Charles R. Hildreth, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
The University of Oklahoma
Norman, Oklahoma, USA
childreth@uoknor.edu
In this new age of digital imaging and optical recording technologies, widescale access to documents is no longer the enemy of preservationists. Access and preservation strategies are no longer incompatible. Digital imaging technology is the first preservation technology that has the potential to increase and expand access to recorded knowledge rather than limit and restrict that access. Some visionaries are now proclaiming that in the digital world "preservation is access, and access is preservation." Digital image formats are now seen not only as feasible alternatives to print and microfilm formats for traditional preservation purposes, but also as the technology bearing unlimited access and distribution potential .
We must keep in mind the distinction between physical access to documents and intellectual access to published works and their contents. It is ironic that while digital imaging technologies have the potential to increase physical access to documents, these same technologies have no inherent capabilities to improve intellectual access to the works represented in these documents, and may, perhaps, actually diminish such access.
Converting textual documents and other formats to digital formats may expand physical access to these materials, especially in a networked world, but such conversion presents new challenges for providing and enhancing intellectual access to these works. For example, what are the requirements for browsing and exploration in the digital library of the future? Is the open bookshelf browsing model of seeking and exploration in a classified physical collection valid in the universal virtual library, or are new models of intellectual access and exploration needed? This paper will examine these issues and challenges.
My first acquaintance with Patricia Battin came through the publication of her paper, "The Electronic library - a Vision for the Future," in the Summer 1984 EDUCOM Bulletin. A copy of this paper was delivered that year to my research office at OCLC by one of OCLC's stellar librarians. Knowing of my research on online catalogs, she surmised correctly that I might also have an interest in what Ms. Battin had to say.
I would like to share with you a few passages from Ms. Battin's 1984 paper:
What the personal computer does mean is the end of the printed page as the sole means of scholarly communication and information storage and retrieval. There will be, in the future, a mix of formats as well as a mix of hardware. If the new, expanded information systems are to be successful, we will need to create a new information infrastructure to provide the electronic scholar with the same kind of universal gateway access to recorded knowledge as the traditional library provided for printed materials.
The challenge for universities is not simply to explore the role of computers on campus, but also to integrate information technology into the existing information system in a way that preserves the linkages to the existing knowledge base, encourages and stimulates the productive use of new technologies, and provides coordinated gateway access to the universe of knowledge in a manner convenient and invisible to the end user. That is the dream. (1)
That dream, so eloquently articulated by Ms. Battin - coordinated gateway access to the universe of knowledge in a manner convenient and invisible to the end user - has become the central user requirement in the rapidly expanding environment of electronic information and electronically-based research and scholarship.
After graciously accepting my proposal for a presentation at this year's Essen Symposium, Dr. Helal encouraged me to focus, in part, on digital preservation issues and challenges. (Many of you know that I have continued my interest and research in library applications of electronic storage and retrieval technologies, including the online public access catalog.)
Let me say at the outset that I am only a lukewarm bibliophile. Although my shelves are lined mostly with books, I regard very few books as singular works of art, that is, artifacts deserving special care and handling. I speak of course of the print "containers" we call books, not the actual works of authors. I will have more to say on this later.
In my eighteen years in librarianship, I have had very little experience with archivists, special collection librarians, and preservationists. My memories are of isolated collections in controlled-access, climate-controlled rooms. I had much to learn as I began my research for this presentation.
Although my faculty office is located in a major university research library, I began my research at my computer workstation by first browsing some Internet-based listserv archives. After identifying some recent discussions of digital preservation, including some works in progress in draft form, I fetched and downloaded these electronic, digital "documents". The citations in these documents led me to other key articles, images of which I had faxed to me. Furthermore, my Internet research helped me identify key individuals, organizations, and projects active in the creation, maintenance, and preservation of digital libraries and collections. I discovered that at the very epicenter of this activity, in North America, stood Patricia Battin and the Commission on Preservation and Access, an organization she helped establish in 1986, and for which she served as its first President.
It only took me a few minutes to discover that the document archives and current reports of the Commission are available on the Internet. The World Wide Web Home Page of the Commission on Preservation and Access provides a convenient gateway to a rich collection of Commission newsletters, annual reports, and commissioned studies on preservation issues, technologies, and challenges.
