Volume 2. No 1 Information Technology News of the University of California, Davis October 1993

---

University Librarian Looks at How Information Will Stack Up

by Catherine Curran, Planning, Strategy & Administration

As a student, I remember lots of time spent talking about the library. It was the center of the campus universe -- a place to meet, a place to study and a place to do research.

We learned how to avoid waiting in line to use the card catalog. And we learned how to judge the success of our subject searches by the number of books we found stacked on the shelf.

To those of us who matriculated in the Pre-PC Era, information was a tangible thing. We could touch it, hold it and carry it with us. We never dreamed that going to the library might someday mean going online. But it's happening. And it's bound to happen more.

Typing a few commands on the computer keyboard will plug you into MELVYL, the University of California's electronic catalog.

MELVYL is actually much more than a catalog. It provides instant access to databases of articles and abstracts in a broad range of disciplines, and its catalog goes beyond UC to include materials in the California State Library. You can view the information at any UC library terminal or from your home or office, if you have network access. (See Going to the Library Online sidebar.)

"MELVYL is one of the most important library tools that has been developed," says Marilyn J. Sharrow, librarian for the Davis campus.

From Sharrow's perspective, MELVYL is technology at its best. It's convenient, it's responsive and it provides an orderly and efficient way of accessing much of the vast store of information archived in UC libraries.

But it is not immune to irony. What MELVYL does not and cannot do is lead us to work that has not been archived. And with more and more information being created on computers and exchanged on electronic networks, that task is becoming more difficult.

As University Librarian, Sharrow is working actively with information technologists, librarians, scholars and university administrators from institutions across the country to develop processes for capturing and archiving the scholarly works that are being created, edited and exchanged electronically.

A past president of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Sharrow is a member of the ARL Working Group on Scientific and Technology Information. She serves on the California State Library's Network Planning Group, the Network Resource Libraries Group and the Network Steering Group. A member of the Coalition for Networked Information Task Force, Sharrow also is a founding officer and first chairperson of the Higher Education Resources Alliance (HEIRA), of ARL, CAUSE and EDUCOM.

"Over the years, we realized that people within the university have two needs -- the need to collect, archive and store information and the need to generate information. Library staff need to be working with the researchers to collect and disseminate the information," says Sharrow.

"The issue isn't that the technology exists or that it is not wonderful -- because it is," says Sharrow.

The issue is how the information that lives in electronic limbo will be saved and archived for posterity.

"Librarians love to help people find information. We want to be able to gather it and help people access it," says Sharrow, noting that there are some important questions that need to be answered before we can ensure that today's intellectual endeavors live to benefit tomorrow's scholars.

• Who should decide what information will be saved? When information is exchanged on the network, it is instantly available to those who want it. But what happens to that information after the initial ingestion. Even if it remains in electronic form, Sharrow says there is no mechanism in place for librarians to organize or index it. "Who is going to say in the next 25 years what will be saved and what won't?" Sharrow asks.

• How will we record the progression of scholarly research? "Having copies of incomplete works is important to scholars, especially those studying poetry and literature," says Sharrow. For instance, having incomplete works of poetry gives scholars an opportunity to analyze why a certain word was used or changed. Because works created on computer are subject to constant and instant revisions, future scholars may not have the luxury of studying works in progress.

• What happens when the technology itself becomes obsolete? "The future conversion issues should be addressed," says Sharrow. Not only is it costly to convert existing records to CD ROMs and other technical formats, but there is an accessibility issue as well.

Libraries, for instance, once stored information on microcards -- a technical innovation that is now obsolete. "How will libraries convert the information to a new format so it can be easily accessed?" asks Sharrow, adding that it is just a matter of time before librarians ask the same question about information now on microfiche.

Long-playing records are a case in point.

"People invested billions of dollars in turntables. Now, you can't buy vinyl records," says Sharrow. "Everybody has gone to CDs and next it will be a form of floppy disk."

Maybe we can't expect information to come full circle anymore.