Federal librarians recently gathered at the Library to ponder the digital future and found much to celebrate in terms of the technology's impact on librarianship.
With a theme of "How Will Our World Look Digitized?" the 23rd Annual Federal Library and Information Center Committee Forum explored the challenges of providing information services in a digital world.
A Digital World
Librarian of Congress James H. Billington opened the forum by envisioning "a digital world, where the shelves span oceans and the reading room encompasses the whole world." According to Billington, "in such a place, individuals can discover their commonalities, and transcultural understanding will increase for the betterment of all."
To fulfill this vision, he announced in June 2005 the Library's plan to build a World Digital Library, which he described as "a dependable online encyclopedia of the world's cultural heritage."
"Through a World Digital Library, the rich store of the world's culture that American institutions have preserved can be given back to the world free of charge and in a new form far more universally accessible than ever before," said Billington.
In his keynote address, David Weinberger, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, delivered a philosophical lecture about the future of knowledge in a digital world.
Digitization in Business and Life
The morning panel examined how digitization will drive innovations in health care, intelligence gathering and entertainment. Daniel Pelino, general manager of IBM's global health care and life sciences business, discussed the development of a national health card to meet President Bush's 2014 deadline for mobile patient health records.
"The mandates are coming from the baby boomers for change [in the health care system]," said Pelino. "Digitization is ready to allow us to make this change. But the question is, Are we ready?"
Exploring the impact of digitization on national security, Lee Strickland of the University of Maryland's Center for Information Policy, said that new technologies are "reinventing the empire of secrecy." Strickland expressed his concern about the human aspect of intelligence, emphasizing the need to gather knowledge through a process of hypothesizing and testing. He advocated restructuring organizations by incorporating a business perspective; revitalizing the scientific method; using performance-based management techniques; engineering effective information-sharing systems; and developing a knowledge base that allows both technology and business practices to make contributions.
Abraham Ravid, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers University, discussed the changing economics of entertainment in the digital age. He mentioned the possibility of piracy of intellectual property in the process of downloading audiovisual material from the Web and the legal battles that have ensued. He also discussed the declining costs of data production and transmission.
"Cheaper production of entertainment leads to democratization of the process," said Ravid. He envisions a world in which everyone "will watch and listen to everything everywhere, with virtually costless transmission."
Libraries, the Government And the World
The afternoon keynote speaker, Beverly Godwin, made some bold predictions about federal Web sites. She is the director of FirstGov.gov (www.firstgov.gov), the U.S. government's official Web portal, which is maintained by the General Services Administration.
Godwin envisions fewer government Web sites and home pages, which would all use the .gov naming convention. She also hopes there will eventually be a common "look and feel" across federal Web sites, thereby ending a prolonged design debate. She also predicts that by 2015, federal Web sites will notify citizens automatically of their eligibility for programs and activities such as voter registration and Social Security benefits.
She presented a prototype of a personalized home page that users might someday access. Based on data such as an individual's birth date, the home page would note all relevant information and links to appropriate federal Web sites.
During an afternoon session on the World Digital Library initiative, John Van Oudenaren expounded on the Librarian's earlier remarks. As senior adviser for the World Digital Library initiative, Van Oudenaren described the project's evolution and progress.
First announced by the Librarian last June at the plenary session of the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO, the World Digital Library will build upon the Library's decade-long experience with digitizing its collections. (For a copy of the Librarian's UNESCO speech, visit www.loc.gov/about/welcome/speeches/wdl/wdl_6-6-05.html). Van Oudenaren noted that the Library's popular American Memory Web site (//memory.loc.gov) contains more than 10 million digital items.
Building on this project, the Library created the Global Gateway Web site as a portal to its international collections.
The Global Gateway site (//international.loc.gov) also features collaborative digital presentations created with its partners at the national libraries of Brazil, Egypt, France, Russia, the Netherlands and Spain. These will serve as models for building a World Digital Library on a broader scale, bringing together rare and important resources from cultures across the globe.
Van Oudenaren noted that planning for the World Digital Library is currently focused on four areas: architecture and other technological issues associated with the digitization and organization of collections, selection of materials to be digitized, governance of the cooperative effort and securing the necessary finances to create and maintain the initiative.
The final panel discussion, moderated by Janice Lachance, executive director of the Special Libraries Association, featured representatives from three national libraries who discussed the competencies that will be required of librarians in a digitized world. Digital competencies are a moving target, agreed Martha Anderson, program officer for the Library's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (www.digitalpreservation.gov); Peter Young, director of the National Agricultural Library; and Kevin Cogdill, outreach librarian at the National Library of Medicine. Therefore, librarians will need to deal with ambiguity and embrace change in order to serve patrons using the latest technologies. Library and information science schools are in the process of adapting their curriculum to include technical requirements. Meanwhile, librarians will have to continue to be lifelong learners—learning on the job and sharing their knowledge with their colleagues.
In a wrap-up of the day's discussions, Trudi Bellardo Hahn, executive director of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, reflected on how the digital future will affect the profession of federal librarianship.
A webcast of the 23rd Annual FLICC Forum is accessible on the Library's Web site at www.loc.gov/flicc/vidlib.html.
