+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
GENERAL DISCUSSION * Two questions for discussion * Different emphases in
the Workshop * Bringing the text and image partisans together *
Desiderata in planning the long-term development of something * Questions
surrounding the issue of electronic deposit * Discussion of electronic
deposit as an allusion to the issue of standards * Need for a directory
of preservation projects in digital form and for access to their
digitized files * CETH's catalogue of machine-readable texts in the
humanities * What constitutes a publication in the electronic world? *
Need for LC to deal with the concept of on-line publishing * LC's Network
Development Office exploring the limits of MARC as a standard in terms
of handling electronic information * Magnitude of the problem and the
need for distributed responsibility in order to maintain and store
electronic information * Workshop participants to be viewed as a starting
point * Development of a network version of AM urged * A step toward AM's
construction of some sort of apparatus for network access * A delicate
and agonizing policy question for LC * Re the issue of electronic
deposit, LC urged to initiate a catalytic process in terms of distributed
responsibility * Suggestions for cooperative ventures * Commercial
publishers' fears * Strategic questions for getting the image and text
people to think through long-term cooperation * Clarification of the
driving force behind both the Perseus and the Cornell Xerox projects *
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
In his role as moderator of the concluding session, GIFFORD raised two
questions he believed would benefit from discussion: 1) Are there enough
commonalities among those of us that have been here for two days so that
we can see courses of action that should be taken in the future? And, if
so, what are they and who might take them? 2) Partly derivative from
that, but obviously very dangerous to LC as host, do you see a role for
the Library of Congress in all this? Of course, the Library of Congress
holds a rather special status in a number of these matters, because it is
not perceived as a player with an economic stake in them, but are there
roles that LC can play that can help advance us toward where we are heading?
Describing himself as an uninformed observer of the technicalities of the
last two days, GIFFORD detected three different emphases in the Workshop:
1) people who are very deeply committed to text; 2) people who are almost
passionate about images; and 3) a few people who are very committed to
what happens to the networks. In other words, the new networking
dimension, the accessibility of the processability, the portability of
all this across the networks. How do we pull those three together?
Adding a question that reflected HOCKEY's comment that this was the
fourth workshop she had attended in the previous thirty days, FLEISCHHAUER
wondered to what extent this meeting had reinvented the wheel, or if it
had contributed anything in the way of bringing together a different group
of people from those who normally appear on the workshop circuit.
HOCKEY confessed to being struck at this meeting and the one the
Electronic Pierce Consortium organized the previous week that this was a
coming together of people working on texts and not images. Attempting to
bring the two together is something we ought to be thinking about for the
future: How one can think about working with image material to begin
with, but structuring it and digitizing it in such a way that at a later
stage it can be interpreted into text, and find a common way of building
text and images together so that they can be used jointly in the future,
with the network support to begin there because that is how people will
want to access it.
In planning the long-term development of something, which is what is
being done in electronic text, HOCKEY stressed the importance not only
of discussing the technical aspects of how one does it but particularly
of thinking about what the people who use the stuff will want to do.
But conversely, there are numerous things that people start to do with
electronic text or material that nobody ever thought of in the beginning.
LESK, in response to the question concerning the role of the Library of
Congress, remarked the often suggested desideratum of having electronic
deposit: Since everything is now computer-typeset, an entire decade of
material that was machine-readable exists, but the publishers frequently
did not save it; has LC taken any action to have its copyright deposit
operation start collecting these machine-readable versions? In the
absence of PETERS, GIFFORD replied that the question was being
actively considered but that that was only one dimension of the problem.
Another dimension is the whole question of the integrity of the original
electronic document. It becomes highly important in science to prove
authorship. How will that be done?
ERWAY explained that, under the old policy, to make a claim for a
copyright for works that were published in electronic form, including
software, one had to submit a paper copy of the first and last twenty
pages of code--something that represented the work but did not include
the entire work itself and had little value to anyone. As a temporary
measure, LC has claimed the right to demand electronic versions of
electronic publications. This measure entails a proactive role for the
Library to say that it wants a particular electronic version. Publishers
then have perhaps a year to submit it. But the real problem for LC is
what to do with all this material in all these different formats. Will
the Library mount it? How will it give people access to it? How does LC
keep track of the appropriate computers, software, and media? The situation
is so hard to control, ERWAY said, that it makes sense for each publishing
house to maintain its own archive. But LC cannot enforce that either.
