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CoLIS3 Proceedings:

"DIGITAL LIBRARIES: Interdisciplinary Concepts, Challenges and Opportunities"

ed. by: Tatjana Aparac, Tefko Saracevic, Peter Ingwersen and Pertti Vakkari

can be directly ordered at the price of DEM 50 (p. and p. _not_ included) at the following address:

Benja Publishing
P.O.Box 51316 Lokve, Croatia
tel: ++385-51-453 004
fax: ++385-51-454 604
benja@ri.tel.hr

CONTENT | PREFACE



Proceeedings CONTENT:


RESEARCH PAPERS

Michael Buckland: VOCABULARY AS A CENTRAL CONCEPT IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE

Bryce Allen: DIGITAL LIBRARIES AND THE END OF TRADITIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Christine L. Borgman: WHAT ARE DIGITAL LIBRARIES, WHO IS BUIDLING THEM AND WHY?

Rafael Capurro: ETHICAL ASPECTS OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Amanda Spink, Colleen Cool: DEVELOPING DIGITAL LIBRARIES EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON THEORY AND PRACTICE

Paul Sturges, Jessica Sambrook: HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP, THE RESEARCH LIBRARY AND THE DIGITAL LIBRARY

Louise T. Su, Hsin-Liang Chen: USER EVALUATION OF WEN SEACH ENGINES AS PROTOTYPE DIGITAL LIBRARIES RETRIEVAL TOOLS

Wanda V. Dole, Jitka M. Hurych: NEW MEASUREMENTS FOR THE NEX MILLENIUM: EVALUATIONG LIBRARIES IN THE ELECTRONIC AGE

Jane Reid: A NEW TASK ORIENTED PARADIGM FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR EVALUATION OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

Christine Dugdale: MANAGING ELECTRONIC RESERVES: NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND NEW ROLES FOR LIBRARIANS?

Robert M. Hayes: THE ECONOMICS OF DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Diane H. Sonnenwald et al: COLLABORATION SERVICES IN A PARTICIPATORY DIGITAL LIBRARY: AN EMERGING DESIGN

Philip Doty, Sanda Erdelez: A DIGITAL LIBRARY OF LEGAL CASE DOCUMENTS: THE DISTRICT ELECTRONIC CASE LIBRARY (DECaL)

Bryn Lewis: AUTOMATING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT ORGANISATION

Zheng Wang, Linda L. Hill, Terence R. Smith: ALEXANDRIA DIGITAL LIBRARY METADATA CREATOR BASED ON EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE

Preben Hansen: USER INTERFACE DESIGN FOR IR INTERACTION: A TASK-ORIENTED APPROACH

Nils Pharo: WEB INFORMATION SEACH STRATEGIES: A MODEL FOR CLASSIFYNG WEB INTERACTION?

Ian Ruthven, Mounia Lalmas: SELECTIVE RELEVANCE FEEDBACK USING TERM CHARACTERISTICS

Kai Korpimies, Esko Ukkonen: TERM FREQUENCY-BASED IDENTIFICATION OF FAQ-ARTICLES

Per Ahlgren: ON A COGNITIVE SEARCH STRATEGY

Denis McQuail: DIGITALIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF COMMUNICATION

Susanne Ornager: IMAGE ARCHIVES IN NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL OFFICES: A SERVICE ACTIVITY

Jerome Aumente: LIBRARIES, JOURNALISM AND THE MASS MEDIA IN THE DIGITAL AGE OF THE INTERNET: CHALLENGES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

 

SHORT PAPERS

William J. Adams, Bernard J. Jansen, Todd Smith: PLANNING, BUILDING, AND USING A DISTRIBUTED DIGITAL LIBRARY

Jasna Dravec-Braun: IS IT POSSIBLE TO BUILD UP ONLINE UNION CATALOGUE WITHOUT ONLINE LIBRARY SYSTEM? EXAMPLE OF THE SUBSYSTEM’S “PRIRODOSLOVLJE” UNION CATALOGUE

Emmanouel Garoufallou: THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON GREEK ACADEMIC LIBRARIES AND LIBRARIANS : PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Marianne Hummelshoj, Nanna Skovrup: INTERNET REFERENCE SERVICES IN THE DIGITALIZED PUBLIC LIBRARY