To sum up, approximately eighty percent of my research for this presentation was conducted electronically. To review traditional definitions of book conservation, preservation, and the cataloger's distinction between a "work" and a "book," I went to the print collection of our university library's reference room to find the appropriate glossaries and textbooks. This was the lesser part of my initial research.
It is a fascinating, eye-opening experience to go online on the Net and electronically trace the activities of organizations like the Commission on Preservation and Access, the Digital Archive Task Force, and the Digital Library Federation. One can even gain important historical insights in this way. As more and more information is being generated, disseminated, and used in digital form, the activities of the preservationists are increasing in frequency and visibility. I found this surprising at first.
In their annual reports and other official documents, the Commission on Preservation and Access publishes this standard statement:
The Commission on Preservation and Access was established in 1986 to foster and support collaboration among libraries and allied organizations in order to ensure the preservation of the published and documentary record in all formats and to provide enhanced access to scholarly information. (2)
My naive suspicion that these preservationists were primarily interested in conserving old books and promoting acid-free paper for new books was quickly laid to rest. If this were ever the case, it soon became clear to me that the focus and goals of preservationists had changed. However, we must recognize that the interest in and acceptance of the importance of digital preservation is a recent development in the 1990s.
A careful reading of the Commission's first newsletter, dated June 1988, reveals that microfilming is the only preservation technology mentioned. The "national brittle books" program is mentioned, as is the Commission's goal to encourage the use of acid-free paper for print publications. In the Commission's first Annual Report, published in June 1988, it is clear that microfilming is the preferred preservation technology:
The Commission's fundamental objectives are the following:
* the preservation, on microfilm and other archival media, of the contents of deteriorating printed materials; * the conservation, where appropriate, of the book as an artifact; * the creation of a cost-effective system to provide unrestricted access to copies of preserved materials in a choice of formats; * the use of alkaline paper for publications of enduring value; and * the institutionalization of preservation as a vital component of library and archival operations on a continuing basis. (2)
It is of historical importance to note that this Annual report announces the establishment of a "Technology Assessment Advisory Committee" to investigate the "emerging capabilities of digitizing technologies" for storage and retrieval of preserved items.
Scanning "fast forward" to 1992, I note that the Commission published a study by Donald Waters of Yale University entitled, "Electronic Technologies and Preservation." The Commission's aim in publishing the paper was "to further stimulate discussion about whether and how consortial efforts can generate in the nation's research libraries useful, productive and economical applications for preservation purposes of important new electronic technologies, including particularly digital imaging technology." (3)
In his introduction, Waters states that "I want to explore the place of digital information in the access-oriented mission of the library, to review some of the preservation concerns for information in digital form, and to focus specifically on information in digital image form." (3)
In October 1992, The Commission published the report of its Technology Assessment Advisory Committee, prepared by Michael Lesk. Recall that "the group was charged in 1989 with advising the Commission on applications of electronics for the preservation of and access to deteriorating paper-based materials. This report, one of a series, goes beyond the preservation of print materials. As such, it is a technologist's summary of how digital technology applies to preservation problems." (Rowland C.W. Brown, Chair, Technology Assessment Advisory Committee) (4)
Recognizing the problems associated with digital formats and media, the Committee strongly recommends digital preservation as the primary route to be followed in future programs and projects.
In the Commission's Annual Report of June 1993, under the heading of "Special Report: From Preservation to Access - a Paradigm for the Future, Ms. Battin writes: "technology has created a new definition of our concept of preservation." She continues:
Perhaps the most formidable characteristic of digital technology is its ability to destroy the comfortable traditional borders and boundaries outlining and shaping our institutions and professional pursuits. The history of preservation and the manner in which technology continues to change the way we think about both preservation of and access to information provides an illuminating example of the power of technology to change the culture, the organizations and the basic principles of our society. As we have explored the uses of digital technology to preserve the deteriorating printed documents of the past, the paradigm of the virtual library has emerged: In the digital world, preservation is access, and access is preservation. The boundaries of the analog world have dissolved. What, then, is the future of preservation? ... With digital technology, we have entered into a ceaseless spiral of change which represents, not so much an evolution from, but a formidable disjunction with the analog world, And as preservationists, we must straddle both worlds. (5)
Although millions of dollars are still being budgeted for microform preservation projects, I think we can say the brief era of microform preservation is over. Just as the OPAC accelerated the obsolescence of the card catalog (and, incidentally, the short-lived COM- catalog), so digital preservation technologies have led to the obsolescence of microfilming as a desirable preservation technology.
