Introduction
The Electronic
Library - an escape from the ivory tower?
Archiving: Who pays the piper ... and why
Future-proofing - a form of hubris?
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes shall
outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these
contents
Than unswept stone, beswept by sluttish time.
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare wrote over a hundred years after the advent of printing yet, in common with other writers, he frequently expressed a sense of wonder - and even ironic enjoyment - at the thought that the fragile paper that contained his verse would outlast stone and marble. Today, standing in a comparatively similar position at the dawn of the electronic age, there is something of the same sense of wonder - and ironic enjoyment too. A form of this is seen in the works of academic commentators such as Bolter and in many of the multifarious web-sites, whether academic or simple home pages. It is discussed in the media, in specialized magazines (like MAC User, PC World and Wired), and on television, in broadsheet and tabloid newspapers.
William J. Mitchell sums up this excitement with regard to libraries in his book City of Bits:
But are we so lost in our sense of wonder that we are not asking ourselves some very real and significant questions about the whole concept of electronic media, and, in particular, about electronic libraries? Robin Alston's comment is timely, if limited. In order to address the issues that it raises, we must consider the present form of libraries, and what the advent of cyberspace offers in the way of change. But it is also seminal to consider to what extent these changes are necessary, and to what extent they might be ill-advised.
The Electronic Library - an escape from the ivory tower?
With all the discussion about the existence of libraries in cyberspace, it is frequently overlooked that libraries - particularly academic libraries - have long made use of technology. In this way, perhaps, Robin Alston's comment is a little weak. Libraries were storing information on microfiche as soon as it became widely available; photocopies were also used - as long as it was allowable within copyright laws. Therefore to speak of 'libraries as we know them' is self-defeating. Libraries are not constant. The hallowed halls of Duke Humfrey's have long been very different from the libraries of modern university institutions in the United states; both have little in common with the municipal libraries that grew out of working men's clubs in nineteenth century urban England or the mobile library vans that travel rural Britain today. Yet all are libraries, and all are subject to change.
However, it would be idle to pretend that the advent of electronic technology, widely available, has not had an impact. The advent of the possibilities of cyberspace have, in its turn, been seized upon enthusiastically by librarians - whether relatively independent initiatives, such as Project Gutenberg , or those associated with major institutions, such as the American Library of Congress or the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
So what, then, are these possibilities?
Firstly, the electronic archiving of texts means that the retention of vulnerable manuscripts is far easier. No longer, it is believed, will works be lost because of the disintegration over time. Equally importantly, rare materials, once electronically archived, can become more widely available. An example of the potential this has can be seen in the British Library Electronic Beowulf Project . This project has taken the famous Anglo-Saxon epic which was preserved only from a single manuscript that was itself badly damaged by fire in 1731. Clearly such a work cannot be made freely available for viewing, even by academics. The electronic archiving has made an important advance, as the Project points out:
These new insights were in part offered by the possibility of fibre-optic readings of hidden letters and ultra-violet readings of erased text from the eleventh century manuscript.
The retention of vulnerable texts is not the only function of electronic libraries, however, and, in Robin Alston's view, it is the second function that is perhaps most significant. For it is the use of cyberspace - more explicitly the Internet - that offers the greatest potential for changing libraries.
The most apparent and fundamental change is that cyberspace abolishes the geographical limitations of libraries - both internal and external. The storage facilities required no longer need miles of corridors, served by weary human beings, or even miniature railways. "Stacks" in that sense could become a thing of the past, to be replaced by compressed computer storage. From the readers' point of view, no longer will scholars have to travel the globe searching for an elusive text, or an even more obscure reference. Instead she or he might well be able to access the necessary material from her or his desktop computer.
It is possible that this could lead to a democratization of information. Some commentators have argued that the materials in libraries will no longer be the preserve of those who have the time and or the money to access it - instead anyone can download information that interests them. Yet this is rather wishful thinking. The Information Superhighway is not travelled by everyone - it is primarily First World and Pacific Rim countries that can use this as a resource. Already it is apparent that material dealing with, say, Malawi, is accessed more frequently by Western scholars studying the country than it is by Malawians.
In addition, access to many electronic libraries is limited even within the web community. The Oxford University Celtic Manuscripts Project is available to authorized users only, and this is true of a significant number of other applications too. For example, the resources of the Database Network of the Bodleian library "are available only to Staff and Members of Oxford University from within Oxford". The University of Virginia Archive does offer some texts for non-University members, although the choice is constrained by commercial considerations, as the university itself freely admits. The commercial considerations in the case of the University of Virginia relate more to problems involving copyright, but commercial considerations come into play even when there is no copyright issue involved. This has to do with the sheer volume of work that could be archived electronically, and this is surely where the role of electronic libraries is hotly debated.
Firstly, there is a need for co-operation. To see this, we can take a standard text, already archived in SGML by the University of Virginia - Great Expectations by Charles Dickens . Out of copyright, this is freely available to non-UVa users, and anyone who wishes can browse the text or even download it. This availability means that no other library need archive the material in the same way if a programme of mutual co-operation is established. Thus, by sharing information, texts can, within limitations, become freely available, and no one university needs to employ a host of SGML processors uploading the same texts. However, it is clear that archiving a vast array of texts in itself will pose two vital questions.