Damir Kalpic, Jasenka Anzil, Hrvoje Zokovic: FROM THE TRADITIONAL TO A DIGITAL ACADEMIC LIBRARY

Maria Kocojowa, Wanda Pindlowa: THE NEED OF A DIGITAL LIBRARY FOR LIS RESEARCH IN POLAND

Wouter Mettrop, Paul Nieuwenhujsen: SOME EMPIRICAL RESEARCH ON THE PERFORMANCE OF INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES

Michael Middleton: METAINFORMATION INCORPORATION IN LIBRARY DIGITISATION PROJCTS

Trine Schreiber, Camilla Moring: DANISH RESEARCH LIBRARIES IN A NETWORKED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Jadranka Stojanovski, Aida Slavic: ELECTRONIC BIBLIOGRAPHY - ITS RELIABILITY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONCEPT OF BIBLIOGRAPHY IN GENERAL

Yin Leng Theng: FRAMEWORK FOR AN APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT MODEL TO BUILD USER-CENTERED DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Branko Zebec, Tvrtko M. Šercar: THE USE OF THE INTERNET IN SPECIAL LIBRARIES IN SLOVENIA



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PREFACE by Tefko Saracevic



Background

The First International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, CoLIS 1, was held at the University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, 26-28 August 1991, resulting in Proceedings edited by Pertti Vakkari and Blaise Cronin (1992). The second conference under the same overreaching name and concept, CoLIS 2, was held at the Royal School of Librarianship, Copenhagen, Denmark, 13-16 October 1996. Peter Ingwersen and Niels Ole Pors (1996) edited the Proceedings.


This volume contains the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science, CoLIS 3, held in Dubrovnik, Croatia, 23-26 May 1999. While CoLIS 1 and CoLIS 2 were organized by a single university, CoLIS 3 is a departure in that it was cooperatively organized by four universities:

University of Zagreb, Croatia,

University of Tampere, Finland,

Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark, and

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.


Furthermore, it was cosponsored by the American Society for Information Science, European Chapter (ASIS/EC), the International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID), and University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The general aim of CoLIS conferences is to critically explore and analyze library and information science as a discipline and as a field of research from historical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives. This aim, which bounds the CoLIS conferences together, was established at CoLIS 1 and followed from then on. However, the specific themes, that provide the emphasis for exploration by papers included, differed from conference to conference. The theme for CoLIS 1 was "Historical, empirical and theoretical perspectives," and for CoLIS 2 was "Integration in perspective." As is shown in the title, the theme for CoLIS 3 was "Digital libraries: Interdisciplinary concepts, challenges and opportunities." While the themes differed, the topics explored at each conference reflected some of the basic trends and issues that are of concern to library and information science as a field. In this sense, CoLIS conferences explore various dimensions of the field by recognizing the past and anticipating the future.

Numerous professional and scientific conferences related to library and information science are held throughout the world. Among these, CoLIS conferences are unique in a sense that they are not organized by a professional or scientific organization, with which the field abounds, nor by a national or international institution with interest in library or information science. People from various universities with interest in the field organize them as a cooperative international venture in order to reflect. Looking through the three volumes of CoLIS Proceedings, even by allowing for discussion about the content or emphasis of some or other individual contribution, CoLIS conferences as a whole show some needed light as to the concerns of the field or discipline as a whole. Where were we as a field? What ideas are influencing and troubling us? What are some of the major problems we are addressing and how? Where are we going? These questions motivate the thinking about CoLIS conferences.

 

Digital libraries: reflections on the theme

Considering these broad questions, digital libraries certainly fit the bill as a major issue for the field. Thus, they have been selected as the theme for CoLIS 3.

Digital libraries are surely a technological invention. So was Gutenberg's book. But as Gutenberg's invention was much, much more than a technology, so are digital libraries. As history goes, the evolution of digital libraries is brief - not more than a decade or so has past since the notion started gaining currency - so it is grossly premature to talk about a history of digital libraries. But even so, in this short period of time the many effects of digital libraries are already evident, with more on the visible horizon. The effects and impacts beyond the horizon are intriguing and exciting to contemplate, but are still a matter of intellectual speculation and educated guessing. It seems very plausible that in a longer run, digital libraries may have as far reaching effect on libraries as Gutenberg. Digital libraries are one of the conceptual ideas and physically realized constructs that are powerfully reaching into the future of libraries in particular and information systems and services in general. Thus, they are affecting conceptually and pragmatically the field of library and information science as a whole.

