The Librarian and the Machine," Library Journal (June 15, 1961). 12-3.

(4) Why is it so important? Because it has five functions which will bring impact on the cataloging. They are: i. encouraging authors and publishers to provide metadata and that can be. collected by automated resource discovery tools.. ii. creating a template with metadata elements for network publishing tools. iii. serving as the basis for a more detailed cataloging record. iv. being understood across user communities ifmetadata become a standard. v. becoming a similar MARC device among HTML, SGML, TEl Header,. MARC and URN(uniform resource name), etc.. III. Information Searching The existence of resources on the Internet is an undeniably rich resource.. The World. Wide Web's search engines are the main tools for indexing and retrieval of internet resources today.. However, there are few "signposts" on the Internet to its most. important information.. One can waste a lot of time "surfing" the net.'. That's why. we need to learn the searching strategies and do the information filtering for quality information. When I hear the mantra. "Anything, anywhere, anytime," I try not to choke. My goal is to have "nothing, nowhere, never,. Unless it is timely, important, relevant or engaging.". Nicholas Negroponts, in "Tools for the future: recreating or renovating information services using new technologies, " by Jane I. Dysart & Rebecca 1. Jones, Computer in Libraries, 15 (January 1995). Comparison and evaluation of their performance is of great importance for system developers and information professionals, as well as end-users.. IV. The Design of WWW Homepage WWW as a powerful tool, one can use it for publishing as well as marketing. Dave Taylor pointed out 8 rules for the designing: Rule #1:. 2. Czeslaw Jan Grycz, "Technological Change and Its Influence on the Practice and Role of Information. Management", The Serials Librarian 25 (1995):51-52. 12-4.

(5) Understand the intended users and uses of your Web site then focus the design and layout around their needs and interests. Rule #2: Be sparing with graphical elements. Rule #3:. Pages should load within no more than thirty seconds, including all. graphical elements.. Rule #4: Minimize color palettes. Rule #5: Design horizontally-oriented graphical elements where possible. Rule #6: Web sites should always be content-centric. Rule #7: One qualified visitor is worth a dozen anonymous browsers. Rule #8: Ensure your site constantly changes and your information is up-to-date.'. v. 1.. Copyright in the Electronic Environment. Position of ECUP on User Rights in Electronic Publications. The European Copyright User Platform (EUCP), consists of the 35 Library Associations which are full members of the European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) suggests that without infringing copyright, libraries should be able: i. to use electronic technologies to preserve copyrighted materials in their collections; ii. to provide on-site access to electronic copyrighted material; iii. to provide off-site access to registered users; iv. to provide on-site copies of copyrighted material in electronic form or in paper. form.'. ) Dave Taylor, Intuitive Systems-Rules for Cool Web Pages, 1977. 4. Pre-Conference Seminar, Tianjin,. 62 nd IFLA Conference, 22-23 August 1996.. 12-5.

(6) 2. IFLA Position Paper on Copyright in the Electronic Environment Librarians are catalysts for the. flo~. of information in a community.. They educate. users about copyright and the use of copyright protected material. IFLA believes that: i. Librarians are crucial to the access to electronic information. This role needs to be protected and enhanced. ii. The lending of published electronic resources by libraries for cultural and educational purposes should not be restricted by legislation. iii. Legislation should give librarians and archivists permission to convert copyright protected texts and images into digital format for preservation and conservation related purposes.. iv, An international agreement on the movement of digital intellectual property across national boundaries is vital to enable an unrestricted flow of information.' 3. Digital Future Coalition (DFC) from USA The Digital Future Coalition was established in Fall 1995 to ensure that the Congressional intellectual property debate is thorough, broad, and balanced.. DFC. includes over 30 organizations representing high-technology industry groups, library and educational associations, and consumer and privacy advocates.". VI. Resource Sharing and Document Delivery 1. Resource Sharing Project Resource sharing of digital information resources holds the potential for revolutionary changes in libraries ofthe 2P' century. The Pacific Neighborhood Consortium (PNC) is an organization formed to initiate and implement a program in computing and communications technology oriented toward maximizing opportunities for information exchange among institutions of higher education in the Pacific Rim. The goal ofthe Consortium is the development of information exchange capacity to a level that will allow the participating institutions of higher education to regard themselves, not as organizations separated. 5. 62 00 IFLA General Conference, 25-31 August 1996.. 6. Mary, E. Jackson,. "Copying in the United States:. IFLA General Conference, 25-31 August 1996. 12-6. Current Developments & Initiatives,". 62 nd.

