First in foremost, I can say that this assignment made me tricky, actually it really took time for me to do this assignment because at first I am so confused about it into the extent that I can’t decide what kind of information environment that I’m going to choose and of course, because I’ve been busy also in a past few days for my other projects on the other subjects. But now as I have my time already to do it and as I have kept on searching on the net about it, I already understood. It made me realized that this Information Environment is a term that is used to develop and provide services which enable people to find and manage information efficiently and effectively in their learning, teaching or research. Moreover, to understand it well and to know more about Information Environment, I will talk about it as it follows. First, I will define the ‘Information’ alone.
Information as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, and representation. The information resources which people need are very varied - books, journals, research papers, teaching resources, videos, maps and more - and while they might be in any format they are increasingly digital. And now, there is a critical mass of digital information resources that can be used to support researchers, learners, teachers and administrators in their work and study. The production of information is on the increase and ways to deal with this effectively are required. There is the need to ensure that quality information isn't lost amongst the masses of digital data created everyday. If we can continue to improve the management, interrogation and serving of 'quality' information, there is huge potential to enhance knowledge creation across learning and research communities.
However, when we talk about also the Information Environment, it is the one that helps to provide convenient access to resources for research and learning through the use of resource discovery and resource management tools and the development of better services and practice. The Information Environment aims to allow discovery, access and use of resources for research and learning irrespective of their location. And as what I have read on the definition that my classmates wrote about it that an information environment could be anywhere, as long as it is a place or set of networks and services that support publishing and use of information and learning resources, that’s what made me thought of the Digital Library as my choice in information environment.
The Digital Library
The information technology explosion and its applications in every aspect of life have changed the entire scenario of the present world. The IT revolution and information explosion has led to the emergence of electronic information era. These days, the users are not satisfied with the printed available material, they require that printed information be supplemented with more dynamic multimedia documents. Thus digital libraries are becoming an important element in the era of information technology and it seems that the digital library concept should be considered a dynamic and essential component of an organization/institute.
To keep pace in the rapidly changing environment, infrastructure and service facilities should be made available according to the needs so as to compete and survive in the era of competitiveness. Major changes in the information environment have transformed the role of librarians into those of information managers.
In ancient days, the libraries were considered as storehouse of books and other reading material whereas the librarians were considered merely as the custodian of these documents. With the passage of time and rapid advancements in electronic information technology, the new means of communication have altered the way in which information is handled, stored and exchanged across the world. These advancements have transformed libraries from a mere static storehouse of documents to a dynamic powerhouse of information, serving all professional and non professionals in utilizing useful and need based collection of documents. The medium of information storage has changed from clay tablets, palm leaves, papyrus to papers and now to electronic and optical media. This has brought a revolutionary change in the way libraries adapt and function, shifting from print to electronic dissemination centre. All these desired the library professionals to switch over from traditional library system to digital library concept.
Digital Libraries are the electronic counterparts of traditional paper libraries, where the digital medium opens new opportunities, especially in the area of improved access support, increased content availability, powerful content interlinking, and reduced costs, but also imposes new challenges like long-term preservation in the context of fast changing storage technologies. Further important challenges are issues of copyright and digital rights management and the cost of digitization for not digitally-born content.
Various definitions for Digital Libraries exist. These can be summarized as follows: A Digital Library is an information system targeted towards a specific community, where content from different sources is collected and managed, content is structured and enriched with metadata, and a set of services is offered that makes the content available to a user community via a communication network, typically the Internet. The term Digital Library may be also used to describe any of the following:
- Collection of electronic journals and books
- On-line educational portal
- Repository of multimedia files
- Archives of information created from local knowledge
- Electronic version of libraries
Multimedia Libraries are also Digital Libraries, where the managed content is not restricted to the usually mainly textual documents. Such libraries contain, next to the “textual” contents, media types like music, videos, images, maps, and mixtures of different content types (multimedia objects) as they are, for example used in e-Learning or in the documentation of history. Multimedia libraries may also contain content types that were not supported in traditional libraries at all like 3D objects, executable software (e.g. computer games) or callable services. One of the main challenges for a multimedia library is to provide effective access to these types of context (based on adequate indexing) and to provide support for the “real-time” integration of different content types. Some challenges of multimedia libraries are closely related to those of museums and archives that make multimedia representations of their artifacts available online.
