Michael Keller, Stanford’s University Librarian, outlined important aspects of various search experiences. He noted that we still are at a point of time at which there is not a clear certain about what digital libraries might be in the future. I’ve been thinking this for some time, and felt vindicated to have the idea shared.
Some general notes:
- Accuracy and precision count.
- Metadata counts.
- GUI navigation may help.
- Great engineering rocks.
- Searching across silos is necessary.
- Searching deeply regardless of genre counts.
- Narrowing a search iteratively is important.
- Identifying genres is helpful.
- Genealology of articles is necessary.
- The citation map makes relationships clear.
- Hot links from blobs in the maps saves times.
- Taxonomic terms allow precise relationships.
- Supplying copious data about object is good.
- Taxonomic terms need to be precise.
- Searching in a document and providing context helps readers.
- Portal info and services must be current to be relevant.
- Good portals are not inexpensive, add to sense of community.
- Great portals are closely responsive to the community.
- Great portals provide real depth of info and services.
- Some good portals are merely guides.
- Better portals have reciprocal links.
- Alerting and recommending services are best invoked by readers.
See Ockham alerting service, Aquifer project, Object Reuse and Exchange.
We need:
- An effective federated search engine that covers our opacs, the web, and the access controlled deep web, OR
- A fully realized semantic web.
New roles for cybrarians:
- What do librarians do when there are no longer books in a library?
- Happening in law and engineering!
- Editors, publishers
- IP managers
- Select and care for digital objects
- Intellectual access specialists
- Intellectual support, mediation
See: SEQ2 Library Vision: The Information Collaboratory.
Need to get to a point where virtual objects interact with each other.
