LIS688B Assignment #3 Che sera, sera Technology and the Future of Collections in Libraries by: Randy D. Ralph Completed August 3, 1996 Describe what you think the special library of the future will be like, given the new technologies of today and projected for the future. The impact of today's technologies on special libraries, in general, I think, has been to: radically improve general connectivity facilitate resource sharing and collection focusing enable electronic publication enhance database management capabilities expand local data storage capacities immensely foster increased local and remote electronic usership facilitate data transfer improve access to information locally and at remote sites lower the cost and increase the speed of document acquisition These trends toward increased reliance on electronic modes of information storage, management and delivery will continue into the future. Probably the most significant future developments will center on the capture, storage and conversion of information from printed formats into electronic formats coupled with more powerful search capabilities. Library users will be presented with tools that will allow them to design their own information profiles and stipulate output formats and delivery modes. Increased interconnectivity will erase the classical physical borders of the library and present patrons with seemless and transparent access to both locally held or produced and remote information sources. How will the new technologies affect the collections in this place of employment? Dramatically increased optical disk storage capacities coupled with plummeting costs will provide terabytes of space for electronic information systems at even the most modest facilities. This will permit special libraries to convert the most highly accessed physical collections to electronic formats and make them available not only to local patrons but to remote users, as well. The rate limiting steps in the conversion process will be scanning, processing and indexing images and text files. Libraries will not be able to make these conversions without significant increases in staffing and budget earmarked for such efforts. Right now such efforts are often considered secondary. That will shift. The work will require professionals who possess not only all the traditional library skills and knowledges but who also have appropriate subject area expertise and in-depth knowledge of electronic information management techniques. Electronic holdings of all sorts will increase radically. Annoyingly qualified and contentious people, not unlike myself, will be needed. The promise held out by vastly increased interconnectivity provided by telecommunications technologies of all types is that collections may become more highly focused and deeper through some sort of intelligent, concerted plan for resource sharing among comparable institutions. The perceived need to stake a claim and carve out a turf on the Net, however, can be expected to interfere with resource sharing for a time and will drive up costs, as well. This is happening on the Internet today. Ultimately, however, things can be expected to settle down as "winners" emerge. The best course of action for special libraries will be to emphasize what they have that is unique, to strengthen their collections in these areas and to make them available globally not for the sake of sheer altruism but with the expectation that special collections of interest and value at other institutions will also be made available by reciprocity. Physical collections will become more focused and will shrink but this will be coupled to and complemented by increased access to remote collections. A radical shift will also take place in collections in all types of libraries in response to increased availability of electronic document delivery services and a shift toward the electronic publication of primary sources, most notably, journals. The expansion of physical collections of periodicals will slow considerably and may even halt. The shift in these collections will be toward conversion to electronic form and preservation of critical or historically valuable holdings. New document delivery service agencies on the Internet will offer patrons direct pay-as-you-go access to primary sources. Libraries with unique collections out of copyright may profit from arrangements with access providers or may benefit by permitting access in exchange for conversion to electronic formats. Partnerships with service providers in the information industry and with electronic publishers will become commonplace. In summary, the major shifts that can be expected in collections will center around radical increases in interconnectivity, access, speed of delivery and variety of delivery modes. If present trends continue, however, the power of finding aids will not keep pace with these developments. Future library users will have an increasingly difficult time locating items in the bewildering array of information sources available to them unless those with the skill and knowledge needed to organize, catalog and index such sources, virtual and physical, provide them with the tools necessary to do the job. And, finally, the most difficult challenge for collection managers, aside from keeping abreast of rapid changes in technology, will be knowing their users. Right now we are living in a difficult time described by Alvin Toffler in Future Shock as "high tech, low touch." We will need to move toward an ideal of "high tech, high touch" if we are to succeed in the future. We will have to invent ways in which to gather appropriate and necessary feedback from all our users, local and remote. The question is, will the charter of our institutions change to permit it? "Exactly who do we serve?" may become the single most important question for collection managers in the next few years. to the Writings Page.