Electronic libraries and electronic librarians: Who does what in a national electronic community

摘要

This talk will have two parts: First, I'm going to describe very briefly what this new kind of library technology is like through a discussion of the Worm Community System (WCS), why it is going to be very important, and why it will involve a lot of money. What I want to emphasize at the startis that while WCS may seem like an esoteric research project, in fact it isone of the flagship information projects funded by the National ScienceFoundation. In addition, the National Information Infrastructure Act loomsin the immediate future, authorizing an enormous amount of money to bespent in the development of digital libraries in specialized areas. Digital librarieswill require information systems like WCS. This project has become a nationalmodel of this new kind of information system, but its primary content is reallyjust a special collection, in the same sense you already know. It is an importantnational effort, but there will be lots of other efforts like this in many differentsubject areas.Second, I'm going to discuss in more detail what kinds of people are requiredto do this kind of activity. The roles range from traditional librarians all theway to systems architects. Similarly, the roles range from those that involveno computer knowledge at all to those that involve very intensive computing.My expectation is that people who call themselves "librarians" in the foreseeablefuture will actually span this entire range, even though now they are significantlyskewed towards the traditional end.