A Digital Library mediates between the information needs of its user community and the globally available content. Contributions in four task areas are essential for supporting this mediation:
• Content preselection: The library selects high-quality content potentially relevant for the members of its user community;
• Content structuring: The library structures the content according to the predominant domain understanding of its user community;
• Content enrichment: The library enriches content objects with descriptive and value-adding metadata provided by domain experts, librarians, and community members;
• Library services: Support for content retrieval, access, annotation, etc. enable the identification of relevant material and facilitate access of content and its use by community members as a group or as individuals;
These contributions allow a Digital Library to reduce the gap that exists between the wide variety and large amount of globally available content and specific information needs of individuals and small group within its community. Ideally, many of these contributions should be achieved without or with little human inference. However, for technological reasons, but also for reasons of quality control and trust, human involvement and especially involvement of representatives from the library now and in the future will be essential for these tasks.
The Objectives of Digital Library
The primary objectives of Digital Library include:
• To collect, store, organize and access information in digital form.
• To meet the requirements of patrons by providing better services.
• To provide personalized and retrospective services in an efficient way.
• To have large digitized database accessible to multiple users at the same time.
• To save time of library staff by avoiding routine jobs.
• To provide a coherent view of all information in any format.
• To serve widely dispersed communities throughout the network.
• To minimize massive storage and space problems of large libraries.
• To reduce cost involved in various library activities.
Digital library is a combination of traditional and media collections, so they encompass both paper and electronic materials. The three main features of digital library are the storage of information in digital form, usage of communication networks, and copying by either downloading or on-line/ offline printing from a master file.
The Digital Information Users
The users of digitized information may be broadly divided into four groups as given below:
(i) Those who have started using latest technology and digitized information.
(ii) Those who have been using these technologies and digitized information and are expanding it rapidly.
(iii) Those who have the fear of using new technologies for information.
(iv) Those who are intermixed between the above three groups but have no training to use the technologies for accessing global information.
The Components of Digital Library:
The basic components that are required for digital library are:
• Servers for database storage.
• Adequate number of PCs connected in a LAN.
• Local databases in machine readable form, CD-ROMs
• RDBMS that supports variety of digital formats.
• Search engines to index and provide access to resources.
• Electronic document management functions that will aid in overall management of digital resources.
• Well trained manpower.
The Advantages of Digital Library
• Universally accessible.
• Easy access to electronic resources.
• Optimizing use of IT environment.
• Knowledge content itself will be ubiquitous and inexpensive.
• Ability to deal with large datasets.
• Support wider range of materials.
• Access to latest information.
• No storage problems.
• Faster information retrieval.
• Increase in end users.
Barriers/ Hurdles/ Problems in Digital Library
• The cost involved in the creation and maintenance of digital library environment is high.
• Attitude of library professionals.
• IPR is not being given due importance.
• Preservation of electronic information.
• Pricing in the digital environment is going to be complex..
• Lack of indigenous, efficient and effective library software.
• Lack of information policy and information culture.
The Performing Role in Digital Library
So, for the role that I chose for this kind of Information Environment which is the Digital Library, I preferred to be an Information Manager because being an IT student and an IT professional someday and also as I belong in the field of Information Technology, I want to contribute my knowledge and skills in providing and disseminate a precise information regarding on the latest trends that we have right now in our industry and to keep pace with the latest developments that are taking place due to advancement of technologies so that many of the information seekers can benefit, use and learn from it. But, it is not possible for the information manager to go to library schools however, training can be arranged for them to have a bird’s eye view about the developments that are taking place.
In addition, here are some trends on the digital libraries:
• A first trend in Digital Library technology is a more decentralized, service-oriented approach for Digital Library architectures. The overall goal here is to systematically make Digital Library functionality available to a broader audience, reduce the cost of entry for this technology, to improve flexibility and adaptability and to foster shared and synergetic use of content, metadata, services and other resources. In this context current technological developments like Grid Computing, Web and Grid Services and the Peer-to-Peer computing paradigm are exploited. The project DILIGENT (EU IST-004260), for example, works on building a Grid-based Digital Library infrastructure that enables the on-demand creation of tailored Digital Libraries, so called Virtual Digital Libraries on top of the generic infrastructure. In general, Digital Libraries migrate from centralized systems to dynamic federations of services.