GIFFORD acknowledged LESK's suggestion that establishing a priority
offered the solution, albeit a fairly complicated one. But who maintains
that register?, he asked. GRABER noted that LC does attempt to collect a
Macintosh version and the IBM-compatible version of software. It does
not collect other versions. But while true for software, BYRUM observed,
this reply does not speak to materials, that is, all the materials that
were published that were on somebody's microcomputer or driver tapes
at a publishing office across the country. LC does well to acquire
specific machine-readable products selectively that were intended to be
machine-readable. Materials that were in machine-readable form at one time,
BYRUM said, would be beyond LC's capability at the moment, insofar as
attempting to acquire, organize, and preserve them are concerned--and
preservation would be the most important consideration. In this
connection, GIFFORD reiterated the need to work out some sense of
distributive responsibility for a number of these issues, which
inevitably will require significant cooperation and discussion.
Nobody can do it all.
LESK suggested that some publishers may look with favor on LC beginning
to serve as a depository of tapes in an electronic manuscript standard.
Publishers may view this as a service that they did not have to perform
and they might send in tapes. However, SPERBERG-McQUEEN countered,
although publishers have had equivalent services available to them for a
long time, the electronic text archive has never turned away or been
flooded with tapes and is forever sending feedback to the depositor.
Some publishers do send in tapes.
ANDRE viewed this discussion as an allusion to the issue of standards.
She recommended that the AAP standard and the TEI, which has already been
somewhat harmonized internationally and which also shares several
compatibilities with the AAP, be harmonized to ensure sufficient
compatibility in the software. She drew the line at saying LC ought to
be the locus or forum for such harmonization.
Taking the group in a slightly different direction, but one where at
least in the near term LC might play a helpful role, LYNCH remarked the
plans of a number of projects to carry out preservation by creating
digital images that will end up in on-line or near-line storage at some
institution. Presumably, LC will link this material somehow to its
on-line catalog in most cases. Thus, it is in a digital form. LYNCH had
the impression that many of these institutions would be willing to make
those files accessible to other people outside the institution, provided
that there is no copyright problem. This desideratum will require
propagating the knowledge that those digitized files exist, so that they
can end up in other on-line catalogs. Although uncertain about the
mechanism for achieving this result, LYNCH said that it warranted
scrutiny because it seemed to be connected to some of the basic issues of
cataloging and distribution of records. It would be foolish, given the
amount of work that all of us have to do and our meager resources, to
discover multiple institutions digitizing the same work. Re microforms,
LYNCH said, we are in pretty good shape.
BATTIN called this a big problem and noted that the Cornell people (who
had already departed) were working on it. At issue from the beginning
was to learn how to catalog that information into RLIN and then into
OCLC, so that it would be accessible. That issue remains to be resolved.
LYNCH rejoined that putting it into OCLC or RLIN was helpful insofar as
somebody who is thinking of performing preservation activity on that work
could learn about it. It is not necessarily helpful for institutions to
make that available. BATTIN opined that the idea was that it not only be
for preservation purposes but for the convenience of people looking for
this material. She endorsed LYNCH's dictum that duplication of this
effort was to be avoided by every means.
HOCKEY informed the Workshop about one major current activity of CETH,
namely a catalogue of machine-readable texts in the humanities. Held on
RLIN at present, the catalogue has been concentrated on ASCII as opposed
to digitized images of text. She is exploring ways to improve the
catalogue and make it more widely available, and welcomed suggestions
about these concerns. CETH owns the records, which are not just
restricted to RLIN, and can distribute them however it wishes.
Taking up LESK's earlier question, BATTIN inquired whether LC, since it
is accepting electronic files and designing a mechanism for dealing with
that rather than putting books on shelves, would become responsible for
the National Copyright Depository of Electronic Materials. Of course
that could not be accomplished overnight, but it would be something LC
could plan for. GIFFORD acknowledged that much thought was being devoted
to that set of problems and returned the discussion to the issue raised
by LYNCH--whether or not putting the kind of records that both BATTIN and
HOCKEY have been talking about in RLIN is not a satisfactory solution.
It seemed to him that RLIN answered LYNCH's original point concerning
some kind of directory for these kinds of materials. In a situation
where somebody is attempting to decide whether or not to scan this or
film that or to learn whether or not someone has already done so, LYNCH
suggested, RLIN is helpful, but it is not helpful in the case of a local,
on-line catalogue. Further, one would like to have her or his system be
aware that that exists in digital form, so that one can present it to a
patron, even though one did not digitize it, if it is out of copyright.
The only way to make those linkages would be to perform a tremendous
amount of real-time look-up, which would be awkward at best, or
periodically to yank the whole file from RLIN and match it against one's
own stuff, which is a nuisance.
But where, ERWAY inquired, does one stop including things that are
available with Internet, for instance, in one's local catalogue?