Looking back over the past three and one-half decades, we can identify three overlapping periods of preservation activities. Prior to the 1960s, there seems to be little concentrated or national preservation efforts. First came the "book preservationists" motivated by the growing number of "brittle books" and "Slow Fires" in our library bookstacks. We owe to them thoughtful conservation projects and the promotion of acid-free paper standards for the publishing industry. Then came the microfilm preservationists who directed national and international attention to preservation needs, and succeeded in acquiring large amounts of funding for the reformatting of millions of titles of deteriorating books and periodicals held by our libraries. Now, in the 1990s, we have entered the age of digital preservation and the growing generation and storage of digital information in a networked environment. Indeed, "preservation is access, and access is preservation."
Preservationists strike me as truly Janus-like guardians of our intellectual past and unfolding information future. Janus was the Roman God who had two faces, front and back: one old and the other young. In his temple, whose doors he guarded, the doors were closed only when Rome was at peace, and was not, presumably, out conquering the globe and its peoples. The Romans considered Janus as the God of "good beginnings" that would then lead to good endings.
Let me state the case in a rather straightforward way. Access to and use of digitally preserved works can be expanded infinitely with no threat to the quality and existence of the original works. This was not the case in the era of conventional (pre-digital) conservation and preservation of manuscripts and printed books, where tradeoffs often had to be made between preserving the content contained on or within physical artifacts, and providing access to that content. As Ms. Battin has pointed out, "In the era of manuscripts and printed books, access to knowledge depended upon the health of the artifact. And the longer the life cycle of the artifact, the lower the access to the knowledge it contained." (5)
In conventional print preservation efforts, the central objective is the preservation of an artifact. There is no intrinsic relationship between these efforts and the expansion of access to the intellectual work contained in the artifact. Additional, extrinsic considerations must be brought to bear if preserved information artifacts are to be used to any degree. In digital preservation, the very product of the effort affords expanded, widescale access to the work. There is an intrinsic relationship between the technology of digital preservation and what Patrick Wilson calls the new "technologies of availability." (6) Wilson has in mind the global access to ever-larger amounts of electronic, networked, digital information we are already taking for granted.
Let me explain what I mean by "nearby" and "half-way" technologies. Half-way technologies are typically early, partial solutions to critical problems. These solutions may be better than no solution at all, but they are solutions that produce undesirable side-effects or require costly and painful tradeoffs that we would rather not have to make, if only a better solution could be found. Often we do not realize they are half-way technologies until something superior and more accommodating comes along. Examples of half-way technologies include the "iron-lung" (used to treat polio victims until the superior technology of the polio vaccine came along), all forms of radical surgery, eyeglasses, manual and electric typewriters, hot-metal typesetting, and the card catalog.
"Nearby" technologies are those technologies that have well-designed practical value, but are of little or no utility unless they are "nearby" and, in some cases, "in hand." Nearby technologies include bicycles, eyeglasses, condoms, card catalogs, and books. I leave it to your imagination to add nearby technologies to this brief list.
Having to have things nearby to use them or to benefit from them is not always an advantage. The printed book is a nearby information technology. Having it nearby is not only convenient for informing purposes, but having a book in hand can be comforting as well. However, a printed book can only be in one place at any one time. A printed book that is known and desired, but not at hand, can be a real source of frustration. To illustrate my point, in the traditional library setting, what more pleasant words than these can be heard by a patron who wants a specific book: "Yes, we have the book and you can borrow it now."
As a researcher, teacher, and avid reader of escapist fiction, I am fond of the printed book or journal, especially when they are conveniently at hand or nearby. Nevertheless, and putting convenience aside, my interest is not in the book itself, but in the work or content that is contained within and delivered by the book or other physical medium.
