If a blog drops in the forest, does anybody hear it?

This blog begins as a continuation of the beginnings of a brainstorming session in an email discussion that needed a home. Where it will lead, who knows? Here's an edited version of the original message that started that discussion:

On Digital Libraries

As Ian Witten and David Bainbridge note in the introduction to their book "How to Build a Digital Library" [1]:

"Whereas physical libraries have been around for 25 centuries, digital libraries span a dozen years. Yet in today's information society, with its Siamese twin, the knowledge economy, digital libraries will surely figure among the most important and influential institutions of this new century. The information revolution not only supplies the technological horsepower that drives digital libraries, but fuels an unprecedented demand for storing, organizing, and accessing information."

I concur. The necessary technical infrastructure is just now becoming available, both in terms of hardware and software, and we're just at the cusp of large-scale implementations. All of us may play an important part in the ongoing development, and the need to bring a high level of pragmatism to this field is very evident. While the "Semantic Web" may end up another technological flash in the pan without even a demonstrable, widespread purpose (like "push" technology but with DARPA funding), the need for digital libraries is plainly evident, and the technologies for their implementation already at hand. We need to get out the Meccano tool kit and begin to play.

On OASIS' OpenDocument "standard"

I'm planning to soon install Greenstone (the digital library project from New Zealand) to see how it stacks up. As I mentioned to Jack Park recently, I'll be looking into how this all might plug into both Ceryle, as well as OASIS' new Open Document Text format [2], which will become a standard document format for word processors as well as other software applications (and therefore a potential target format for digital libraries worldwide).

OpenOffice 2.0 will be able to import and export to ODT — I've installed a beta version and it's very cool — as with previous versions of OpenOffice, the stored documents are all XML under the covers, and done right too. But now, with ODT, the format is now fully specified and we can expect to see importers and exporters in commercial products, maybe even MS Word.

You can take any ODT document and unzip it (it's just a bunch of XML and text files zipped together). This in marked contrast to MS Word's format, which is an opaque and proprietary format that changes in undocumented ways between versions of Word, and even between operating system versions. ODT will become a standard, because when governments wisen up they will begin to demand open formats for their content. ODT is a quiet new thing, and will become part of the Digital Library Master Plan*.

Murray

[1] How to Build a Digital Library, Ian H. Witten & David Bainbridge, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, San Francisco. ISBN: 1-55860-790-0. See also: How to Build a Digital Library (UNESCO)
[2] OASIS Releases OpenDocument 1.0 Committee Draft Specification for Public Review. XML Cover Pages, 4 January 2005.
^* Yes, there is a conspiracy amongst librarians (in particular, systems librarians) to take over the world.