Creating The Library Of The Future

Vice President for Academic Planning and Administration

Brown University

Summary

It is easy to believe that the electronic information-rich environment envisioned by members of the academic community will soon come to pass -- the necessary electronic infrastructure is being deployed, government policies to encourage its creation are being formulated, and the popular and trade press abound with predictions of "electronic libraries." Unfortunately, the appearance that the electronic library is imminent is an illusion. This is not for technological reasons, but because of logistical, organizational, financial, and legal obstacles. The new "data highways", which indeed are fast becoming a reality, will be dominated by commercial transactions, entertainment services (e.g., video and games), and general information services (e.g. shopping, banking, news). An intense and concerted effort to develop a radical and effective model for the electronic library is required to overcome the obstacles blocking its realization.

In fact, we have no choice but to undertake this effort. The urgent financial crises of our libraries make it clear that the traditional library will not scale into the next decade. A National Electronic Library would not only bring significant new functionality but would directly address and resolve the economic issues that are fast eroding the viability of the traditional library.

Towards a Business Plan for the National Electronic Library To initiate the necessary discussion, a business plan for an electronic library is proposed. Several key principles are articulated and are used to evaluate different models for the financial and organizational structure of a National Electronic Library. This analysis shows that only a non-profit corporation model has the appropriate characteristics for effective implementation.

Ten specific features that any successful business plan for a National Electronic Library must have are presented: voluntarism, institutional (not individual) payments, use of existing infrastructure, cooperation of all stakeholders, initial focus on strategic academic information, new models for licensing, technical standards, adequate tools, appropriate tax incentives, and endorsement of trends towards common or shared library holdings.

An analysis of current circumstances reveals that incremental change will not be effective and delay will be costly. There must be an immediate effort to make radical changes. We must begin now.

Why Planning the National Electronic Library is Urgent

Introduction: Despite what you hear...

The Library of the Future appears imminent

The current prophecies seldom fail to include wonderful descriptions of the on-line databases and libraries that will also be available via these new highways:

As now envisioned, when the data superhighway is finished early in the next decade, a student whose local library proved inadequate for research could tap into an enormous electronic library once available only to elite scholars.[2]

But in fact it is not imminent

Our world is indeed being rapidly connected by the converging technologies of computing and telecommunications. The infrastructure of "data highways" and household information appliances -- which will combine and integrate aspects of what we know today as telephones, televisions and computers -- is being created with astonishing speed and will deliver enormous functionality. Many of our information needs -- such as news, shopping, entertainment, and banking -- will be met via this infrastructure, which will both shape new industries and transform old ones. These changes are in fact already well underway and are being effected by actual patterns of investment and industry alliances. This is empirical confirmation that the envisioned future is not just a matter of academic analysis, journalistic imagination, or governmental industrial policy: corporate strategies and a tremendous amount of capital are already being risked on the assumption that these prophecies are by-and-large true. Or, to put it another way, strategy and capital are being deployed to make these prophecies true.

But while there is excitement about many of these information services, a close look reveals that it is the industries, and particularly the entertainment industry, that will provide the content, filling the networks with movies, video games, shopping services, general news, and banking services. In a recent letter to the editor of Time Magazine, in response to the feature on "Information Highways", one reader suggested that the look of this grand new future might more appropriately call for investment in potato chips and "munchies" than in the technology. [3] This point should not be missed, for there is no doubt that the commercial drive for additional entertainment outlets has both the vision and the financial resources to effect this transition.

There are indeed many parallels between the base technologies which would make movies, video games, and shopping available on demand and those which would make our educational and research information available electronically. But when one looks at the institutions that would provide the promised content for this technology it is easy to see that there are crucial differences between the commercial and academic "industries". Commercial and entertainment services such as Turner Broadcasting, Time-Warner, and TCI, have existing organizations and the capital in place to make such new ventures viable. On the other hand, the 3200+ college and university libraries, which operate as independent organizations offering duplicative services, possess none of the requisite capital, organizational structures, or corporate culture necessary to move effectively into the new world. In addition, the capital assets they do have, and that would be most appropriately reallocated to finance the development of electronic information resources, are hardly fungible, being tied up in existing library facilities and inventories of "owned" library materials, mostly in print format. As important as the lack of resources is the lack of organizational structures and corporate culture that would support effective action and development in a rapidly changing environment. The aggressive pattern of coordinating alliances, strategic action, and capital reallocation that characterizes the commercial information industry is unimaginable in the academic world. In brief, there is no effective organizational mechanism in place in the educational arena that could provide the cohesive leadership and management necessary for the development and implementation of an electronic library.

It is important to note that the investments of these private sector enterprises will ensure the long term financial viability of the electronic infrastructure, keeping communication prices down, and thus allowing for the economic viability of even having an electronic library at all. But this is merely an enabling condition, falling far short of what is necessary to actually bring about the cherished prophecies.

The delightful vision of electronic libraries , a vision so cherished by academics and librarians, is still little more than a pipe dream, notwithstanding the constant and confident iterations of the popular press. This confidence confuses what is technologically possible with what is logistically probable: the technical possibility of having the "libraries of Alexandria" available to everyone with a connection to the network is certainly feasible from the technological perspective, but a sober appraisal of the significant financial, logistical, legal, and contractual obstacles suggests that this dream may be long way off.

We know where we want to go -- but not how to get there

Academic leaders, librarians and technologists alike, all seem to be waiting for the information revolution to arrive, perhaps being all too eager to know it is coming because they read it in Time Magazine. Such a future is not likely to realized soon, partly because nobody is stepping back and looking at the problem, partly because a disaster which is at our doorstep is not fully recognized, and partly because of the terrible history of cooperation among institutions of higher education.

