ASU Research E-Magazine: Robo Reference: From Dewey Decimal to Digital

Woe the poor librarian in the information age. Her Dewey Decimal system just got digitized. Libraries, like nearly every other entity, are being changed by technology. First there was microfiche. Then came electronic backroom tools. And, finally, the on-line title search.

Throughout this march of technological refitting, libraries have primarily remained repositories for printed things. They are places where librarians point you toward periodicals that you can pick up to ponder. But in the Library of 2000, ‘point and click’ will most likely outnumber ‘pick and ponder’ by huge degrees. This is true especially among those who view the Internet as the ultimate global electronic reference tool.

“Books are ‘mark it and park it’ in library parlance,” explains Sherrie Schmidt, dean of libraries at ASU. “Their content and location rarely change, which make them relatively easy for us to track. But, people can change website data and location almost on a whim.”

For many people, libraries are symbols of shelter and sentiment, especially to those who enjoy the luxury of lingering while they learn. But in other ways, even modern libraries are somewhat outdated. After all, books must be purchased and maintained in sufficient quantities by each individual facility. The same is true with periodicals, which also must be saved on microfiche.

Printed materials are costly, time-intensive to reshelve, and require a great deal of storage space. Then there is that other pesky problem: Users must physically go to the library when it is open to get things done.

Contrast that with a robo-reference facility.

“Instead of acquiring most new books, we’ll be licensing access to those ‘books’,” Schmidt says. Once a book is digitized and made available on one server, it can be accessed by nearly everyone from anywhere, anytime.

“Likewise,” she says, “libraries can share the enormous costs of digitizing current books, saying, ‘I’ll do six, and you do six’.”

Accordingly, Schmidt predicts something akin to a “virtual university” in future years. She already sees teachers blending sections from several CD-ROMs and textbooks, ASU videos, external videos, and data from numerous websites to create a “richer course format.” Imagine the options that become possible once an overwhelming majority of music, photos, journals, newspapers, books, and videos are available on-line.

“I see people building the perfect degree course by course from all the best places,” she says. French at the Sorbonne. Technology from MIT. Anthropology and geology from ASU. Business from Wharton. All without necessarily having to “leave” one’s host university.

The world’s best teachers, leaders, artists, and engineers can all be “live” on-line. “There will be so many opportunities,” she says. “We won’t be limited by geography or time.”

Of course, a robo-reference world would create other issues. Think how students at MIT and the Sorbonne would feel if they shared classes with enrollees at a community college in Guam. Problems: Which price should such enrollees pay? For which university does that professor work?

Specific courses could also be self-customized. For example, say your marketing professor is an expert on distribution chains, but he’s not as strong in market research or pricing policies. Should he or she pick the best available “experts” from your host college for those topics? Or should he hand-pick an international retail marketing expert from Singapore, a British micro-economics professor, or perhaps even allow each student to computer-select the expert who best fulfills his or her own needs?

Of course, there is always the problem of ever-evolving technology.

The music industry has already “morphed” through the phonograph, 78s, 45s, reel-to-reels, 8-tracks, cassettes, and compact discs—each rendering its predecessors obsolete.

The robo-reference world would face similar drawbacks, especially if MIT and ASU were operating in the information technology format equivalent of compact disks, while the Sorbonne used cassettes, and Guam still used reel-to-reel.

“Libraries must still help organize information and help guide people to that information in the appropriate format,” Schmidt says. “The good news is that if a book disintegrates, we don’t lose its intellectual content, just the artifact.” —Lindsey Michaels