In his article, "Publishing Over the Next Decade", Rawlins waxes enthusiastically about the "electronic book." This is another of my favorite oxymorons. I am about as fond of this term as I am "horseless carriage"! But Rawlins does force us to consider some critical shortcomings of the printed book, a half-way, nearby technology.
The advantages of printed over electronic books as a medium of information storage and exchange are that they are robust, they need zero power, several can be open at once, they have been around for 550 years, all literate people know how to use them, and they are readable in strong sunlight.
Their disadvantages are that illiterate people cannot use them, it is easier to print an electronic book than it is to digitize a printed book, and it is hard to collate nonsequential but related parts of one book, or many books by several subjects. Further, they do not talk, adapt to their readers, or have animated illustrations or music. They do not let readers zoom or pan illustrations, or increase or decrease their font size, nor do they recognize voice commands or visual cues. Finally, they are not cheap, long lasting, easily copied, quickly acquired, easily searched, or portable in bulk.... About all that can be said of paper books is that they are lighter than clay tablets, less awkward than papyrus rolls, and cheaper than parchment codices. (7)
Negroponte reminds us in his new work, Being Digital," that the cost of acquiring a book "includes shipping and inventory. In the case of textbooks, 45 percent of the cost is inventory, shipping and returns." And he adds, "Worse, a book can go out of print. Digital books never go out of print. They are always there." (8) And, I hasten to add, in the networked information environment, "there" can be anywhere.
Responding to the cult of McLuhan ("the medium is the message"), Negroponte argues forcefully and frequently that in the digital age, the message, once encoded into bit streams, is truly independent of any particular storage and transfer medium. The digitized message content has, in a very real sense, been "liberated" from its container book, or any other physical format, and has been liberated from the constraints to access and use inherent in the physical formats.
Librarians, of course, have been aware of this "content in the container" dilemma for some time, as expressed in their careful distinction between "physical access" to books and "intellectual access" to works. This distinction between works and books has been central to cataloging theory and practice in the 20th century.
In describing the "bibliographic universe and its parts," the Librarian's Thesaurus, following Lubetzky, has this to say:
Works consist of the intellectual content of units, and thus have no physical existence until embodied in an actual physical book. ...the material record of a work. ...The existence and extent of a work is defined by a creator or author; the book or books that contain a work are usually defined by the producer or publisher. (9)
Harrod's Librarians' Glossary, 7th edition, defines a "work" as:
Any expression of thought in language, signs or symbols, or other media for record and communication [i.e., a work before printing or other publication]. After publication it becomes a 'published work'. (10)
Patrick Wilson reminds us that,
In three working papers prepared for the 1961 International Conference on Cataloging Principles, Lubetzky, Verona, and Leonard Jolley all agree that the object of interest, in the normal search of a catalog, is not a particular book or other publication, but rather the work represented by the book. In Verona's words, 'the object of the reader's essential interest is not the publication but the work represented by it. There is no denying the fundamental truth of this statement, which appears to assign greater importance to works that to books in relation to the catalog.' Jolley agreed that 'it is quite obvious that the reader is normally interested primarily in a work rather than in a specific publication.' (6)
Wilson urges us to respect the "predominance of the work," and to end once and for all the "dominance of the publishers' package" in our obsolete cataloging objectives and practice. He recommends that Cutter's well-known second "object" of the catalog be placed above the even better known first objective in our cataloging-for-access priorities. (11)
In the print on paper age, not only was the distinction between physical access and intellectual access a unavoidable conceptual distinction, in practice, two fundamentally different sets of operations were required to achieve full access to works. In the digital environment, we have the opportunity to provide a more unified, integrated approach to knowledge acquisition and transfer.
Works are works, and bits are bits. But when works are bits (rather than physical atoms) and bits are works, in a very real sense, the age of works imprisoned in physical bondage - that is, half-way, nearby technologies - may be nearing an end. The material enslavement of intellectual works - our cultural record - has resulted in nearly unsolvable problems of preservation, access, and use. Our best efforts to provide full bibliographic and physical access, honorable as they are, have largely been half-measures.
Recording or transforming works into bits makes possible unprecedented widescale access and use, without any intrinsic threat to the existence and quality of the original works. I think this is what Ms. Battin means by "preservation is access, and access is preservation."
