INFORMATION IS THE CURRENCY OF DEMOCRACY Scurl

							INFORMATION IS THE CURRENCY OF DEMOCRACY


SCURL / MmITS Annual Seminar: National Library of Scotland, 14 th October
2005


Keynote Address




Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to begin by thanking you very much for the
opportunity to come and address you on developments in e-services and e-
resources. As some of you will know, this is an area particularly close to my own
heart and my own particular interest in is e-services and e-resources in the local
studies field although, today, I am taking a wider brief than that. I intend to look
only briefly at the background to e-services and at current developments. For the
most part I would like to concentrate on the issues associated with the marketing of
e-resources to users and to ensuring their active engagement with digital sources
and services. And, of course, being a good academic I am going to muse and ponder
some questions and then run away and hide.


Those of you who know me will know that I always like to have a literary title for any
presentation that I give and the title of this address, Information is the currency of




democracy, was said by Thomas Jefferson. OHP1                    However, I like the
addendum added to that phrase by Wendell Ford sometime US Senator from
Kentucky and stalwart defender of libraries and of access to information. Ford said
“If information is the currency of democracy then libraries are the banks”. And with
the revolution that has taken place in electronic dissemination of information over
the last ten to fifteen years that statement by Ford is particularly apposite. Libraries
of all descriptions now have the potential to have electronic access to a vast array of
sources and services that once seemed almost unimaginable.


I’d like to begin with a quote from the American Library Association:
       “Freedom of expression is an inalienable human right and the foundation for
       self-government. Freedom of expression encompasses the freedom of speech
       and the corollary right to receive information.1 Libraries and librarians protect
       and promote these rights by selecting, producing, providing access to,
       identifying, retrieving, organizing, providing instruction in the use of, and
       preserving recorded expression regardless of the format or technology”.

The first part of that quote is, ironically enough, taken from a US Supreme Court
decision in 1943, which enshrined the right of Jehovah Witnesses to disseminate
information whether or not the recipient actually wanted to receive it.


I like these grand notions that the right to receive information is central to freedom
of speech and expression. I also like the notion of the library being the bank, the
repository of a commodity that is vital to the social, cultural and economic well-being
of society. Yet, we face a not inconsiderable challenge in this respect because of the
enormity of the range of electronic sources that are now available and the
complexity engendered by lots of different interfaces and searching mechanisms.




OHP2                  Just think of the terminology that we now use websites,
databases, portals, subject gateways, laptops, desktops, palmtops, remote access,
authentication protocols, logins, e-services, e-books, e-resources, e-everything in
fact. And soon it will be through mobiles and ipods....but let’s face they’ll soon be
the same thing. It is bewildering.


Paradoxically, I think one of the greatest challenges that we face is ensuring that all
of these wonderful electronic resources are actually used and that people benefit
from them. A marketing colleague of mine remarked, when I told her the subject of
this paper, that the best way for libraries to market electronic sources effectively is
to take them completely out of the hands of librarians who don’t want users to have
access to complicated sources that they themselves don’t understand. I don’t think
that’s true but we do perhaps have to take a long hard look at these sources and
their value.....and dare I say it.....not just keep adding to them.
Background to e-sources
Online databases first began to become available in the 1970s, although some had,
after a fashion, been available for some time before this. At this time, users were
seldom permitted hands-on access to such sources and librarians and information
specialists tended to act in their traditional role as intermediary or gatekeeper by
carrying out searches on users’ behalf. Gradually this changed, aided not
inconsiderably by the advent of the CD ROM as a means of electronic dissemination.
How novel it seems today to look back at individual and then networked CD ROMs as
being at the vanguard of the electronic revolution.




OHP3                   How many of us can remember when and where we first
looked at an internet site? Can any of us actually remember what that first site was?
I can’t actually remember precisely when I used the internet for the first time but I
do know that the first site I looked at was the British Library’s digitized version of
Magna Carta. I can’t imagine how many sites I have looked at in the intervening ten
years. Probably tens of thousands I should imagine.



The internet has revolutionised the way in which we, and by we I mean everyone
rather than information professionals, live our lives. The way in which we interact
with one another has changed so too has the way in which we approach finding




information that we require. OHP4                     Many people are now part of
online communities whether this is through participation in education delivered




online or through OHP5                    cyber communities that people choose to be
involved with. Higher education institutions, my own included, are falling over
themselves to develop virtual learning environments and provide online learning
opportunities. In some cases, without necessarily understanding the dynamics of
cyberspace in general or the mechanics of online learning in particular.


It seems to me that much of the marketing of sources hinges on the issues of the e-
quality and inequality of access. Today, an interesting dynamic exists. The rapid
increase in electronic sources and services has undeniably increased access to
content. New content is being developed all the time, new projects are being
developed all the time. So what you can argue; new books are being publishing all
the time too. Indeed, however, if we look back to the 1970s and 1980s, when the
librarian was very much the gatekeeper, carrying out online searches, then we must
conclude that this rapid expansion has indeed made access much easier. Rather like
the shift from closed to open access. Today we expect end-user remote online access
to virtually (no pun intended) every source. I was recently demoralised inordinately
that I actually had to travel two miles into a library building because I couldn’t get
online access to a particular source. Mind you, normal people don’t much need




access to OHP6                Crockford’s Clerical Preface for the Church of England.




