Week Eleven Readings: Social Issues

This week's readings are: Social Aspects of Digital Libraries. The final report of UCLA-NSF Social Aspects of Digital Libraries Workshop
The Infinite Library, Wade Roush, Technology Review, 2005.
William Y. Arms, “A Viewpoint Analysis of the Digital Library”, D-Lib Magazine, Volume 11 Number 7/8, July/August 2005.

The first article I examined was The Infinite Library by Wade Roush. This article, written in 2005, begins by talking about the Google book digitization project and goes on to basically cover the discussion and debate that has gone in the library world on over the past few years. Is Google's project a good idea or a bad one?
Overall, I found this article to be very engaging. It explained concisely and clearly the possible ramifications of the digitization of materials and the different aspects of information access.
This article did lend me some insight into each side of the Google Book Project issue. Previously, I had been leaning towards not being very pro-Google because I do not like the idea of one corporation having control of all that information. Especially when looking at situations like Corbis. I think this article presented each side without favor, however, the information provided led me to believe that maybe Google's intentions are not that bad. On another note, this article also opened my eyes to the thought that without metadata or the proper metadata, a digitized item could be lost or useless.

The next article I examined was A Viewpoint Analysis of the Digital Library by William Y. Arms. Once again, Arms does an excellent job of clearly explaining his subject. His articles are always informative and detailed without being dry. Arms covers the three viewpoints of organizational, technical and user.
I like that Arms calls for a new thought process on evaluation. I also like that he brings a focus to the user viewpoint, something I can really relate to. I really think that progress does need to be made in digital libraries from a user viewpoint. Things need to be found and found easily, the interface should be consistent and clear, otherwise user's will be uninterested.

Lastly, Social Aspects of Digital Libraries, a report based on workshops that focused on the need for more research on the social aspects of libraries. The article started with a description of the two agreed upon definitions of digital libraries. It also discusses research framework, cycle models and research issues among other things. The group identified two problems that they found to be urgent 1". indentifying real information needs and developing digital libraries to meet those needs and 2. designing digital libraries in which it is possible to find the right information in a glut of information."
Overall, what I took from this article was an appreciation that their are people in the information science and librarianship world (among other disciplines) who are far smarter then me, brainstorming and working on the issues.

Overall, all three of these readings expressed to me that in the future, both digital libraries and physical libraries will really need to meld technology with what the user needs and wants. The user viewpoint, is quite possibly be, the most important aspect for the future.