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Home > About SI > John Seely Brown Symposium > Kahle's Abstract
John Seely Brown Symposium on Technology and Society
Keynote by Brewster Kahle:
"The Closing of Library Services ... The Opening of Library Services"
Kahle's keynote talk, titled "The Closing of Library Services ... The Opening of Library Services," will explore the implications for libraries of the "closing" of content, and will consider "open" alternatives.
Abstract
As print resources become databases, libraries are moving away from
selecting and organizing materials from a multitude of publishers in
order to create their information services to one of acting as
collective bargaining agents with a small number of database vendors.
This shift is dropping the number of organizations that create and
control the information services presented to library patrons. In some
circumstances, this has led to one or two corporations controlling a
whole type of literature such as Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw's effective
control over US law literature, and Elsevier's dominance in scholarly
publishing. Google, enabled by several large libraries, is making
aggressive investments in book scanning.
If the same few commercial services are offered through most libraries,
then the control of library services shifts to these few companies.
While applauded by some as more efficient, a lack of diversity and
transition to commercial entities from a large number of non-profit ones
could create an information environment that will show monopolistic
tendencies in pricing and single points of control. For instance,
repurposing and bulk analysis of these resources is rarely allowed by
commercial services, and a mistake or bias in one can become the bias
for all readers.
This "closing" of library services are causing some entities to invest
in an alternative, "open" ones. For instance the Public Library of
Science offers open journal publishing and the Internet Archive offers
open digital book services. These non-profit services support free
end-user and bulk services that are rare in commercial services.
This talk will explore some of the characteristics and differences
between these two approaches to building library services in the
Internet era.
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Last updated: Oct 20, 2008
Home > About SI > John Seely Brown Symposium > Kahle's Abstract
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Keynote speaker Brewster Kahle is founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, home of the "Wayback Machine" and one of the world's largest digital libraries.
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