Guide to the professional literature

Articles about libraries and information management in Asia and the Pacific region are not plentiful in the mainstream literature. This column is designed to alert you to some of the most interesting journal literature specific to the region, as well as more general articles relevant to information professionals working in Asia and the Pacific.

Bilal, D., Barry, J. and Penniman,W.D. (1999), "A balancing act", Library Journal, Vol. 124 No. 6, pp. 45-54.

This annual analysis of the automated systems marketplace views 1998 as a year of partnerships, and the authors describe ways in which vendors and customers are working together to address such problems as planning for new interfaces while living with old closed systems, checking for Y2K readiness and creating Web-based services. The review presents profiles of 27 vendors, and the tables present data on microcomputer system sales, server-based system sales, academic, school and public library system sales, etc.

Coffman, S. (1999), "Building earth's largest library: driving into the future", Searcher, Vol. 7 No. 3, March. http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/mar/coffman.htm

In this article Coffman offers a vision of a library catalogue system that is accessible, convenient and extremely large. Using Amazon.com as a model, Coffman asks why libraries are not forming consortia to do something similar, but more professionally.

Coffman, S. (1999), "Reference as others do it", American Libraries, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 54-6.

Coffman investigates customer call centres for what we may be able to learn about providing library reference service. These centres tend to have centralized staffing, interactive voice response systems, automated call distribution, question analysis techniques,sophisticated software support, and training and monitoring. Despite the differences between these centres and library reference services, there are lessons to be learned from this comparison. Coffman discusses some of these lessons and suggests that we use these to assess how reference service is provided in libraries.

Ellis, S. (Ed.) (1998), "A special theme: digital libraries", Library HiTech, Vol. 16 No. 3/4, pp. 12-62.

Five of the seven papers in this collection deal with electronic text centres. Taken together, the articles offer a useful overview of several electronic text centre projects.

Fourie, I. (1999), "Should we take disintermediation seriously?", The Electronic Library, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 9-16. http://www.learned.co.uk/tel/focus1.asp

Fourie argues that end-user empowerment does not necessarily imply disintermediation or "the finding of information by an end-user without the need for a third party." He discusses the implications of disintermediation on the future of information specialists and offers some valuable points for information specialists to consider in keeping their skills effective and relevant.

Garman, N. (Ed.) (1999), "Special search engine section", Online, Vol. 23 No. 3. Miller, K. (Ed.) (1999),"Electronic searching tools and methods in flux", Computers in Libraries,Vol. 19 No. 5. http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/may/cilmag.htm

While these two journal issues have slightly different focuses, both deal with searching from research and applied perspectives. In Online the emphasis is on understanding how search engines operate for the benefit of both searchers and Web masters, and in Computers in Libraries the discussion focuses on search strategies for librarians.

Hegener, M. (1999), "The Internet,satellites, and human rights", On the Internet,Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 20-29,40. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/publications/oti/interim.html

This paper focuses on the possible impact of the Internet on global human rights. What may happen is far from clear, but the change will result from a complex interplay of technical,political, economic and human issues. Hegener understands these issues and does not overlook their complexity in order to present his conclusion that the Internet is likely to diminish the ability of oppressors to sustain their control.

Huwe, T.K. (1999), "New search tools for multidisciplinary digital libraries", Online, Vol. 23 No. 2,pp. 67-74. http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag/OL1999/huwe3.html

Huwe regards the migration of many online services to the Web environment as a stimulus for the creation of better search utilities which can ease the task of multidisciplinary searches. He argues that "the current challenge is to develop new search tools that deliver multidisciplinary results, but that also preserve the metadata and finding aids of the discrete databases." The tools highlighted include the KnowledgeCite Library by Silverplatter Information http://www.silverplatter.com/KC/kcintro.html,the University of California at San Diego's Database Advisor http://scilib.ucsd.edu/Proj/dba/,Ameritech's Pharos system for the California State University System http://uias.calstate.edu, and Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com/

Kiernan, V. (1999), "An ambitious plan to sell electronic books: university librarians and press officials see promise and possible pitfalls in the concept", Chronicle of Higher Education,Vol. 65 No. 32, p. A27.