In closing, let me share with you two concerns. The first has to do with how we talk about libraries in this early stage of the digital age, and the second concern is about the new access challenges confronting us in an environment of global networked access to vast amounts of digital information.
About the library of the future we ask: Will it be an electronic library? Will it be a library without walls? Will it be a digital library? Will it be a virtual library? Will it be "just-in-case" collection-oriented or "just-in-time" access-oriented? The onslaught of new computer and telecommunications technologies are, no doubt, forcing us to address these issues. However, our rhetoric tends to out-distance our knowledge and collective wisdom. Furthermore, I wonder if we are asking the right questions. Rather, should we be asking questions like these: How will research and scholarship be conducted in the future? What transformations are currently taking place in this arena? What kinds of service and assistance will today's library users need in the emerging electronic digital age; and what will they need when it is fully in place?
Today's research libraries, even as they struggle heroically to integrate electronic resources into their mix of services, are "places in spaces" - both physical spaces and institutional places. Study after study has shown that faculty and researchers, given a more convenient option, would rather not come to our libraries to access and obtain copies of works. Researchers and scholars want convenient, effective access to works of potential interest to them, and they want selected sources on demand. More and more these identification, access, and selection activities are being performed at the scholars' personal workstations, yet we still talk bravely of places and collections, albeit, digital ones. Both the early and later stages of research and scholarly activity intimately involve the pre-monograph, periodical literature. Thus, the trend to electronic publishing of the periodical literature bears watching. In the 1980s we spoke of dozens of electronic journals; in the 1990s we speak of hundreds of e-journals and related forms of electronic communication. In the next decade, will it be thousands of e-journals we have networked access to, or most all of them?
Nicholas Negroponte encourages us to reflect carefully about the ramifications of the new technologies of availability, and the concept of "place without space."
In the same ways that hypertext removes the limitations of the printed page, the post-information age will remove the limitations of geography. Digital living will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time. (8)
Applying these insights to libraries and their collections, Patrick Wilson adds:
What these technological changes do to the traditional idea of a library collection is clear enough. When storage medium and display medium were the same, the only way to get the information in a store was to have a copy of the store itself; availability of information required availability of a physical object that was simultaneously the carrier and the display of information. No longer; availability of a store of information at a place does not require the presence of an actual display but only a virtual display, that is, the possibility of producing a visual display, transitory or lasting. Availability at a place does not require the physical presence of a copy, but only the possibility of producing a copy, and the collection of actual and virtual copies now constitutes the available stock of information. (6)
Furthermore, Wilson continues,
A remote source available to one is potentially available to all; and as the technology of information transmission marches on, increasingly the information held in any form by one library will be available to others in some form without physical transportation of physical objects. (6)
Several years after Wilson' remarks, as we enjoy the presence and promise of the global information environment supported largely by the Internet, no one can doubt the accuracy of his projections.
My second concern has to do with "intellectual access" to the growing amount of electronic resources in the networked information environment. Intellectual access requires access to the content of works, and, at a minimum, enough content access to sufficiently inform the researcher's efforts to identify and evaluate works of potential relevance. In a networked information environment, this access cannot be satisfied by conventional indexing and retrieval methods represented in our current online library catalogs and other database search systems. As Rao and her colleagues have argued, "Effective information access involves rich interactions between users and information residing in diverse locations." (12) Intellectual content access requires us to make a paradigm shift from optimizing user-system interaction to enriching user-information interaction. The authors put forward the concept of an "information workspace" to replace the notion of a scholar's workstation. Mischo and Cole provide one of the best functional definitions of a scholar's workstation in a transition stage on the way to becoming an "information workspace":
From a single workstation, a user will be able to 1) perform a literature search using the major periodical index databases; 2) identify retrieve and read the full text of journal articles, book chapters, etc.; 3) send results to electronic mailboxes and personal databases as desired; 4) use scholarly software residing on the workstation or provide a gateway to a remote computing facility (such as a supercomputer) for data analysis or preparation; and 5) capture and display the results of the work using the multimedia capabilities of the workstation to prepare presentation materials for the classroom or publication. (13)
It is not too soon to shift our emphasis from convenient, timely enhanced actual ("physical"?) access to information objects over to efforts to enhance the modes and methods of intellectual access to networked information sources. What I have in mind is better exploratory browse, search and retrieval mechanisms and user interfaces that will assist network information seekers in their tasks of identifying, evaluating, and retrieving works and information potentially relevant to a topic of interest, or useful in solving a problem under consideration.
