Open Archives and Open Libraries

Thomas Krichel

2003-06-22

who am I?

• I was an economist.

• I was a leisure digital librarian.– NetEc 1993– RePEc 1997

• I am a geek.

• I am a visionary.– but not St. John the Baptist

Who is he?

St. IGNUicus

• A humoristic creation of Richard M. Stallman (RMS)

• RMS is the father of the free software movement– a geek– a visionary

• St. IGNUicus shows an emphasis on the moral case for free software.

moral case and business case

• Other folks in the free software movement stress the need to demonstrate the business case for free software.

• They tend to avoid the word free, because free can mean cheap and cheap can mean bad.

• They use the term "open source software".

RMS and us

• Some of us are already developing and using free software.

• I say: we librarians need to learn more from the free software movement.

• We need to make the concepts coming of free software more a part of our business.

• Let us look at a key concept: free software.

free software according to RMS• Free software comes with four freedoms

– The freedom to run the software, for any purpose

– The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs

– The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor

– The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits

free speech and free beer

• Free software does not mean $0

• The term "free" in free software should be interpreted as "freedom to do things with it".

what has this to do with us?

• Just replace free software with free information.

• Libraries are about free information.• But the analogy is not quite as simple.

– When we talk about free information, we usually mean things that we can freely read (download…). free as in: $0

– We do not usually mean free information as information we are free to do things with. Free as in freedom.

moral and business

• There is a moral case for free information.– We rely on it.

• There is a business case for free information.– We need to make our own.

we rely on the moral case

• The citizen should be informed…

• Individuals in the organization should have free access…

• This is how we justify resources given to us.

• Often, members of the community who pay get privileged access.

from moral case to business case

• To form the business case for free information, think of "free information" as "freedom to do things" rather than $0.

• Thus libraries can make a crucial business case for them as agents who transform information.

• Recall that there are whole industries out there that produces free information.

was this seminar not about open archives?

• Open archives are crucial tools for the development of libraries that transform freely available information.

• By analogy to the term "open archives" I will say that the "libraries that transform freely available information" are "open libraries". These are usually digital libraries.

what are open archives

• They are machines that may or may not store items.

• Data or metadata records about these items is being made available through a machine interface.

• One possible interface is defined OAI protocol for metadata harvesting. In the following I will be assuming that any open archive runs that protocol.

why do open archives matter

• Open archives are specifically set up to allow machine readable access to information.

• Thus presumably there is a permission to further process the information. "cogito, ergo sum" logic.

• You may think about the act to establish an open archive as an early 3rd millennium digital ritual.

open archives and open libraries

• In the early history of open archives, their main use is as metadata repositories.

• We can build a simple open library by aggregating contents from many open archives.

• But we can do more.

what do open libraries do?

• Identify records found in open archives.

• Relate identified records in open archives with each other.

• These actions require human control.

example from RePEc

• There are 300+ archives that contribute to RePEc data about publications.

• That data has author name strings.• A special open archive furnishes access

control records. These records lists author names and paper record identifiers of the papers the author wrote.

• This is classic access control, but done by the authors.

• An open archive exports the author data…

why do authors register?

• Authors perceive the registration as a way to achieve common advertising for their papers.

• Author records are used to aggregate usage logs across RePEc user services for all papers of an author.

• Open archives at the RePEc user services export usage data.

open library idea: serials data

• Serial level information is a crucial component of academic library data.

• Idea: build and maintain free serial records.

• Two ways to build:– Use volunteers and collect in a decentralized

way.– Make an expensive central collection,

disseminate well, charge $$$ for record changes later.

another open library idea: law

• Much of the legal texts are de jure free.

• De facto there are two companies who have comprehensive collections and charge a lot of money for the free information bundled with proprietary information.

• Our moral case calls for a replacement!

(it will also create jobs for us)

free legal open library

• Have all laws and cases– online (open archives)– as text (open archives)– identified (open library)

• Have citation metadata, so that legal citations can verified be while composing case data.

• Registration procedure to verify the integrity of data.

open library idea II: drugs

• Collect data on the composition of all drugs– drugs composition reported by drug

companies, using open archives– drug components documented by the

governments, using an open archive

• Open library brings the two together!

Am I crazy? • Money does not make the world go round. Ideas

do.• When RMS proposed a free replacement for

UNIX in the early 80s, most people dismissed the idea.

• Today it is reality! • Similarly, when I started to work on RePEc a

totally free and improved A&I dataset in 1993, nobody gave it a high probability to succeed.

• It will be a reality!

obstacles to open archives & open libraries

• lack of imagination• lack of entrepreneurship• inability to form alliances• user-centered thinking• document-centered thinking• technical competence required

– OAI PMH– XML and XML Schema– Unicode

• the "C" word

what I do for open libraries

• Create an open library for library science: the rclis (reckless) dataset.

• Create a supporting organization:

the open library society.

• co-workers welcome!

conclusion

• The open library is a business idea to move free information powered by libraries from the paper to the digital world.

• Open archives are a sine qua non component of the business idea.

• Open archives furnish information that we are free to further process (as opposed to consume).

http://openlib.org/home/krichel

Thank you for your attention!