(7) by vast distances, but as the residents of a virtual neighborhood.' With this goal in mind, the following problem areas were selected for study: (1) The availability and capacity of existing communications technologies; what is currently available; what is forecast to be available for the future; and what will be needed to produce effective and harmonious exchanges among the participants. (2) The standards needed to provide effective means of communication, including agreements on character sets, formats and system protocols. (3) The resources in the Pacific Rim currently accessible through technology, including libraries, data bases and corpora of texts in technologically accessible form.. 2. Commercial Document Delivery Innovative networking technologies are creating a flood of new commercial information media and services, such as: UnCover, EBSCO, OCLC, Search Bank. UnCover is a database of current article information taken from 17,000 multidisciplinary journals.. Over 4000 current citations are added daily.. UnCover. contains brief descriptive information about over 7,000,000 articles which have appeared since Fall 1988.. VII. Digital Library 1. Barriers. to the Success of the Digital Library. (1)Reading from the screen continues to be unacceptable to most scholars; (2)Wok at the remote scholar workstation will be solitary; (3)Potential for plagiarism and imprecise attribution increases; (4)The digital library is difficult to conceptualize and plan;. (5)Librarian roles will change dramatically; and. (6)The costs will be enormous.". 2. Responsibilities of Digital Librarians The Internet presents librarians with the opportunity to apply their established skills as. 7. PNC (URL: http://www.pnv.berkeley.edu). 8. "Editorial: The Digital Librarian,". The Journal ofAcademic Librarianship (March 1997): 79-80. 12-7.

(8) educators, information managers, custodians, information providers and change agents in their work with Internet users. (1)Partners in Book Production. (2)Browser Development. (3)Metadata Creation. (4)New Instructional Agendas. (5)Archiving.. (6)Collection Decisions.. (7) Fair Use Guardians." (8)Organization of networked information resource.. VIII. Problems in the Electronic Information age 1. Dealing with Technologies on a Limited Budget Librarians find themselves operating in a "zero-sum economic situation'.. Libraries. must change or be left out of the process.. 2. The Emergence of Information as a Commodity Information increasingly is being treated as a commodity. information is rising.. The price attached to. The growing commoditization of information is changing the. character of information services.. Value-added services, in which the packaging or. manipulation ofthe information provides a justification for an additional charge, are becoming more common.. 3. Information Technology Standards for Libraries Technical standards for libraries have a long history.. The National Information. Standards Organization was established in 1939 as Committee Z39 in order. to design and promote voluntary bibliographic standards for libraries, information services, and publishers.. More than 50 standards have been produced since the establishment of. Committee Z39, including standards for a common language (Z39.58), an interlibrary loan data element (Z39.63), and international standard serial numbering (Z39.9).IO Ofthe standards being developed specifically for libraries, the most important is American National Standard Z39.50: Information Retrieval Service Definition and. 9. "Editorial: The Digital Librarian,". 10. Christinger Tomer,. The Journal ofAcademic Librarianship (March 1997): 79-80.. "Information Technology Standards for Libraries,". Society for Information Science 43 (September 1992): 566-570.. 12-8. Journal ofthe American.