A US firm is embarking on a venture to sell electronic books to university libraries, and some university presses believe this programme is "the most promising experiment with e-books yet." The product is called netLibrary http://www.netlibrary.comand already has 2,000 titles on its list.

McKay, S.C. (1999), "Accessing electronic journals", Database, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 17-23. http://www.onlineinc.com/database/DB1999/mckay4.html

This is a useful article for those faced with decision making about electronic journals and their access. In particular McKay makes sound points on reporting considerations and provides a brief profile of services from major subscription agencies. She also predicts that e-journals will eventually be ordered through a single subscription agent,much as print journals are ordered at present.

Markup Languages (1999), No. 1, http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=10996621

The first and second issues of this new MIT journal demonstrate a very useful resource for anyone managing information which uses SGML, XML, or may be deployed on the Web. This journal has articles from international authors, and aims at an intermediate to advanced reader. There are several articles per issue, as well as book and article reviews. Articles range from the theoretical to the practical, and there are excellent illustrations.

Ober, J. (1999), "The california digital library", D-Lib Magazine, March. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march99/03ober.html

The California Digital Library, an initiative of the University of California, has received minimal coverage in the literature until now. This paper provides considerable information on the project, as well as several key URLs for learning more.

Puglia, S. (1999), "Creating permanent and durable information: physical media and storage standards", CRM: Cultural Resource Management, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 25-27. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/crm/archive/22-2/22-02-10.pdf

This collection of preservation standards, media and guidelines is a useful reference to the key materials regarding the current preservation state-of-the-art. Life expectancy as applied to preservation media is defined; environmental requirements for long-term storage are noted; and digitization guidelines are described. This is essentially a reference resource dense with data.

Seadle, M. (1998), "The raw and the cooked among librarians", Library HiTech, Vol. 16 No. 3/4, pp. 7-11.

This special issue on digital libraries is built around organizational themes which dominate the electronic text and information technology centre profiles in the collection.

Stokes, J.R. (1999), "Imaging pictorial collections at the Library of Congress", RLG DigiNews, Vol. 3 No. 2, 15 April. http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-2.html

The Library of Congress is one of the few institutions with the resources to outsource the digitization of 250,000 images. Judging from the accompanying photographs, a phenomenal amount of work was accomplished in minimal space. What is most fascinating is the decisions that were made and the reasons for them.

Stubbs, W. and Wettstein, E.(1999), "US GPO CD-ROMS: blessing or curse?", Journal of Government Information, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 131-63.

The move in the USA towards a more electronic Depository Library System has resulted in an overwhelming influx of Government Printing Office CD-ROMs. This study sheds light on what librarians found useful, why some discs have been avoided, and if and when the Web was preferred. Particular attention is paid to the advantages and disadvantages of the many varieties of enabling software required to run these discs.

Tyckoson, D.A. (1999), "What's right with reference", American Libraries, Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 57-63.

Tyckoson revisits the seminal article on modern library reference service by Bill Miller, "What's wrong with reference: coping with success and failure at the reference desk" (American Libraries, May 1984, pp. 303-306; 321-322). Tyckoson notes that the problems remain, and in fact may be more apt now than in the past. He also critically assesses the various attempts to solve these problems in recent years, which he asserts have largely failed. After running through each attempted reform and why it has failed, he concludes that reference service is not a failure, but rather it is merely not supported to an appropriate level.

Vogt-O'Connor, D. (1999), "Is the record of the twentieth century at risk?", CRM: Cultural Resource Management,Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 21-4. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/crm/archive/22-2/22-02-9.pdf

This is an excellent description of the digital preservation problem. Vogt-O'Connor has thoroughly outlined the challenges facing anyone with digital material to be preserved. The works cited are useful and very up-to-date.

Weibel, S. (1999), "The state of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, April 1999." D-Lib Magazine, Vol. 5 No. 4. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april99/04weibel.html

The effort to define a basic set of metadata elements for Internet resource discovery has been under way for some time. In this report the leader of the Dublin Core effort describes the current state of affairs and identifies six areas where participants are currently focusing their efforts: formalization of a process for the Dublin Core,standardization, HTML encoding, qualification mechanisms, the role of RDF, and relationships with other metadata models.