Archiving: Who pays the piper ... and why
The first problem with archiving so much material has more frequently been addressed, and this is the commercial argument once again. Here, however, we can move away from considerations of copyright. Even among material freely available for archiving, that which is more likely to have a commercial application is the more likely to be archived. Thus, if we look again at the Bodleian, a major project is underway to archive the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera . This collection deals primarily with transport and, for that reason, the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota is sponsoring the site. This is not to disparage per se what is potentially a worthy collaboration. It is true, on the other hand, that the Bodleian holds many other such collections and, from a different perspective than the purely commercial, it may be that other such collections are as important if not more important. A few years ago, for example, the Bodleian made strenuous financial efforts to purchase a unique and valuable archive - the Opie Collection. This was collected over a number of years by Peter and Iona Opie and focuses on children's literature and language - a field to which they have made significant academic contributions . Yet this important Collection is not available on the Internet, or even referred to by the on-line Bodley. Will it need sponsorship by Toys'R'Us before this archive too becomes available?
Yet financial considerations have always played a part in selecting not only what should be archived, but what should be written in the first place, and certainly in selecting what should be published. As Dr. Johnson said, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." It is perhaps fruitful if we also look at the consideration of the purpose of archiving and our cultural perceptions of this, which have clearly been radically altered by post modernism.
Indeed, to some extent Robin Alston's comments about the preservation of libraries "as we know them" have already become redundant. Even if we had never had the advent of cyberspace, the advent of the structuralist and post structuralist movements - indeed the whole influence of post modernism - has been to change our perceptions of what constitutes a text. Thus the archiving of "so-called ephemera" probably has as high a value in our culture as the archiving of the complete canon of Shakespeare, Dickens and all the other so-called DWEMs whose collected opus was, until twenty years ago, seen as the basis of Western culture. Let us take an example of this. For many years, it was known that the Greek poet Hesiod wrote many more poems than were still extant. Scholars have long speculated on the content of these missing works. Yet, in recent times, excavations at Herculaneum on the outskirts of Naples, have uncovered a library that possessed, among other treasures, previously unknown works by Hesiod. This was clearly a very important find. Yet, in our culture, the discovery of a Roman matron's shopping list would have equal - and possible even greater - significance, in revealing details of the Roman diet and lifestyle. However, only a hundred years ago, our culture was so radically different that the uncovering of the Hesiod poems would have been seen as far more significant; the Roman matron's shopping list comparatively unimportant.
This is not to say that our cultural values are wrong, or that the Victorian values were. It simply stresses that attitudes to these matters can change radically - and in a comparatively short period of time. In five hundred years' time, should we be successful in our future-proofing of our archive material, our descendants might vigorously applaud the culture mores that led us to place the archiving of the John Johnson Collection over the Opie Collection; they may also hold up their collective hands in horror at our frivolity, or our blindness to what was/is truly important. But what is truly important? Even if we were financially and physically able to archive everything - as some would have us do - that in itself would be a choice, and future scholars might then curse us for failing to spot the jewels and just handing them the whole gutter to search. There can be no objective judgment. Guided by our cultural constructs, not forgetting commercial considerations, we can only make subjective, imperfect choices.
Future-proofing - a form of hubris?
This idea that we are really making subjective judgements with regard to our selection of archived material brings up another important point. Robin Alston has pointed out that electronic libraries are a radical change; that we cannot expect our libraries to survive in their current form unless we reject cyberspace altogether. Throughout this essay I have really argued against this, in suggesting that electronic libraries can offer valuable expansions or perhaps extensions to current libraries. But there are certainly arguments to be advanced against rushing too whole-heartedly into cyberspace, and an important one relates to the issue of future-proofing.
At the moment, one of the main points made by proponents of the electronic library concept is that it offers the chance to future-proof archived material. So far, concerns about future-proofing have focused on issues such as formats and platforms. "Will SGML become a Betamax?" seems to be the primary worry. Otherwise, there seems to be great confidence over the stability of cyberspace as opposed to that offered by conventional libraries. Commentators may point, as William J. Mitchell does , to the vulnerability of libraries, symbolized by the destruction of that Wonder of the Ancient World, the library at Alexandria. However, while libraries are subject to change and decay as much as any other form of institution, there is no guarantee that cyberspace will, ultimately, offer any better protection. During the nineteen eighties, everyone talked of the potential of nuclear weapons to emit an electro-magnetic pulse that would paralyse all electro-magnetic associated instruments. Not only would computers go down, but even all cars with electric starters would grind to a halt. The end of the Cold War has put nuclear fears on hold for the time being, but is it too fanciful to suggest that cyberspace might not be the future-proofed environment that is popularly imagined? Is it not possible that, in our embrace of the electronic age, we are ignoring a fundamental truth?
Perhaps Shelley has expressed it best:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two
vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the
sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip,
and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that
mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.