New technologies, new sources, new users — or only new words?
| Pages | 191-196 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045290 |
| Date | 01 March 1994 |
| Published date | 01 March 1994 |
| Author | Nathalie Dusoulier |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
New technologies, new
sources, new users — or
only new words?
Nathalie Dusoulier
Villa
l'Oustalet,
192 Chemin du
Cannet,
06220
Vallauris,
France
Introduction
For some twenty years now, the world of information,
communications and publishing has been preparing itself for
a new era — an era of technological advances, where the
wildest dreams can come true. One of these dreams is to
obtain reliable, collated and relevant information as fast as
possible at an acceptable
cost;
or, even
better,
to
provide
it
free
to all those who need it. Although some of these dreams are
becoming reality — at least in part — the changes involved
are having a profoundly disconcerting effect on professionals
and users alike.
The traditional professions of the information world —
librarians, information scientists, publishers and computer
specialists — not only have to redefine the scope of their
work but also to adapt to new techniques and new tools. User
behaviour and demands are changing and, compounding the
problem, the economic situation of all the players involved is
getting worse.
The aim of the present article is to examine what has
actually happened over the past two
decades:
to pinpoint the
pros and cons, the realities and possibilities which new
technologies represent; and to try and see what services they
can offer
to
the most important player in the game — the user.
What happened during the last decades?
Our past has extensively influenced the way we work, the
techniques we use and our attitudes towards the user. For
centuries, the conservation, research and presentation of
information have been synonymous with
libraries,
catalogues
and
books.
Although the advent of new technologies began to
transform dunking in these
fields
from the
1970s
onwards,
the
major upheavals occurred in the 1980s and things have been
speeding up ever since. In fact, new technologies forced
themselves upon us without our either having a clear view as
to how they should be developed or knowing what the
consequences would be.
Automation, which took off in
the
USA in the 1960s and in
Europe in the 1970s, was mainly used to create
bibliographical databases and library catalogues. Generally
speaking, work was local and non-standardised, with a few
exceptions in the case of international cooperative systems.
Exchanges between countries were not easy and what was
done in one continent generally remained little known in
another. In the 1980s, the concepts of the electronic library
and the paperless society arrived on the scene. Also during
that decade, information sources began to be
internationalised.
The first full-text databases began to appear towards the
end of
the
1970s, sometimes very successfully, as in the case
of the full-text data used by newspapers like the New York
Times
or the legal texts in
LEXIS.
These systems were put on
the market not for librarians but for individual users. The
distribution of electronic information in the form of full texts
had not been around for long before actual electronic
publishing came along.
Since the beginning of thel990s, researchers have been
more and more capable of identifying and finding
information without having to leave their
desks,
and without
even knowing what the library and staff look like. This is
partly due to the increasing gap between the information
which researchers need and what libraries — lagging further
and further behind the demand — are actually able to supply.
But the greatest changes have occurred in the field of
information dissemination. The progress in telecommuni-
cations has been so extensive that data transfer on dedicated
lines,
local and international
networks,
or hooked-up national
networks gives the overall impression of a world where
information knows no frontiers.
The possibility of storing data on various media of
ever-increasing capacity and ever-decreasing cost has given
rise
to
many experiments in
the
creation of enormous stores of
texts,
images and numerical data, accessible from any place
in
the world possessing the necessary infrastructures, or by any
user with a minimum amount of equipment and enough
money.
In fact, things are more complex than they appear, and less
attractive too. If most major data processing centres are
frantically racing to keep up with the latest technology,
smaller companies or underprivileged countries are simply
watching their situation getting worse. The use of advanced
technologies, which have after all turned information into an
* Reproduced from NORDINFO-Nytt, 1993:4,
pp.
4-11, with
the permission of NORDINFO (The Nordic Council for
Scientific
Information),
Espoo,
Finland.
The Electronic Library, Vol. 12, No. 3, June 1994 191
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