(9) Protocol Specification for Library Applications which was first set forth in 1988 and subsequently revised by the NISO. The Z39.50 standard specifies both a syntax for formulating queries and a general framework for transmitting and managing queries and results.. The user of a system. that supports Z39.50 connectivity sees remote system as though they were additional database available from the local system. The Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) protocol developed by Thinking Machines, Inc., will allow for the full exploitation ofthe MARC format's value to libraries and library users. 11. VIII. Implications for Information Centers Whether librarians accept the changes or not, the public's perceptions of the "information superhighway" will have a fundamental impact on their relationships with and expectations for libraries. The Internet has been compared to" a blistering fast, multilane roadway where the vehicles are traveling in at least three dimensions at once, the directional signage changes all the time, and there are no rest stops." For information centers, Internet development have a number of implications:. 1. Competition New forms of competition for the library are emerging. The related forces of technology and commoditization are fostering a significant growth in private, computer-communications-based information services. Information centers need to use these services to enhance their own service offerings. to users, the new services also represents source of competition for information centers. The role ofthe government producer and distributor, raising questions of competition with the private sector, the legitimacy of private firms profiting from the marketing of government information, and the appropriateness of citizens paying to receive government produced information generated from tax dollars.". 2. Convergence. II. M, Stem,. "Browsing Through Terabytes: Wide-area Information Servers Open a New Frontier in. Personal and Corporate Information Services," 12. Anne, J. Mathews,. "Introduction,". BYTE 16 (May 1991): 157-164.. Rethinking the Library in the Information Age. Issue in. Library Research: Proposals for the 1990s. Vol. II(ERIC Reports, 1988),p.3.. 12-9.

(10) Technological convergence is creating or fostering institutional convergence. Computer and communications technologies are converging.. Parallel to this. technological convergence, there is also a functional convergence taking place within the information marketplace among information creators, publishers, and distributors. Self-publishing is increasing.. Parts ofthe library are becoming technically. indistinguishable from other information service providers (such as computer centers, instructional communication agencies, and book vendors), while from a service perspective, many of its functions are in danger of being bypassed. 13. 3. Virtualization Computer allows information to be more easily and inexpensively altered, repackaged,. repressed, deleted, networking is making electronic communication a primary feature. of the modern information environment.. Information is becoming an increasing. inpermanent interactive phenomenon.. What is "virtualization"? According to Bauwens "virtualization" means that every. piece of information produced everywhere in organization, is accessible from. anywhere, anytime.. The Cyberspace is an ideal whose time has come.. What is Cyberspace? Ermel Stepp calls it: "The space of interactive computational. possibilities, where computers are available to users of any participating computers,. anywhere.':" Michael Benedikt defines cyberspace as: "A globally networked,. computer-generated, multi-dimensional, artificial or 'virtual' reality.':". 4. Globalization At the international level, networking is turning information into a global phenomenon.. This has several implications:. (1) It gives rise to concerns regarding the availability and accessibility of. domestic or local information.. (2) It presents major questions regarding the possibility, and the terms, of access. by foreign nationals.. IJ. Louis Vagianos and Barry Lesser,. "Information Policy Issues: Putting Library Policy in Context". Rethinking the Library in the Information Age. Iss,ues: Putting Library Research: Proposals for the 1990s.Vol. II (ERIC Reports, 1988),p.13. /4. Ermel Stepp,. "The Virtualization of Institutes of Research,". The Arachnet Electronic Journal of. Virtual Culture 1(1993). 15. Michael Benedikt,. "Cyberspace: Some Proposals", in Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge, Mass.:. MIT Press, 1991), p.p.199-224. 12-10.

