UKOLN 1995

“Stone Walls Do Not A Prison Make...”

Derek G. Law

Director of Information Services & Systems, King’s College London

Paul Peters opened the conference with a paper conjuring images of caged birds. In conclusion it may be appropriate to contrast this image with the words of Richard Lovelace. From prison he wrote that famous couplet “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage”. All of the papers presented here demonstrate that we need not feel constrained and caged in creating a new electronic world. We face huge challenges and even threats but the electronic information world is an exhilirating new one which is opening doors rather than closing them. It is always difficult to sum up a conference on the fly with more than a set of abstracts laced with prejudices, but this paper attempts to pull together a few of what appear to be overarching themes.

National Planning

The way in which national planning is being undertaken was a strong theme. Although we may be said to have some of this in hand in Higher Education in the United Kingdom. We sadly lack an Al Gore to be our product champion. The K-12 programmes in the United States are said to lead to over a million US schoolchildren logging on to the Internet each day, while in the UK it is assumed that the parsimonious provision of hardware is a sufficient condition for information literacy. That theme was perhaps best expressed by the wonderful Singapore concept of “the intelligent island” . Phrases such as “staying competitive and thriving” or “investing in the nation” provide the sort of soundbites which make one envious of the strategy being adopted.

The Dumbing of the Internet

One might set against that set of aspirations the danger that we face the dumbing of the Internet. Several factors point in that direction. Firstly there is a tendency to elide and confuse ease of use with transparency of use and connectedness. The latter is clearly enormously desirable, allowing the user to move freely and readily amongst different types of information resources and to use them with fairly intuitive sets of commands. It seems implausible that the same sets of commands are appropriate for the manipulation of statistics, images, full text and bibliographic records, but there is no reason why a common look and feel should not be achieved. But that is not to suggest that everything must be easy to use. In the academic world and at the leading edge of research, difficult concepts and problems are being grappled with and reducing them to an elementary level is both implausible and unhelpful as a goal. What we must aim for is informed use which allows intelligent users to move at their own pace without the tools providing a barrier to progress.

Secondly, commercial dominance of the network is a threat. Massive multinational corporations, often dominated by individuals have no concern other than the profit margin required by shareholders. Information which provides a threat to that can be suppressed, either because it is cost inefficient or raises issues which the corporation does not like. Information may be suppressed in one part of the world in order not to offend cultural susceptibilities elsewhere. The same is true of governments, where economic or political motives may hinder the free flow of information. We may expect to see more governments giving preferential access to their own citizens in order to give competitive advantage. Many modern disciplines ranging from computing to biotechnology have most of the copyright in their literature in private hands, although this has largely been created with public funds. This has not proved a problem when the word existed in printed form since its purchase and preservation of items effectively means that copyright cannot be withheld. In an electronic world where data is typically leased rather than purchased and where publishers have given no guarantees of future-proofing we run the real risk that large areas of knowledge will simply disappear once they cease to provide adequate profit levels. Other major players such as Microsoft now wish to be considered publishers, while most of the PTTs aim to be content providers. Perhaps fortunately they are likely to follow companies such as Compuserve with what might be termed the Argos approach to information - the provision of bright shiny novelties which challenge the wallet rather than the brain.

Thirdly the network is universally agreed to be full of junk. Much of it distracting, much of it ill-informed and some of it so wrong as to be dangerous. One response is the suggestion for the cataloguing of the Internet a project as doomed as it is ambitious. More reasoned approaches suggest attempting to find only what is relevant and of quality. This seems a more rational approach but I suspect that this is much more than the mechanical process the web crawler advocates would have us accept and that there will remain a need for sophisticated human intervention for some considerable time.

