Courting discovery: Managing transition to the virtual library
| Published date | 01 April 1994 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb047933 |
| Pages | 7-13 |
| Date | 01 April 1994 |
| Author | Charles B. Lowry,Barbara G. Richards |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
COURTING DISCOVERY:
MANAGING TRANSITION TO
THE VIRTUAL LIBRARY
Charles B. Lowry and Barbara G. Richards
Since the mid-1980s, a primary objective of the
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Libraries has
been to build a state-of-the-art electronic library.
This early development was known as the
Mercury Project. A new effort is underway at
the CMU Libraries to move beyond Mercury to
a new virtual library infrastructure. The virtual
library will become reality when users can access
digitized information as easily as they can access
television. A distributed computing environment
is already in place at CMU; this distributed
architecture allows the CMU Libraries to engage
in the improvement of productivity for the
campus community by making access to
information more efficient. A primary focus has
been to be a pioneer in creating and providing
services not readily available from vendors.
An analogy for the library profession in the 1990s
is to be found in the following story. A young man was
being introduced to his fiance's family at a crowded
holiday party. He noticed an elderly, gray-headed lady
in a rocker who seemed not to be engaged by anyone.
Mindful that he needed to make a good impression,
he approached her and said, "And who might you be?"
She looked at him blankly and replied, "How soon do
you need
to
know? " Libraries are much like that elderly
lady: we are an old, graying institution; we are not sure
who or what we are any longer; and we need to find
out quickly.
The list of catch phrases—new library paradigm,
access versus ownership, electronic library, digital
library, virtual reality—is becoming long. What will
it take for the electronic environment implied by this
list to become the everyday reality? Basically two tasks
are necessary to build
the
virtual library infrastructure.
Neither is trivial. First, we need to build the telecom-
munications' technologies that allow users to access
electronic information as easily as they can access a
television set. Second, we need to create a substantial
amount of digitized information they really want
to
use.
We are all participating in a process that has a
close historical analogy in the creation of libraries as
they have existed for about 100
years.
The touchstones
of that earlier process were the emergence of modern
scholarly monograph publication, the development of
the modern journal, classification and subject heading
schemes, periodical indexing, replacement of book
catalogs by card catalogs, and the application of the
typewriter. Concomitant with that was the emergence
Lowry is university librarian and Richards is
associate university librarian, Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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COURTING DISCOVERY
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ISSUE 48 — 12:4 (1994) 7
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