Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2006 07:40:31 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
As libraries incorporate OA, they become libratories
Leo Waaijers, From Libraries to 'Libratories', Liber Quarterly, 16, 1
(2006). Only this abstract is free online, at least so far.
While the eighties of the last century were a time of local automation
for libraries and the nineties the decade in which libraries embraced the
internet and the WWW, now is the age in which the big search engines and
institutional repositories are gaining a firm footing. This heralds a new
era in both the evolution of scholarly communication and its agencies
themselves, i.e. the libraries. Until now libraries and publishers have
developed a digital variant of existing processes and products, i.e.
catalogues posted on the Web, scanned copies of articles, e-mail
notification about acquisitions or expired lending periods, or traditional
journals in a digital jacket. However, the new OAI repositories and
services based upon them have given rise to entirely new processes and
products, libraries transforming themselves into partners in setting up
virtual learning environments, building an institution's digital showcase,
maintaining academics' personal websites, designing refereed portals and -
further into the future - taking part in organising virtual research
environments or collaboratories. Libraries are set to metamorphose into
'libratories', an imaginary word to express their combined functions of
library, repository and collaboratory. In such environments scholarly
communication will be liberated from its current copyright bridle while
its coverage will be both broader - including primary data, audiovisuals
and dynamic models - and deeper, with cross-disciplinary analyses of
methodologies and applications of instruments. Universities will make it
compulsory to store in their institutional repositories the results of
research conducted within their walls for purposes of academic reporting,
review committees, and other modes of clarification and explanation. Big
search engines will provide access to this profusion of information and
organise its mass customisation. PS: The same issue of LQ contains a
report by Raf Dekeyser on The LIBER Workshops on the "Open Archives
Initiative" at CERN, Geneva. But it doesn't even have a free abstract
online, or not so far.
Arun