It almost seems that that is LC's means to acquire access to them.
That represents LC's new form of library loan. Perhaps LC's new on-line
catalogue is an amalgamation of all these catalogues on line. LYNCH
conceded that perhaps that was true in the very long term, but was not
applicable to scanning in the short term. In his view, the totals cited
by Yale, 10,000 books over perhaps a four-year period, and 1,000-1,500
books from Cornell, were not big numbers, while searching all over
creation for relatively rare occurrences will prove to be less efficient.
As GIFFORD wondered if this would not be a separable file on RLIN and
could be requested from them, BATTIN interjected that it was easily
accessible to an institution. SEVERTSON pointed out that that file, cum
enhancements, was available with reference information on CD-ROM, which
makes it a little more available.
In HOCKEY's view, the real question facing the Workshop is what to put in
this catalogue, because that raises the question of what constitutes a
publication in the electronic world. (WEIBEL interjected that Eric Joule
in OCLC's Office of Research is also wrestling with this particular
problem, while GIFFORD thought it sounded fairly generic.) HOCKEY
contended that a majority of texts in the humanities are in the hands
of either a small number of large research institutions or individuals
and are not generally available for anyone else to access at all.
She wondered if these texts ought to be catalogued.
After argument proceeded back and forth for several minutes over why
cataloguing might be a necessary service, LEBRON suggested that this
issue involved the responsibility of a publisher. The fact that someone
has created something electronically and keeps it under his or her
control does not constitute publication. Publication implies
dissemination. While it would be important for a scholar to let other
people know that this creation exists, in many respects this is no
different from an unpublished manuscript. That is what is being accessed
in there, except that now one is not looking at it in the hard-copy but
in the electronic environment.
LEBRON expressed puzzlement at the variety of ways electronic publishing
has been viewed. Much of what has been discussed throughout these two
days has concerned CD-ROM publishing, whereas in the on-line environment
that she confronts, the constraints and challenges are very different.
Sooner or later LC will have to deal with the concept of on-line
publishing. Taking up the comment ERWAY made earlier about storing
copies, LEBRON gave her own journal as an example. How would she deposit
OJCCT for copyright?, she asked, because the journal will exist in the
mainframe at OCLC and people will be able to access it. Here the
situation is different, ownership versus access, and is something that
arises with publication in the on-line environment, faster than is
sometimes realized. Lacking clear answers to all of these questions
herself, LEBRON did not anticipate that LC would be able to take a role
in helping to define some of them for quite a while.
GREENFIELD observed that LC's Network Development Office is attempting,
among other things, to explore the limits of MARC as a standard in terms
of handling electronic information. GREENFIELD also noted that Rebecca
GUENTHER from that office gave a paper to the American Society for
Information Science (ASIS) summarizing several of the discussion papers
that were coming out of the Network Development Office. GREENFIELD said
he understood that that office had a list-server soliciting just the kind
of feedback received today concerning the difficulties of identifying and
cataloguing electronic information. GREENFIELD hoped that everybody
would be aware of that and somehow contribute to that conversation.
Noting two of LC's roles, first, to act as a repository of record for
material that is copyrighted in this country, and second, to make
materials it holds available in some limited form to a clientele that
goes beyond Congress, BESSER suggested that it was incumbent on LC to
extend those responsibilities to all the things being published in
electronic form. This would mean eventually accepting electronic
formats. LC could require that at some point they be in a certain
limited set of formats, and then develop mechanisms for allowing people
to access those in the same way that other things are accessed. This
does not imply that they are on the network and available to everyone.
LC does that with most of its bibliographic records, BESSER said, which
end up migrating to the utility (e.g., OCLC) or somewhere else. But just
as most of LC's books are available in some form through interlibrary
loan or some other mechanism, so in the same way electronic formats ought
to be available to others in some format, though with some copyright
considerations. BESSER was not suggesting that these mechanisms be
established tomorrow, only that they seemed to fall within LC's purview,
and that there should be long-range plans to establish them.
Acknowledging that those from LC in the room agreed with BESSER
concerning the need to confront difficult questions, GIFFORD underscored
the magnitude of the problem of what to keep and what to select. GIFFORD
noted that LC currently receives some 31,000 items per day, not counting
electronic materials, and argued for much more distributed responsibility
in order to maintain and store electronic information.
BESSER responded that the assembled group could be viewed as a starting
point, whose initial operating premise could be helping to move in this
direction and defining how LC could do so, for example, in areas of
standardization or distribution of responsibility.
