Wide enough for libraries?
The library function in a web-based world

Libraries are cultural institutions with a technological basis. Libraries collect, store, organize and make available written documents. Documents are public goods: my reading does not compete with your reading of the same book - except just before exams. The general role of libraries, in the social division of labour, is to increase the value of documents by multiplying access. The economic rationality is obvious: libraries facilitate the widest possible use and reuse of humanity`s written record.

Libraries depend on the technology of writing. Before Gutenberg, documents were hand-written. After Gutenberg, they were printed. Today they are published on the web. This paper will discuss the consequences of the third technology - writing on the web - for the library as an institution, for librarians as a profession, and for librarianship as a subject.

Libraries as we know them belong to the industrial age. From the very beginning printed books were standardized, mass-produced objects. In many ways print was an industrial revolution - prefiguring the industrial mass-production of the 19th and 20th century. In the richer part of the world, the technical tools of librarianship - catalogues, bibliographies, indexes - are generally digitalized. But the documents themselves remain on paper. Librarians are still collectors and distributors of paper objects.

This is likely to change. Books and periodicals on paper will hardly disappear. Print is a cheap, flexible and sophisticated technology for storing and distributing information. It ought to be, since it builds on more than 500 years of trial, error, and innovation. But the potential of the web is even greater. Web publishing is cheaper, even more flexible, and allows forms of "reading" - or interaction with the text - that go far beyond the possibilities of paper.

The marginal production cost of a printed book is typically less than one euro. The marginal cost of an additional reader on the web is close to zero. Books are compact, durable, moveable objects. But the web is a dance of electrons - so all web documents will be available everywhere. Print can include pictures as well as words. The web adds sound, movement, and interactivity.

In the longer run, say twenty or thirty years, web-based documents will play a greater role in our lives than documents on paper. In our personal histories, the transition may seem slow. But in a larger historical perspective, it is exceptionally quick. The printing press (which moved fast) needed almost 40 years to spread from Mainz in Germany (1450) to the corners of Western Europe: Stockholm, Copenhagen, Lisbon, Vienna. (Eisenstein, 1993, p. 16-17).

Readerships developed much more slowly. It took 450 years before most European adults were able to read a newspaper on their own. The WWW was released in 1991 - and had more than 600 million users 12 years later (WWW). This speed of reception is unique: not only faster than books, but faster than phones, radios and TVs. As the technology develops, moreover, phone, radio and TV gravitate towards the web. Internet is more than a new and dynamic medium. Internet represents the convergence of all electronic media towards a single technological platform.

Books and journals will not vanish. Libraries are likely to operate in mixed-media environments for a long time. But their relative importance will decline. Here I will concentrate on the pure case: library services in a strictly virtual setting. In other words: if a library should define itself through the web - providing virtual access to virtual documents - what could such a library offer? Who would need it - and why? Would it be able to survive? And under what conditions?

In other words: will the future WWW be wide enough for libraries?

Complete paper

References

Eisenstein, Elisabeth L. The printing revolution in early modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 (1983).

The author

Tord Høivik, b. 1942, teaches management subjects, web design and social science methods at Oslo University College. He has published books and articles on methodology, reference work, peace research and future studies. More at brief curriculum vitae.