There are some very good finding tools on the Internet and the World Wide Web, for those instances when you have a pretty good idea what you want before you start looking for it. Effective exploration and browsing tools that take the searcher deep into the content of works on the network are still lacking.
As we stand on the threshold of an exciting era of expanded information access and delivery, there is another danger equal, perhaps, to the uncritical adoption of new technologies. The danger I speak of is the danger of uncritical devotion to outmoded models (forms, if you like) and long-standing ways of doing things. (I am tempted to coin the phrase, "bibliographic nostalgia," but I shall restrain myself.) Furthermore, the gloss of new technologies may disguise the fact that underneath, things remain pretty much the same as they always were.
Let me bring to mind imagery from a not-so-long-ago era in library history. It is a personal recollection of a "hard" reality, far distant, it would seem, from those virtual realms we hear so much about these days.
Thirty years ago, while a young undergraduate student at the Ohio State University, when I went to the main library on campus to look up materials, I accessed the massive public card catalog to locate needed books or bound periodicals. If successful at the card catalog, I then went to a designated "workstation" which supplied small pencils and small slips of paper. For each book I desired I wrote down on one of these slips its author, title, and call number. I then took these slips to the circulation (check-out) counter where a clerk confirmed that they contained sufficient data and sent them via pneumatic tubes to "stack runners." You see, the stacks with their organized shelves of books were closed to ordinary folk like undergraduate students (unless one was employed by the library as a stack runner). Bookshelf browsing, as a means of discovering works of interest, was not permitted. In this closed-stack retrieval system, you had to know precisely what you wanted and identify it in the card catalog before it could be retrieved by a stack runner from the bowels of the library warehouse.
Another way of expressing my second concern is this: By providing network access to our conventional online catalogs using advanced access tools like Telnet, Gophers, Z39.50 protocols, WAIS, World Wide Web, etc. - that is, opening the doors to a vast number of online "libraries without walls" - are we not at the same time "closing the stacks" and eliminating the opportunity for a variety of kinds of meaningful browsing, browsing that often leads to the discovery of previously unknown items of interest? I consider personal interaction with an organized collection of published materials to be a rewarding activity, and I think providing this opportunity should be a service priority of most libraries. As we shift our priorities from building and maintaining physical collections to the provision of electronic access to document collections, are we not in danger of eliminating a qualitative experience and closing the stacks once again? Perhaps today's network access technologies like WAIS and Z39.50 are the digital versions of human stack runners and book retrievers.
Thousands of library and other document collections can now be accessed with relative ease via the Internet, either by Telneting to a library's online catalog network address, selecting one from a Gopher directory menu or a WEB home page. Almost all of these online catalogs and retrieval systems can be characterized as query-oriented retrieval systems. They have very limited relevance feedback, query refinement, and browsing capabilities. As such, they place intrinsic limits on the potential of new network-based access and search technologies, like the Z39.50 protocol, to provide more effective and more appropriate search environments for many kinds of search needs and behavior.
Although some uniformity will be introduced in the searching of networked online catalogs when Z39.50 and the ISO Search and Retrieval protocols are widely available for use (conforming software must be developed and installed on hosts and/or network servers), limited search and browse functionality is supported by the standard approach, and little assistance to the user having search problems during a session will be provided by the new protocol-based search interaction. For example, this approach will not inform the user why a search resulted in no matches. The search can be repeated with new attributes and/or values, but it will be transmitted and processed in the same pre-defined and rigid manner. The assistance of a friendly local user interface will be excluded from this process.
The WAIS (Wide Area Information Servers), a distributed database retrieval system also based on the client-server model, provides a rudimentary kind of weighted-term/document retrieval from indexed databases on the Internet. WAIS displays retrieved documents in ranked order, with those documents most likely to be relevant to the query listed first, and WAIS offers some opportunity for relevance feedback on retrieved documents so that the search can be refined and extended. WAIS is an application of the probabilistic theory of information retrieval promoted for many years by researchers as a better alternative to conventional Boolean retrieval systems. However, WAIS is still a query-oriented approach which provides only limited, rather linear browsing capabilities.