OHP7                   We expect to have 24/7 access from our desktop, from our
home, goodness knows, our mobile phone. We may be the banks of information but
we are in the business of providing our users with the currency, whenever and
wherever they need it. There is, it would seem, an insatiable appetite for these
sources, so much so that one might question whether active marketing is in fact
required.


Seven or eight years ago we heard a great deal of the phrase “information rich and
information poor”; to stretch an analogy with the title of this paper, some people had
little investment in the currency of democracy and little use for its banks. The
phrase information rich and information appears no longer to be in vogue in the way
it once was – at least not in purely technological terms – but the issues of e-quality
of access have not necessarily gone away. At that time, the issues revolved around
access to the hardware and the facilities. Although there are undeniably still issues
associated with the technological haves and have-nots, libraries have, by providing
widespread internet access, overcome some of these. However, there are now
other, allied issues that is, perhaps, equally significant.


At the risk of being lynched in this forum, I think we have to ask ourselves whether
we actually be sure that we are benefiting from this electronic revolution? There are
three major issues that I believe we need to consider as part of the development of
any concerted approach to electronic sources and their marketing.




OHP8                     Firstly, the array of digital resources can now seem vast and
unmanageable to many people. To some users it is rather like being sent into a
traditional, hardcopy library that has neither catalogue nor classification scheme, just
a bewildering large, amorphous collection of sources. We would do well to
remember that there are still users who lack the enthusiasm for electronic sources,
finding them threatening because they are more accustomed to using traditional,
hardcopy sources. There are now so many different electronic resources available,
individually and collectively. Many users don’t understand the difference between
databases, portals, gateways, e-books, e-content, and so on; the array of different
user interfaces and search techniques also confuses them inordinately. This leads
very directly to the second major issue we face.




OHP9                  Secondly, there are issues associated with users’ ability to
search these sources and make effective use of them. The focus, over the last ten or
twelve years has been on the delivery of electronic content. This is where the
money, such as it is, has gone. Much less focus has been given to the issue of
information literacy in the digital environment. This is not simply a question of a
digital version of bibliographic instruction or initiation in the art of searching
databases. Certainly it is about introducing them to search techniques, the
importance of the transferability and consistency of searching across a range of
sources but it is also about inculcating them with critical appraisal and evaluation
skills. Ultimately, it is about understanding the value and impact of the information
that we can now access; at a grandiose level this is about enabling engaged
participation in the currency of democracy.


OHP10                 The third point is, perhaps, closely allied to the second. And
this is the cult of Google which presents us with a number of problems because large
numbers of users in all sectors – public, academic, school and elsewhere –
underestimate the potential diversity and complexity of sources and of search
techniques. The cult of Google leads many users to believe that searching for
information is an easy and straightforward task. Many do assume that every source
does operate like Google and that if you bung in a few ill-chosen search terms then
you’ll get the results you are looking for.


Yet, there is a paradox here because many people who rely on web search engines
do often suffer from “web-rage” when they fail abysmally to answer even
straightforward questions. A couple of years ago, I set my postgraduate
librarianship students a challenge in the Reference Services module; I gave them
one hundred and thirty quick reference questions to be answered using only Google
to test its effectiveness and efficiency against conventional references tools both
electronic and hardcopy. One of the questions was who is the President of the
Federal Republic of Germany. Sloppy searching, coupled with poor critical appraisal
– and doubtless a desire to win the bottle of champagne that I had offered to the
most successful team – led one team to give me the name of the President of the
German Construction Industry Federation.




OHP11                   Conversely, many users of electronic sources spend an
unfeasibly long period of time searching for a particular piece of information and then
value it disproportionately highly – a value based not on the intrinsic value of the
piece of information or on its ability to change life, but on the energies expended to
find it. And yet, these users are their own worst enemies when it comes to the
sources: how often my heart sinks when I hear students say “I scanned the first five
pages of the results on Google”. Because, of course, as we all know, the ranking
mechanism is so accurate and sophisticated, that a better result could not possibly
be on the sixth page. Not to mention that the search terms adopted in the first place
might not have been the most appropriate.


However, Google, for all its flaws, highlights something quite profound that we must
recognise for it is crucial in understanding the role the e-services have in delivering
information to all types of users across all library sectors. People use Google
because it is easy and because they perceive that it retrieves effectively and
efficiently the information that they require. We, as information professionals, may
be sceptical about this and know, from the likes of Sherman and Price in their book
The Invisible Web, that this is often a misnomer and it only taps into a proportion of
the web. However, users like it because it is simple and straightforward in a way
that other sources appear not to be. Now, we can argue that a particular database
or portal or gateway is more sophisticated, does more things, enables more refined
searching and such like; but users are not really interested in that. They are
concerned solely with being able to access the information they require quickly and
easily. In their minds, Google encapsulates all of this. We might know differently
but convincing people of this is not easy. And this is, indeed, a major issue to
consider in the marketing of sources.