(11) (3) It accentuates long-standing concerns regarding the relationship between open information flows and national security interests. (4) It presents new concerns regarding individual rights of privacy and the. confidentiality of personal records.. (5) It creates the technical possibility of relocation of information storage offshore, with potential implications for political sovereignty, employment, and income. 16. 5. Future directions for librarians What is the librarian's role as we approach the year 2000? "Cyberpunk librarian" is proposed as a metaphor for the librarian able to operate in the emerging cyberspace. Cyberpunk librarian is a new identity. The cyberpuk librarian may discover that, in a world changing by the second, the best way to keep on top is to stay out at the cutting edge. 17 The alternative careers for librarians include the following role-play: 1. Abstractors 2. Collection Developers 3. Brokers. 4.Consultants. 5. Creators 6. Database Managers. 7.Database Set-Up Contractors. 8. Developers. 9.Digital Technologists. 10. Digitizers 11. Disseminators 12. Entrepreneurs 13. Evaluators. 16. 14.. Graphics Designer. 15.. HTML Coder. 16.. Internet Security Analysts. I7.. Interpreters. Louis Vagianos and Barry Lesser,. "Information Policy Issues: Putting Library Policy in Context". in Rethinking the Iibrary in the Information Age. Issue in Library Research: Proposals for the 1990s. Vol. [[ (ERIC Reports, I988),p.I6. 17. Jonathan Willson,. "Enter the Cyberpunk Librarian: Future directions in Cyberspace,". Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy 6( 1966): 22-28. 12-11. Internet.

(12) 18. Journalists, Electronic 19.. Knowledge Workers. 20.. LAN Administrators. 21.. Learning Facilitators. 22.. Market Researchers. 23.. Navigators. 24.. Negotiators. 25.. Organizers. 26.. Project Managers. 27.. Records Managers. 28.. Repackaging Specialists. 29.. Sales Persons. 30.. Strategists. 31.. Systems Administrators. 32.. Team Leaders. 33.. Team Members. 34.. Trainers. 35.. Virtual Librarians. 36.. Webrnaster". x. Conclusion In "Into the Information Age", A. D. Little refers to three eras of information services. Era I consisted of discipline-based services designed to help solve the subject-oriented question.. Era II was of mission-oriented services for helping accomplish a mission,. such as getting a man on the moon.. Era III was problem-oriented services to help. solve problems, such as pollution.. Toni Carbo Bearman believed Era IV should be. individually-oriented services, customized for the individual. In the networked environment, we have a kaleidoscope of choices.. We should. turn the electronic challenge into our own electronic opportunity. Hopefully this workshop experience for us is "One small step, one Giant Leap"!. 18. Barbara Best-Nichols,. "Technologies Change Organizational and Occupational Structures:. Librarian, Cybrarian or ? " 12-12.

(13) Bibliography 1. Bawens, M. "TheEmergence of the 'Cybrarian': a New Organizational Model for. Corporate Libraries," Business Information Review, V. 9, No.4, p.p. 65-67. 2. Benedikt, Michael. "Cyberspace: Some Proposals" in Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 1991), p.p. 199-224. 3. Definition and Purposes of a Digital Library", Association of Research Libraries, October 23, 1995. 4. "Editorial: The Digital Librarian," The Journal ofAcademic Librarianship (March 1997): 79-80. 5. Grycz, Czelaw Jan.. "Technological Change and Its Influence on the {Practice. and Role ofInformation Management," The Serials Librarian 25 (1995): 43-53. 6. Jackson, Mary E. "Copyright in the United States: Current Developments & Initiatives," 620d IFLA General Conference, 25-31 August 1996. 7. Stern, M.. "Browsing Through Terabytes: Wide-area Information Servers Open a. New Frontier in Personal and Corporate Information Services," BYTE 16 (May 1991): 157-164. 8. Tomer, Christinger. "Information Technology Standards for Libraries," Journal of the American Society for Information Science 43 (September 1992): 566-570.. 9. Willson, Jonathan. "Enter the Cyberpunk Librarian: Future Directions in Cyberspace," Internet Research: Electronic Networking Applications and Policy 6 (1966): 22-28. 10. Wright, Kieth C. Computer-Related Technologies in Library Operations (Gower, 1995). 12-13.

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