In increasing amounts records of human knowledge are digitized or created digital ('borne digital') to start with, which in itself creates a number of new manifestations of such records, such as to their linking properties. Increasingly, 'information' and 'digital' go hand in hand. With the advent of digital libraries, the nature, organization, storage, distribution, availability, accessibility, use and preservation of records of human knowledge and information, all of them of essential concern to library and information science, are changing in many ways, many of them fundamental, new and untested. Their economics and management are changing in significant ways as well.

But what is a digital library? Conceptions differ. Approaches differ. Realizations differ. A number of communities are actively dealing with digital libraries, each from its own perspective. We discuss here three such communities, for they are represented in these Proceedings.

The community that concentrates on funded research under the rubric of digital libraries comes mostly (but not exclusively) from computer science. Not surprisingly, technical issues and concepts, which are complex and significant to start with, predominate. In general, much of digital library research is experimental or exploratory. As in all applied research, projects lead to demonstrations, pilot systems, and, hopefully, to deployment in practice. Currently, there are few ways to evaluate the effectiveness of results of this research, because the ways to evaluate digital libraries are not yet determined.

The community that concentrates on building and deploying operational digital libraries as institutions comes mostly from operational libraries, or the professional branch of library and information science. Not surprisingly, the concentration is on practice and realization within some or other institutional setting and goal. As in all such developmental projects, approaches are pragmatic, leading to operational systems. While digital libraries developed so far share some basic concepts, they vary greatly in their implementation. Well, libraries vary in implementation as well. Again, there are few ways to evaluate the results of these applications, for the same basic reasons as mentioned in relation to research; as yet, we have not determined the ways for evaluation of digital libraries in practice.

The community that concentrates on contemplation of basic concepts, as well as on research and discussion on a number of issues related directly or indirectly to digital libraries, comes mostly from the scientific and academic branch of library and information science. Not surprisingly, coverage is quite wide, from philosophical issues to economics, to users and use, to fit within structures, to education, to a variety of relations, and to exploration of applications in different fields. Evaluation remains an issue here as well.

Digital libraries do not 'belong' and cannot 'belong' to any one field or area of research or practice, to any one social institution, or to any one community. Like many modern endeavors, digital libraries present a complex problem and issue, beyond the exclusive realm of any one field or discipline, agency or institution. Besides, digital libraries are too important to be left to any one of these. However, as is common in approaches to complex problems, different fields may and do approach different dimensions of digital libraries. While the three communities deal with digital libraries, they approach them from different perspectives, showing a number of dimensions of the problem or different conceptual, theoretical, experimental, or pragmatic aspects associated with digital libraries.

In each of these communities and approaches a lot has been achieved in a relatively short time. Actually, an ever-growing number of operational digital libraries are appearing throughout the world. The products of research resulted in a growing body of knowledge about digital libraries, not to mention a growing body of literature. An ever-larger number of people and institutions are joining the digital library fray. But a lot remains to be resolved and solved as well. A number of basic and applied concepts need to be clarified better than they are at present. New approaches need to be developed and tested. Evaluation needs to be tackled. In addition, the three communities are evidently not in the best of communication and cooperation. In particular, research and practice have not achieved a fruitful interaction, as is common in mature fields and areas. Digital libraries are still at the beginning stage of their evolution. This presents huge challenges and marvelous opportunities to proceed.

 

Organization

The Proceedings include a selection of papers from the three communities as described above; however, no distinction in the organization was made as to authors' community. The organization of the papers in the Proceedings follows the sequence of their presentation at the conference. In turn, the presentations were organized by grouping the papers into sections, each of which represents a larger significant issue, problem, or work area in digital libraries. The exceptions are papers, presented in the last section, Short Papers; at the conference these were poster presentation and in the Proceedings they are organized alphabetically by the first author.