The first network access technology with promise for inveterate browsers is the World Wide Web (WWW, or W3). The Web supports hypertext retrieval and browsing among selected, specially organized databases on the network. Through the multiple linking of related data entities, textual units, or entire documents, the hypertext approach offers the user a network of alternate paths for self-directed, non-linear browsing and exploration of bibliographic and other document spaces. At this time, there are only a few hypertext OPACs accessible via the Internet.
To end on an optimistic note, there is good reason to expect that these new network access and retrieval technologies will have an impact on OPAC vendors and developers, motivating at least some of them to venture beyond second generation functionality. The Internet is marvelously hospitable to innovators, and it is a wonderfully public and influential medium.
1. BATTIN, Patricia. The electronic library - a vision for the future. EDUCOM Bulletin, Summer 1984, pp. 12-17, 34, 1984.
2. COMMISSION ON PRESERVATION AND ACCESS. Annual Report, July 1, 1988 - June 30, 1989. Washington, DC, Commission on Preservation and Access, Council on Library Resources, 1989.
3. WATERS, Donald J. Electronic Technologies and Preservation. Washington, DC, Commission on Preservation and Access, Council on Library Resources, June 25, 1992.
4. LESK, Michael. Preservation of New Technology: A Report of the Technology Assessment Advisory Committee to the Commission on Preservation and Access. Washington, DC, Commission on Preservation and Access, Council on Library Resources, October 1992.
5. COMMISSION ON PRESERVATION AND ACCESS. Annual Report, July 1, 1992 - June 30, 1993. Washington, DC, Commission on Preservation and Access, Council on Library Resources, 1989.
6. WILSON, Patrick. The second objective. In: Svenonius, Elaine ed. The Conceptual Foundations of Descriptive Cataloging. San Diego (etc.), Academic Press, 1989. pp. 5- 16.
7. RAWLINS, Gregory J. E. Publishing over the next decade. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 44, (8), pp. 474-479, 1993.
8. NEGROPONTE, Nicholas. Being Digital. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. 243 pp.
9. SOPER, Mary Ellen, ed. The Librarian's Thesaurus. Chicago and London, American Library Association, 1990.
10. HARROD, Leonard Montague. Harrod's Librarians' Glossary of terms Used in Librarianship, Documentation and the Book Crafts and reference Book, 7th ed., Aldershot, England, Gower Publishing Company.
11. CUTTER, Charles Ammi. Rules for a Dictionary Catalog, 4th ed., Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1904.
12. RAO, Ramana, PEDERSEN, Jan O., HEARST, Marti A., MACKINLAY, Jock D., CARD, Staurt K., MASINTER, Larry, HALVORSEN, Per-Kristian, and ROBERTSON, George G. Rich interaction in the digital library. Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), 38, (4), pp. 29-39, 1995.
13. MISCHO, William H. and COLE, Timothy W. The Illinois Extended OPAC: Library Information Workstation Design and Development. In: Ra, Marsha (editor), Advances in Online Public Access Catalogs, New York, Meckler, 1992. pp. 38-57.
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LESK, Michael. Why Digital Libraries? The Follett Lecture Series, London, 1994 (http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/follett_lectures/lesk/follett.html)
LOCKE, Christopher. The dark side of DIP. BYTE, April 1991, pp. 193-204. 1991
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ROTHENBERG, Jeff. Ensuring the longevity of digital documents. Scientific American, January 1995, pp. 42-47, 1995.
TASK FORCE ON ARCHIVING OF DIGITAL INFORMATION. A Report to the Commission on Preservation and Access and the Research Libraries Group. Washington, DC, Commission on Preservation and Access, Council on Library Resources, 1995 (http://www-rlg.stanford.edu/ArchTF/ or listserv at: archtf-l@yalevm.cis.yale.edu).
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Keywords: Digital preservation, Access, Internet, World Wide Web, Electronic library, Information retrieval, Digital documents, Digital imaging, Electronic publishing, Hypertext, Browsing, Commission on Preservation and Access, Scholar's workstation