Another marketing issue about electronic resources is one that has emerged quite
strongly in the area that I, myself, am most interested in. In my own specialist field,
that of local studies, there is a particularly interesting dynamic, one that is a direct
result of the electronic revolution. Family history is often quoted in the top-ten uses
of the internet – normally not far behind sex and pornography – and a global
industry has been built around servicing this demand, family history that is, not sex
and pornography. A good many budding genealogists choose to undertake the bulk
of their research online. In this country that means exploiting resources like 1837




Online, Scotland’s People, Family Search and so on. OHP12


This is clearly not without pitfalls; the discipline engendered by poring over hardcopy
primary sources has largely been lost; most of these online genealogists work at
home, away from the watchful eye of information or archival professionals who are
capable of encouraging caution and rigour in investigations; This is very much what
my colleague, Professor Dorothy Williams, describes as a “real world information
literacy” problem. And, all too often, the vast array of additional, beneficial hardcopy
“extras” that libraries can supply, are often being ignored because electronic access
is not an option. We would do well to remember this aspect when planning the
development of e-content and that, potentially, one of the most beneficial marketing
aspects may actually be in what libraries, on their own, hold, not in what global
electronic databases they subscribe too.


We need to think very clearly about the users that we are actually targeting these
services at. This is perhaps clearer in the academic or special library sectors than in
the public. Is remote access to be restricted to our members or is our patron base
wider than that? Again, this is something that has become very pronounced with the
electronic delivery of services in the local studies field where a significant proportion
of users or enquiries come from outside the geographical catchment area or from
people who are not members / council taxpayers in the area and consequently
contribute little, if anything, to the financing of the service. Are we, therefore,
creating these services for altruistic reasons alone? I’ve said in papers on local
studies collections in the digital age that I have no particular answers in this respect
and I have to say the same again here. However, the whole point – or at least an
underlying implied theme – of electronic dissemination is of widening access to
information.


Another crucial point associated with electronic delivery is one which is exercising
many practitioners at the moment, particularly but not exclusively in the academic
sector, namely what to do with hardcopy versions of sources that are now largely
accessed electronically. De-accessioning or de-duplication has over the last couple
of years moved up the agenda, particularly since the report of the Research Support
Library Group in 2003 which suggested the creation of the Research Libraries




Network. CASS, SCURL’s own initiative is one potential solution. OHP13


I have to say that I am an enormous fan of electronic resources in every shape and
form – from CD ROMs to portals, online databases to virtual learning environments
and everything in between. However, I am not an unquestioning or uncritical
devotee. We do very much run the risk of creating more and more content without
necessarily giving the concomitant (or at least it should be concomitant) thought to
how users will access and make sense of it. And if we do think of these factors we
often think of this in isolation. I go back to my point about Google, people like it
because it is simple and straightforward; for all our portals and gateways, they keep
going back to it because they sense that otherwise they get hopelessly bogged down
in a mire of information overload.




OHP14              Dialog is hardly a model of user-friendly online resources but one
of the benefits that it has is multiple sources searching, ensuring transferability and
consistency of approach across the range of sources being interrogated. Admittedly,
the search syntax might as well be in Serbo-Croat, but the efficiency of the searching
process is commendable. I deliberately teach it to students not because I am a huge
fan of it as a product but because it teaches them discipline in terms of search
strategy development, execution and evaluation. However, it is one thing to do this
for students of information science, quite another to attempt to inculcate “ordinary”
library users with this sense of search discipline.


I am not, of course, suggesting that we should stop creating electronic content but I
think we need to look strategically at what is being created or else we are simply
going to drive people back into the hands of Google. And people are resisting this –
witness the recent lawsuit taken out by authors against the notion of e-books.




OHP15                The effective marketing of e-resources is absolutely essential.
An e-resource is only valuable if users know that it exists and can use it effectively
and can see benefit in doing so. We need to look carefully at our portals and
gateways and at multiple source searching and look critically at what we are doing,
because others, like these authors are.


We need to be proactive in publicising what is available to the community we seek to
serve. We need, of course, not to be focused principally on the notion of user groups
and communities because this leaves out those who are not our users and with
whom we wish to engage. We need to attempt to understand who our users are and
what their needs are as well as who our non-users, what their information needs are
and how we engage with them.


Crucially, I think that we need to look at information needs and requirements before
developing training packages which should not take the form of some generic ‘here’s
how to use the database’.   Information literacy has always been important – since
that phrase was first coined in the 1970s – but with the multitude of new resources
available it has become even more significant.


Ladies and Gentlemen, all I can offer and, indeed, have offered are random thoughts
on the challenges and opportunities that we, as information gatekeepers, face with
the development of e-services and e-resources. There are many more I’ve not
touched on from the very technical to the legal and copyright ones. However, I hope
I have had some interesting observations that might prove thought-provoking during
the rest of today’s programme.