The first section, named Context, contains papers that address the 'big picture.' Michael Buckland as invited speaker, examines the nature and role of vocabulary in library and information systems, treating vocabulary as a central component in digital libraries. He suggests that problems inherent in vocabulary help explain the nature and history of conceptions of library and information science. Bryce Allen deals with the changing nature of design of information systems, suggesting that shift toward user-centered design in digital libraries can produce more flexible systems and services, more adaptable to user characteristics. Christine Borgman explores reasons for the developments in digital libraries, and the influence of key players, and speculates on future directions. She finds that the term "digital library" is used in two distinct senses, pretty much reflecting the communities as discussed above. The three papers in this section can set the stage for much of discussion of key directions and issues in digital libraries.

In the second section, Relations, the discussion of the 'big picture' is continuing, but with more specific themes: ethics, education, and humanities scholarship. In an invited paper, Raphael Capurro addresses the ethical aspects of digital libraries, the main question being how cyberspace in general and digital libraries in particular should fit into the life world of people. Access and preservation are seen as two main ethical challenges for digital libraries. Amanda Spink & Colleen Cool provide a survey of educational efforts in digital libraries, finding that, as yet, there weren't many. They suggest a list of curriculum areas and associated topics for digital library education. Paul Sturges & Jessica Sambrook explore pragmatic issues facing research libraries serving humanities scholars, showing how in practice the changing attitudes of scholars toward digital resources affect library strategy towards access to resources distributed across networks and institutions. The three papers in this section can set the stage for discussion of access, education, and strategy, issues that are more related than it seems on the surface.

The papers in the third section, Evaluation, tackle this critical issue from different perspectives. Louise Su & Hsin-liang Chen approach evaluation of digital library retrieval tools from the perspective of evaluation of web search engines. They provide data from a pilot study of four search engines on the web, suggesting an evaluation model that incorporates a number of measures useful for evaluation of digital library searching. Wanda Dole & Jitka Hurych, after surveying conventional standards for evaluation of libraries, also survey several classes of standards that have been suggested for evaluation of digital libraries, raising questions about appropriateness of suggested standards as well. Jane Reid looks at evaluation of information retrieval systems from the viewpoint of the task that the users are addressing, suggesting a task-oriented paradigm for evaluation and information value as criterion, incorporating the broader social environment.. The three papers illuminate very different approaches to evaluation, showing the complexity of evaluation issues and the diversity of possible approaches.

The two papers in the section Management show a sample of issues, problems, and difficulties in approaching the management of digital libraries. Christine Dugdale, provides a list of challenges and opportunities for library managers in managing electronic resources. She also provides practical experiences from a digital (in this case called 'electronic') libraries program, integrated with print library services, for teaching and learning practices. Robert Hayes presents a descriptive analysis of the economics of digital libraries, discussing their economic properties, and providing microeconomic data for a variety of publications, print and digital. He points out at difficulties of economic analyses stemming from problems with definition and collection of accurate economic data. In general, after all is said and done, management and economics will make or break digital libraries.

Section 5, Design, provides two papers as examples, one general the other specific, in approaching the design of digital library services. Diane Sonnenwald et al. Suggest a design for collaborative services, as an extension of other services provided by digital libraries. Through provision of various tools people can collectively engage in research sharing resources. It is a vision of collaboration built into digital libraries. Philip Doty & Sandra Erdelez, show the context and design of a specific digital library for legal case documents, which emerged from empirical studies of potential users. The design integrates existing work practices with the digital library. In a broader sense, the papers illustrated the richness of possible design approaches to digital libraries.

The papers in section 6, Representation, deal with that perennial issue of all libraries, digital libraries included. Bryn Lewis describes an experimental system for classification of documents in electronic forms. The approach involves machine learning, information retrieval, and evaluation of results. Zheng Wang, Linda Hill & Terrence Smith describe a design and implementation of a metadata creator for a digital library, based on Extensible Markup Language. Metadata, data about data, is descriptive information (similar to descriptive cataloging) about electronic documents adapted to specific collections. The two very different approaches illustrate as a sample the many approaches possible and being tried to represent documents in digital collections.