• A second trend is the offering of additional services beyond search and collection management that reflects a broadened understanding of the role of a Digital Library within a community. This includes community services that support community formation, awareness of a community for trends in the domain and the role of individual within the community as well as services for fostering collaboration in the community. In addition, these are also services that enable community members to take a more active part in content provision and annotation. In summary, the idea is to support the collaborative information processes of the community in a more comprehensive and participative way, migrating from the information access support provided by Digital Libraries to the idea of tailored virtual information and knowledge environments. For research libraries this trend is reflected by current research activities in the area of e-Science.
• A third trend in Digital Libraries is the use of Semantic Web technology for intelligent search services. This includes semantic annotation of content objects based on domain ontologies, the use of concepts and ontological knowledge instead of strings in search, and concept-based clustering of query results. Another area of research and development in intelligent search support is to more systematically take context into account. On the one hand, this refers to user context. More comprehensive, ontology-based models of the user and his current situation (including user tasks and relationships a user is involved in) are used to go beyond existing personalization approach. On the other hand the context of an information object can be used to improve retrieval results like, for example, the information a content object is linked with or the annotations about a content object.
Furthermore, Information Manager has to take into consideration the following aspects before collecting information for the end product, which they have to offer:
• It must be according to needs of its users.
• It must be equipped with powerful, easy to use, intelligent search engines.
• It must have attractive user interface.
• It must be reasonably priced.
• It must allow access from, and delivery to the users’ workstation.
The Information Manager has also to keep in mind the following points to keep pace with the modern trends, if they want to survive:
• Continuous updating
• Developing strong professional teams in their respective libraries.
• Arranging continuous education and training programs for users and staff.
• Accept the challenges being imposed due to advancement of technology.
• Arrange lectures / training programs from time to time.
Information managers are only competent enough to provide efficient and intelligent access to the world’s information sources to its novice users. The knowledge and experience of libraries can be helpful in directing users to get an easy access to relevant information on the digital library network.
On the other way, the other information environment that I also chose was the Information science which is the interdisciplinary academic field that deals with the generation, collection, organization, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of recorded knowledge. Information Science combines elements of librarianship with ideas and technologies from many other fields, including social sciences, computer science, mathematics, electrical engineering, linguistics, management, neuroscience, and information systems theory. Within the field of information science, information may be defined as the knowledge contained in the human brain and in all electronic and written records. Information science is the scientific study of that information: how it is created, transmitted, encoded, transformed, retrieved, measured, used, and valued.
The role that I also like is being the Information scientist who’s the one will analyze the many and various phenomena that affect any aspect of information. Its interest is studying such questions as the following: What is the effect of information on individuals and groups when it is presented in various formats? How do publication dates, frequency of citation, productivity and prominence of authors affect the relevance of literature on a given subject? (This field of study is known as bibliometrics.) How do humans and computers interact? What is the reliability of retrieving information from online databases and the Internet?
For the information scientist, the library is only one of several sites for information storage and usage. Information scientists may study information stored in archives, switching centers (systems that establish connections between electronic communications, such as e-mail), or institutions such as schools and businesses. Information scientists work in such places as medical centers, computing companies, university and corporate research institutes, and indexing companies. They are concerned with a wide range of activities, from creation of computer file structures to experimental tests of interactive communication between computers and humans.
Challenges in performing the role
The digital library concept is growing at a fast pace. Emerging technology of digital libraries is an offshoot of information revolution which can drastically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of management of physical and financial resources of libraries. The challenge for information managers is to equip themselves with the capabilities to link with global trends for the ultimate benefit of information seekers. The arrangements for managing and supporting information technology will take different shapes depending upon the size of its parent institution, the institution’s existing computing and communication resources and the capabilities of the library’s management and staff. The information providers have to keep themselves abreast with the latest trends if they desire to survive in the present world. Whereas, Information scientists are working on better ways to manage massive databases containing not only text, but also numerical data; sound; and fixed, moving, and three-dimensional images. A major challenge for information scientists is to determine the extent to which information access systems can be made easy for non-specialists to understand and use. Information scientists are also working to further their understanding of human thought processes.
"Our profession should do what our commercial information suppliers are doing: focus on the users, their needs, their wants, and the practices of using information." - by OKERSON
References:
• Encarta Encyclopedia
• Digital Libraries and Changing Role of Information Managers.pdf
• http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment/overview.aspx
• http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/articles/pages/6822/Multimedia-Libraries.html