Key Themes

A number of key themes seemed to emerge from various papers. The need for information policies was one of them. Whether at local or international level, the process of bringing order to a chaotic and dynamic environment is best managed by having an agenda and targets. The need to invest in learnng capacity was another recurrent note, whether due to pressures of rising student numbers or through the developing expectation of life long learning placing new demands on our already stretched system. This refocussing on the library in its historic role as a key tool for learning rather than recreation is both welcome and overdue. Coupled with this was a repeated emphasis on training. There is a need not just for librarians to train the population at large in information management skills but for a constant re-education of the trainers themselves. The reskilling of the profession is a huge challenge which we must address. All of this requires leadership, another recurring leitmotif. Although that need and challenge is clear the profession may take considerable comfort from the fact that whether in terms of the list of speakers on the programme or the list of attendees in the conference hall, the profession can fairly claim to be as well led as any of the parties involved in either networked services or higher education. But there is perhaps one threat (other than complacency). Dreams and visions were much mentioned by speakers none of whom can have heard Henry Heaney’s dictum that while the young have visions and the old dream dreams, the world is forever run by the middle-aged.

Professional Skills

In considering how we face the future as a profession there is a great danger that we ignore why we have become a profession and that in the flight to novelty we lose sight of those traditional skills and strengths. The skills of the book-based librarian may be summarised as: the organisation of knowledge; quality assurance through acquisition of relevant and appropriate material; user instruction in information skills; preservation of the intellectual record. There are of course many other skills and duties involved in whatever kind of library or information service in which one is employed. However that core of responsibilities is essentially the same core as is required in an electronic environment. The organisation of knowledge is as relevant to the Internet as the catalogue and is generally seen as a major missing element in resource discovery; given the huge variety of inappropriate material on the networks the selection and support of relevant material is a vital skill. All of the experience we have shows that ownership rather than acquisition costs are the more significant cost element and assuring the reliable availability of supported information will prove a demanding new area of thinking. User instruction in information management skills will perhaps rise in prominence in an area increasingly noted for dynamism and change. Many other groups believe themselves equipped to operate in this area and information professionals will have to be very effective if they are to stake out their claim to lead here. Preservation and archiving is perhaps something we have rather taken for granted. But as publishers increasingly lease data at the same time as they will neither futureproof that data nor (judging by history) can be trusted to preserve it against takeover, bankruptcy and incompetence, libraries must take steps to ensure the preservation of the intellectual record. This responsibility lies perhaps principally with the universities which appear to be the one enduring feature of the last millenium; even the nation state and national libraries are unstable nineteenth century inventions compared with the universities.

Philip Bryant’s influence on the profession both in the UK and abroad is quite remarkable, not least for its length of time. Yet, curiously, this admiration and affection has not been translated into public honours apart from a solitary Honorary Fellowship of the Library Association. This is unlikely to bother Philip for he knows the great affection and regard in which he is held by all he has worked with. He values friendship more than honours and his many friends will not drift away through the casual accident of retirement - although they all suspect that retirement and lotus-eating are unlikely to go together in Philip’s case.

UKOLN was created at the IFLA meeting in Paris in 1989. In what would now be called a power breakfast at the Palais des Congres. Philip Bryant, Derek Law and Brian Perry agreed the need for such a centre, its staffing and its management. It had a difficult period getting going in a new and uncharted area and took several efforts to establish a clear sense of direction. Several years later the Joint Information Systems Committee came on the scene as co-founder and Philip could look back on the establishment of a highly respected new institution. Much of that respect was due to the growing national and international reputation as a commentator of the man who has succeeded Philip as Director of UKOLN. One of the first conferences at which we shared a platform was in New York, where the then tiro researcher was introduced as Dorcan Lempsey. No one would make that mistake now and Lorcan has already extended his reputation by the firm and incisive manner in which he has taken forward the post of Director.

Lorcan and Mel Collier, the new Chairman of the Management Committee, have taken on their new task with relish and the conference was perhaps the first public manifestation of the interests and directions which UKOLN will be taking forward. If this volume is dedicated to Philip and what he has given us in the past, its content is a fair reflection of where UKOLN will be working, investigating and advising for the future.