Section 7, Interaction, addresses information seeking and interacting issues that are present not only in digital libraries, but more broadly in digital and networked environments. Preben Hansen concentrates on the types of tasks that are related to information seeking and retrieving processes. The concept of tasks is suggested as fundamental to design of interactions in information retrieval systems. Nils Pharo presents a model for classification of web navigation and search strategies. The approach is based on users' information seeking strategies.

The three papers in section 8, Information Retrieval, follow closely the topics addressed in the previous section, but they more specifically address retrieval and evaluation. Two are distinguished by the fact that they incorporate large-scale experiments, and the third one provides examples. Ian Ruthven & Mounia Lalmas present a relevance feedback technique based on usage of terms within documents. Experimental results are provided, using a large collection of documents and queries. Kai Korpimies & Esko Ukkonen demonstrate in an experiment that FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) articles can be identified among a set of documents returned by a search engine based on analysis of term occurrence frequencies. Per Ahlgren has developed a set of formulations for search strategies that involve a cognitive approach to online searching, allowing for stepwise retrieval of documents in respect to decreasing order of relevance. Papers in sections 7 and 8 describe a set of issues and approaches involved in the end-processes of interaction and retrieval of digital collections. Inevitably, interaction and retrieval are part of concerns with digital libraries.

Section 9, Digital Libraries and Mass Media extends the reach of digital libraries to communication and mass media. Denis McQuale, in an invited presentation, discusses the future of communication from a social science perspective. Many implications for changing nature of communication stem from digital resources and networks, where digital libraries play an important role. Sussanne Ørnager investigated a large number of newspaper photo or image archives. From her findings she formulated the characteristics for quality communication and use of such archives, and for changing them into services for users. Jerome Aumente takes a broad view in connecting journalism, mass media and digital libraries. The print and mass media play an increasing role in delivery of online news and are re-engineering themselves as information companies, rather than just news media. New work alliances between library and news professionals are suggested to exploit a full potential of digital collections and libraries. The papers in this section show the potential for extension of digital library investigations and applications to a number of other areas.

The final section, Short Papers: Digital Library Conceptions & Applications, contains 13 papers, most of them describing specific approaches and examples in given institutions. The topics cover: the use of digital libraries in distance learning; examples of various digital library projects or experiments in Croatia, Greece, Denmark, Poland, Australia, and Slovenia; empirical results from Internet search engines; and design criteria for user-centered digital libraries. The papers provide an example and a glimpse of the wide breath of digital library projects in many countries around the globe.

A final note: Clearly, the papers in differently named sections do not cover the whole range of topics possible under the common section name. However, the sections, as named and treated in content by papers, represent a gamut of critical areas of research, practice, and conceptualization in digital libraries. The papers in each section should be considered examples of works and problems addressed in that area, and opportunities for more advances. In each of these areas we will definitely see much more work in the future.

 

Acknowledgements

Organizing CoLIS 3, as organizing any international conference, was a complex undertaking depending on hard work and cooperation of great many people and good will of many institutions. The Program Committee wishes to thank them all. But in particular we wish to acknowledge the contribution from colleagues and institutions from Croatia: University of Zagreb, National and University Library, Zagreb, Interuniversity Centre, Dubrovnik, and Ministry of Science and Technology, Republic of Croatia.

Let me end the Preface to these Proceedings on a personal note. In the Spring of 1999 I worked as a Fulbright scholar at the National and University Library, Zagreb, Croatia, and at the University of Zagreb. I wish to thank my colleagues at the Library and University for assistance in organizing the Program for CoLIS 3 and in helping me generously to do the job. They made the job not only possible, but also pleasurable.

 

References

Vakkari, P. & Cronin, B. (1992). Conceptions of Library and Information Science. Historical, empirical and theoretical perspectives. London: Taylor Graham.

Ingwersen, P. & Pors, N. O. (1996). Proceedings of the. Second International Conference on Conception of Library and Information Science. Information science: Integration in perspective. Copenhagen: The Royal School of Librarianship.

 

Tefko Saracevic, Ph.D.
Program Chair, CoLIS 3
School of Communication, Information and Library Studies
Rutgers University
4 Huntington Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 USA
tefko@scils.rutgers.edu


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