Design shirk: disparities between the wealth of our material and the poverty of its use
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055720010804087 |
| Published date | 01 September 2001 |
| Pages | 6-11 |
| Date | 01 September 2001 |
| Author | Leo Robert Klein |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
6 — VINE 124
Design shirk:
disparities between
the wealth of our
material and the
poverty of its use
by Leo Robert Klein, Web Coordinator,
William and Anita Newman Library,
CUNY
Libraries and other institutions of higher
learning have a num ber of advantages when it
comes to develop ing web-based med ia. First
they are repositorie s of large amounts of
traditional content which they can digitise and
make available to the public to great effect.
Second they have a role in instruction w hich
acts as a great incentive to develop origina l
materials of all so rts for online use. Both
these factors are the building blocks of a
considerable presence on the web y et they do
not always lead to an equ ivalently prominen t
level of accomp lishment in execution or, more
specifically, in desig n. The following article
examines this situation, its causes, and wha t
can be done to reme dy it.
The role of content
Everything begins with content. Content is what
people are looking for. Content is what lies at the
heart of online development. Half the energy used
during the dot-com madness during the late Nine-
ties was looking for content. That the dot-com
people found so little, or rather, that so little of
what they found seemed in any way significant
helps to explain the ridicule heaped on them and
the eventual failure of their enterprises.1 and 2
Libraries on the other hand had content galore —
had an avalanche of the stuff. There were count-
less special collections packed away in institutions
all over the place. The uniqueness of these collec-
tions cried out for digitisation. At the same time,
we were hearing from our preservation brethren
that anywhere from a third to two thirds of our
print collections were at risk due to acid paper.3
Digitisation would ride in and save the day sparing
us from ugly microfilm — a welcomed develop-
ment since even before Nicholson Baker it was
clear that “nobody likes microfilm.”4
So we had the material. Equally as important,
libraries and the academic world in general had an
approach — a sensitivity -- to this material not
always present in the commercial world where
profitability obliges a concentration on the more
widely appealing aspects of a collection to the
detriment of a more comprehensive treatment. (Of
course, to a certain extent, this is business as
usual.) In a library or academic treatment on the
other hand, not merely were one or two favourites
picked out of a given collection and presented to
the public but often the entire collection went up
and the public was encouraged to pick its own
favourites. Furthermore, the manner in which this
material was presented was far more varied —
with multiple views and zooms — particularly in
cases where the visual aspect of the original was
thought significant as in a work of art or a finely
printed book. The image database at the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco or works like the
British Library’s Gutenberg Bible Project spring
readily to mind.5
Such was the enthusiasm of the times that few in
the library profession would have disagreed with
American Memory Coordinator, Carl Fleischauer
when he said: “If we have a vision, the vision
should be one of a method of mass transformation
of information to digital form.”6
Invisible institutions
The best of intentions however can sometimes go
awry. Several studies have shown that despite our
best efforts, the public does not always place a
high value on material coming from a library –
does not recognise it as its first choice for informa-
tion. This is a problem. In one recent study for
example, students would blithely pass by library
resources, go online, and jump directly into any of
the more general purpose search engines.7 The
students’ opinion of their own ability to discrimi-
nate between good and bad material was high
though in reality, as the study makes clear, this was
far from the case.8
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