FLEISCHHAUER added that AM was fully engaged, wrestling with some of the
questions that pertain to the conversion of older historical materials,
which would be one thing that the Library of Congress might do. Several
points mentioned by BESSER and several others on this question have a
much greater impact on those who are concerned with cataloguing and the
networking of bibliographic information, as well as preservation itself.
Speaking directly to AM, which he considered was a largely uncopyrighted
database, LYNCH urged development of a network version of AM, or
consideration of making the data in it available to people interested in
doing network multimedia. On account of the current great shortage of
digital data that is both appealing and unencumbered by complex rights
problems, this course of action could have a significant effect on making
network multimedia a reality.
In this connection, FLEISCHHAUER reported on a fragmentary prototype in
LC's Office of Information Technology Services that attempts to associate
digital images of photographs with cataloguing information in ways that
work within a local area network--a step, so to say, toward AM's
construction of some sort of apparatus for access. Further, AM has
attempted to use standard data forms in order to help make that
distinction between the access tools and the underlying data, and thus
believes that the database is networkable.
A delicate and agonizing policy question for LC, however, which comes
back to resources and unfortunately has an impact on this, is to find
some appropriate, honorable, and legal cost-recovery possibilities. A
certain skittishness concerning cost-recovery has made people unsure
exactly what to do. AM would be highly receptive to discussing further
LYNCH's offer to test or demonstrate its database in a network
environment, FLEISCHHAUER said.
Returning the discussion to what she viewed as the vital issue of
electronic deposit, BATTIN recommended that LC initiate a catalytic
process in terms of distributed responsibility, that is, bring together
the distributed organizations and set up a study group to look at all
these issues and see where we as a nation should move. The broader
issues of how we deal with the management of electronic information will
not disappear, but only grow worse.
LESK took up this theme and suggested that LC attempt to persuade one
major library in each state to deal with its state equivalent publisher,
which might produce a cooperative project that would be equitably
distributed around the country, and one in which LC would be dealing with
a minimal number of publishers and minimal copyright problems.
GRABER remarked the recent development in the scientific community of a
willingness to use SGML and either deposit or interchange on a fairly
standardized format. He wondered if a similar movement was taking place
in the humanities. Although the National Library of Medicine found only
a few publishers to cooperate in a like venture two or three years ago, a
new effort might generate a much larger number willing to cooperate.
KIMBALL recounted his unit's (Machine-Readable Collections Reading Room)
troubles with the commercial publishers of electronic media in acquiring
materials for LC's collections, in particular the publishers' fear that
they would not be able to cover their costs and would lose control of
their products, that LC would give them away or sell them and make
profits from them. He doubted that the publishing industry was prepared
to move into this area at the moment, given its resistance to allowing LC
to use its machine-readable materials as the Library would like.
The copyright law now addresses compact disk as a medium, and LC can
request one copy of that, or two copies if it is the only version, and
can request copies of software, but that fails to address magazines or
books or anything like that which is in machine-readable form.
GIFFORD acknowledged the thorny nature of this issue, which he illustrated
with the example of the cumbersome process involved in putting a copy of a
scientific database on a LAN in LC's science reading room. He also
acknowledged that LC needs help and could enlist the energies and talents
of Workshop participants in thinking through a number of these problems.
GIFFORD returned the discussion to getting the image and text people to
think through together where they want to go in the long term. MYLONAS
conceded that her experience at the Pierce Symposium the previous week at
Georgetown University and this week at LC had forced her to reevaluate
her perspective on the usefulness of text as images. MYLONAS framed the
issues in a series of questions: How do we acquire machine-readable
text? Do we take pictures of it and perform OCR on it later? Is it
important to obtain very high-quality images and text, etc.?
FLEISCHHAUER agreed with MYLONAS's framing of strategic questions, adding
that a large institution such as LC probably has to do all of those
things at different times. Thus, the trick is to exercise judgment. The
Workshop had added to his and AM's considerations in making those
judgments. Concerning future meetings or discussions, MYLONAS suggested
that screening priorities would be helpful.
WEIBEL opined that the diversity reflected in this group was a sign both
of the health and of the immaturity of the field, and more time would
have to pass before we convince one another concerning standards.
An exchange between MYLONAS and BATTIN clarified the point that the
driving force behind both the Perseus and the Cornell Xerox projects was
the preservation of knowledge for the future, not simply for particular
research use. In the case of Perseus, MYLONAS said, the assumption was
that the texts would not be entered again into electronically readable
form. SPERBERG-McQUEEN added that a scanned image would not serve as an
archival copy for purposes of preservation in the case of, say, the Bill
of Rights, in the sense that the scanned images are effectively the
archival copies for the Cornell mathematics books.
*** *** *** ****** *** *** ***