Information seekers dream of the day when all the world's knowledge will be at their fingertips, just a few keystrokes away. Certainly the Internet has boosted the availability of facts -- as well as bottomless opinions. But the day when digital libraries and archives can truly compete with the old bricks-and-mortar model with its dusty, book-laden shelves is still years, if not decades, away.
Having recently read that 41 percent!! of Americans think the Second Coming will occur before 2050, if not this May 21st, perhaps the future of the digital library isn't worth troubling about. Here are some of the more earthly stumbling blocks to virtual omniscience, as outlined by Maryland State Law Library and Maryland State Archives staff members.
1. Physical and monetary limits. Digitizing takes time and, yes, the sort of digits still found at the ends of arms. The Archives has a spiffy microfilm-to-digital machine through which the fiche flies. Not so with print that has not been converted to microfilm. In the Archives' small and crammed digital images lab, high-tech scanners digitize documents, page by page, with constant oversight by Human Beings, who also have to make the decisions on how best to copy fragile works. Digitizing all of Maryland's land records, archivist Mike McCormick said, took eight years and $15 million.
2. Copyright. The Law Library puts legislative bill files on microfilm. These are the collections of supporting documents and hearing records that form the history of legislative action. Why not digitize them?
Legislative Services makes the decisions on what/whether to digitize. Informing that decision are copyright laws. With the bill files, for example, microfiche is allowable because only limited copies are made and are available only to those who enter the building (or get the material through interlibrary loan). While much of the content of the bill files is public record, the files do include copyrighted works such as news articles. Rights would have to be obtained for each such work if a complete file is to be digitized.
Another example is the annotated code. The annotations to the laws, which are by their nature public domain, are written and published by legal sources. These copyrighted annotations again cannot be included in the digital version without permission from the publisher, and possibly, a fee for use. And by the way, because of Point 1, the library is behind in digitizing in any case.
3. Accessibility. Digital is not always better. The Law Library maintains the historic Baltimore Sun on film. "Sometimes the database is not as searchable," librarian Catherine McGuire said.
4. Longevity. Biodegrable as it is, paper is still a format to be trusted. After the Rapture (see above), when computers may not function optimally, or at all, and the last remaining microfiche reader needs an irreplaceable part, those volumes of Old English law will still be housed in the Law Library. I do worry about the loss of climate-control, but still, there remain the physical, readily accessible books. The Smithsonian ran into this sort of dilemma a few years ago, when the ancient tape recordings in its collection could no longer be played because of the lack of the ancient technology to play them.
Another kind of longevity problem is due to the instrinsic evanescence of the Web. So much of what was once "published" online is gone for good, hence the need to clean up your dead links periodically. This problem gave rise to entities such as the Chesapeake Digital Preservation Group, of which the Law Library is a partner. They term the aforementioned broken-link problem "link rot." What the group's site includes:
• Reports and studies relating to U.S. government and policy
• Selected state, federal, and foreign government documents
• Materials relating to public policy and legal issues in the state of Maryland
• Publications issued by Virginia's judicial branch of government
• Materials by and about the District of Columbia
Be sure to read the Chesapeake Group's copyright policy.
The Law Library also is trying to capture "born digital" information and records, print them out and bind them so they will be retrievable after they disappear into the ether.
Relevant reading:
Robert Darnton in Chronicle of Higher Education:
"Despite the efforts to preserve the millions of messages exchanged by means of blogs, e-mail, and handheld devices, most of the daily flow of information disappears. Digital texts degrade far more easily than words printed on paper. Brewster Kahle, creator of the Internet Archive, calculated in 1997 that the average life of a URL was 44 days. Not only does most information not appear online, but most of the information that once did appear has probably been lost."
Bobby Glushko in American Libraries:
"Any library with a good scanner and some staff hours can make high-quality digital copies for online distribution or provide patrons a place to comment on and discuss materials online. Many libraries don’t, though, because they are unsure whether they can legally do so."
This just in from Chronicle of Higher Education, via Library Link of the Day.
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