Dear all,
 
there were a couple of issues I briefly raised on the Concertation Day
which I'd like to be permitted to pursue on these lists, hoping to get
some discussion going. One is the use of URN's which I intend to take up
on the lis-elib-tech list. The other is educating the users (which Chris
Rusbridge unfairly dismissed IMHO with "if you try to educate the users
you are dead"). 
 
 I'll try here to say something about the why and how behind my belief
 
Firstly, as someone pointed out during the afternoon, a lot of the day
was spent looking at technical issues in the integration of electronic
resources. However I think many of us have taken "hybrid" to indicate
that we should also be looking at ways to integrate the traditional
library with the digital library. We need to extend our concept of
information landscape to include not only the electronic information
landscape but also the traditional information landscapes. As someone
hinted, we may even tempt users back into physical libraries, by
suggesting that the better source of information is not necessarily the
electronic form. I feel that this hybrid integration should go beyond
just incorporate references to physical media into the electronic
landscape, but should also look at social practices of use in
traditional libraries, and see how we can develop their digital
analogues. (Maybe someone from the social aspects eLib projects such as
IMPEL could comment here).
 
In the traditional world (one in which we can pretend for the time being
that digital resources don't exist), it is almost an implicit assumption
that there will be a learning curve to navigate the information sources
available. (BTW some of these arguments are HE specific, maybe someone
in one of the projects incorporating public libraries could comment on
applicability outside HE). It is expected that students will need to
take time to find their way about the library. The library (and
bookshops etc.) confronts them with a range of information some good,
some poor, some relevant, some not. There is some structural
arrangement, but the user needs to learn this (probably getting to grips
with some subset of Dewey Decimal). The user will be confronted by
information in different formats (books, serials) different layouts,
with different (and sometimes non-existent) methods of displaying
content or indexing. There may be subject bibliographies (again of
varying quality, relevance, and format), possibly buried in the
reference section of the library. If they have to tackle microfiche or
microfilm they have to learn new "interfaces" and "applications". (I
studied in Oxford, where it wasn't even clear which libraries I could
and should be using). However, learning to use this, learning to
navigate this landscape is taken for granted. Indeed, although it is a
generalisation, and more applicable to the humanities, most employers
are more interested in the fact that a graduate has done a degree, than
that they have done a degree in a particular subject, because they
assume that in doing so they will have picked up skills, not just in
thinking and presenting arguments but also navigating information.
 
However, in the traditional information landscape we have a structure to
aid the student. Namely that of collaboration and peer recommendation.
Lecturers and tutors will recommend texts to look at and to avoid, they
may even direct the students to the correct parts of the library. In
this landscape the role of the librarian is to provide an infrastructure
to the information and act as a guide, but not necessarily "spoon feed"
the user, in that they wo'n't necessarily go out and find the
information for the user. The user in the main is assumed to be self
sufficient, or though the librarian will sometime act as a "research
assistant" for the more obscure/interesting queries.
 
What I feel should be an important component of the Hybrid Library
models, is to try to look at how we can better equip the students to
navigate the information landscape (acting as a guide or signposting
where necessary), but not make them complacent by necessarily
abstracting them too far from the underlying mechanisms. After all they
may not be some pampered when they leave University, and many employers
complain that we aren't giving the students the real technology skills
they need to survive. I don't mean to belittle the role that technology
must play in realising this, nor regard this as an excuse for poor
interfaces and poor integration, but I do feel that a strong element of
these model must be looking at the social aspects, in particular how we
can introduce the methodologies used in navigating the traditional
information spaces into the digital world. How is a question which I've
no easy answers to, in fact it may turn out that there are no good
answers to - but that doesn't make it an any less valid question. I
think a key component is encouraging tutors and lecturers  (they may
object to the term "teaching") to develop the new information handling
techniques needed in their students. Again how to do this within
different institutions is, I think, as strong an element in developing
the models as the technological aspects.
 
Anyway, that's my view - and I look forward to others' comments,
confirmations or contradictions to the above.
 
Matthew Dovey
Libraries Automation Service
Oxford University
 
 
 
 
 
 


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