Diffusion of knowledge in the field of digital library development: How is the field shaped by visionaries, engineers, and pragmatists?
Marija Dalbello, Tefko Saračević, Carole L. Palmer, Mentor Cana · Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology · 2004
Digital library development is a field moving from diversity and experimentation to isomorphism and homogenization. As yet characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and new entrants in the field, who serve as sources of innovation and variation, they are seeking to overcome the liability of newness by imitating established practices. The intention of this panel is to use this general framework, to comment on the channels for diffusion of knowledge, especially technology, in the area of digital library development. It will examine how different communities of practice are involved in shaping the process and networks for diffusion of knowledge within and among these communities, and aspects of digital library development in an emerging area of institutional operation in the existing library institutions and the specialty of digital librarianship. Within a general framework of the sociology of culture, the panelists will focus on the following broader issues including the engagement of scholarly networks and the cultures of computer science and library and information science fields in the development process and innovation in the field; involvement of the marketplace; institutional resistance and change; the emerging standards and standards work; the channels of transmission from theory to application; and, what ‘commons’ exist for the practitioners and those engaged with the theoretical and technology development field. The panelists will reflect on these processes through an empirical study of the diffusion of knowledge, theorizing on the implication of open source software in the development of digital libraries, and the standardization of institutional processes through the effect of metadata and Open Archive Initiative adoption. This paper surveys two large sets of activities concentrating on digital libraries to examine the following questions: How does digital library research inform digital library practice? And vice versa? To what extent are they connected, now that nearly a decade has passed since they began? Examined were research projects supported by the first and second Digital Library Initiative (DLI), digital library projects listed by the Association for Research Libraries (ARL) and Digital Library Federation (DFL). We examined an extensive literature on digital libraries, to trace connections between the research and operational digital libraries, using the project websites, secondary sources evaluating the projects, papers in conference proceedings. We compare our findings from January 2002 with the findings of the past two years, to provide an insight into the new trends and patterns of informationa dissemination in the area of digital library development. Methods concentrate only on examination of documented communication activities of the research and practice communities, or “surface” sources or records, i.e. information that can be gathered from web sites, open literature, and published data. This method does not take into consideration the informal channels of communication that influence the development of technologies and the diffusion of innovation. We will comment on the existing and possible future points of intersections, the “commons” where these two communities have engaged in the sharing of ideas such as the area of standards. Our initial conclusion based on data collected in the first stage of the study is that the two activities are not as yet demonstratively connected in their established networks of dissemination. A set of differing interpretations and conclusions about the underlying issues that are shaping technology transfer in the digital library field and their relationship to the complex nature of application is provided. This paper examines the process of knowledge diffusion in the field of digital library development based on a study of 95 digital collections projects. The focus will be on how knowledge about metadata, OAI, and digital collection content and expertise is gained, transferred, and shared among projects, the cultural heritage institutions conducting the projects, and within the profession. The paper will report findings related to: choice and rationale of metadata scheme(s) and standard vocabularies for item description; application of a newly developed collection level scheme; the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the schemes; perceptions of metadata efficacy for supporting key functions and communities of users; and assessment of the ability of current standards knowledge to support the inevitable evolution of needs, technologies, and opportunities institutions wish to exploit. The study is part of the Digital Content and Collections project, a three-year initiative which aims to provide integrated access to the digital content developed by the IMLS National Leadership Grant (NLG) projects conducted by academic, public, and state libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, another cultural heritage institutions. Surveys were conducted with all the digital projects funded by the NLG program from 1998–2002, supplemented by a content analysis of the original grant proposals. Twenty case studies are also in progress to better understand operations, requirements, and experiences related to specific services and users of the many kinds of institutions involved. This analysis examines the channels and barriers to knowledge diffusion associated with the application of metadata standards and collection description practices. We conclude that advances in interoperability require a high level of collaboration and new ways of organizing work activities and professional development, but with progress also comes risks of knowledge loss that may impact both users and the profession. This study explores the theoretical and methodological framework provided by the actor-network theory and the open source software development framework, to investigate the role of open source software utilization in the development of digital libraries (DLs). The relationships of numerous human and non-human actors of the existing open source DL systems, Dspace (Smith et al., 2003) and Greenstone (Witten et al., 2000) are cast through the prism of the actor-network theory and methodology (Bijker and Law, 1997). The paper argues that this theoretical framework lends itself to a most encompassing explanatory framework for contexts that exhibit manifestations of both social aspects of DLs. DLs exhibit properties of social structures and technological aspects. Integration of open source software into these contexts is paralleled by a process by which integration of the open source DL software-properties (Borgman, 1999; Marchionini) reflects an integrated social/techological environment. The common ground between the use of open source software (OSI, 2004) in the construction and sharing of digital content is outlined through the exploration of the various digital library actors, links, and topologies. This paper develops the conceptual framework for an empirical study of the application of open source software in DL projects in selected research libraries.