And yet we must begin the process immediately to avoid catastrophe

An economic case as to why we must begin now!

During the ten year period from 1981 - 1991, the library acquisition budgets of 89 of the nation's finest schools more than doubled, and in real dollars increased by an average of 51% when normalized based upon the Consumer Price Index (CPI).[6] Although these increases may seem impressive, and although these increases represent major commitments on the part of these universities, the reality is that the average library in this elite group of libraries lost 27% of its buying power. During this time period, the inflation rate for acquisitions was consistently in the mid-teens. Although the costs of books and monographs did not rise at quite this fast a rate, the cost of some serials (especially those in the sciences) increased over 20% per year. Brown University lost 40% of its buying power from 1980 to the present.

Unless something dramatic is done quickly, we have the potential of losing our society's ability to capture the information that not only chronicles and documents our civilization, but to a large extent constitutes it. If these same trends continue, by the year 2026, the acquisitions budgets of our finest libraries will only have 20% of the buying power they had forty-five years earlier. It should be noted that even this dire outcome assumes the unlikely probability that universities will be able to afford to continue to fund libraries at more than twice the rate of inflation. Library Buying Power -- 1980 - 2010 This problem is further complicated by the fact that the amount of "available" information is also increasing at a fantastic rate. According to many experts, the information explosion is well under way, with information doubling every two to three years. Admittedly, the amount of published information that is available and desirable for collection in a library may be increasing at a somewhat lesser rate, but there is no doubt that information growth is a very real issue that must be considered in an examination of library acquisitions. If one assumes that information is doubling every four years, then by the year 2001, the combined impact of inflation and the growth of information would result in our libraries only being able to purchase 2% of the "total" information acquired only two decades before. .

While this problem is national and international scope, the solution has largely been relegated to research institutions, as historically they have developed the largest, most complex and oldest collections. The 89 schools which were analyzed represent nearly 40% of all library acquisitions among the 3200+ colleges and universities in the country. The research universities of this country have assumed a major societal role in creating, preserving, organizing, and disseminating the world's knowledge, funding this function largely via student tuition. Not only are our great universities losing their library buying power, they are also losing their ability to pass on these costs to undergraduate students in order to meet this national obligation. So what is to happen to the libraries if they cannot afford to buy information and make it available "free of charge"? The economic trends are more than dire -- they are insurmountable! This situation must be addressed immediately and it must be recognized at the outset that there is no way for the old paradigm to work --thus the subtitle of this paper.

This same conclusion was reached by the recent Mellon Foundation report which stated:

"The rapidly rising prices of materials, the continued increase in the number of items available for purchase, the fact that university libraries seem to be acquiring a declining share of the world's output, the impracticality of continuing to build large, costly, warehouse-type structures to shelve printed materials, thus replicating collections that exist elsewhere -- these and other developments cause one to question whether established practices, which are already eroding, can be continued for very much longer."[7] In fact, analysis shows decisively that libraries will not scale into the 21st century using the current model. We cannot afford to provide new buildings to store information which is expanding at this exponential rate, much less acquire, under the current purchasing arrangements, the information itself. A new paradigm, a revolutionary paradigm, must be developed that meets the economic parameters of our institutions, and yet which still supports the traditional values of libraries and scholarship. But why worry ... all you have to do is wait, it is coming soon to a television near you, ... I read it in Time Magazine.

The Electronic Solution

Access vs. Ownership -- the key economic change

New types of scholarship

The difficulty seems to be not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record. The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships.[9] Today's technology gives us many tools to navigate this morass of information, many of them based upon Bush's concept of facilitating the reader in working his or her way through this process. While much of the needed technology and software to help people navigate through large amounts of information has been developed, there has not been corresponding movement in making the informational resources of our society available in an electronic format so that these dreams are attainable.

One of the most important impacts of an electronic library is that a whole new dimension of scholarship and education will emerge. When text is stored electronically, it permits scholars to quickly search enormous amounts of information, and to ask new questions that would have been impossible to address with text in printed form. This "new information" will undoubtedly include hypertextual materials, with finding aids embedded in the text. It will include compound documents including images, data sets, graphics, and other multimedia materials, which have the potential of profoundly affecting the ways in which students are educated, and in which scholarship is shared.

More integrative approaches to thinking

It is an open secret that the modern university is not well suited to the task of educating people for the get-it-all-together function. The university's self-image, its organization, and its reward systems all tilt against breadth.[10] Electronic formats, with their support for hypertext links and rapid navigation can help restore the traditional integrative function of a liberal arts education.

More opportunity in support of life long learning

With an electronic library, one's rural or metropolitan residence would not affect whether one could access the scholarly works, the new scientific advances, or the artistic performances that were stored in such an entity. This type of resource would mitigate against further dividing our society as to who had books in one's home and who did not.

Both the processing and the uses of information are undergoing an unprecedented technological revolution. Not only are machines now able to deal with many kinds of information at high speed and in large quantities, but it is also possible to manipulate these quantities so as to benefit from them in new ways. This is perhaps nowhere truer than in the field of education. One can predict that in a few more years millions of schoolchildren will have access to what Philip of Macedon's son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the services of a tutor as well-informed and as responsive as Aristotle.[11]

While this description of the availability of information and intellectual challenge described by Patrick Suppes in 1967 was perhaps a bit premature, it is now in the realm of possibility. The technological advances have been dramatic, but we are not much further with the provision of electronic information than when he wrote this over a quarter of a century ago. The advances in making electronic information available are not even close to being adequate to make these dreams a reality. It is not clear for what or for whom we are waiting.

The electronic library violates some traditional assumptions

We need a plan to get there!

The greatest challenge facing library leaders in the next decade is not to implement new technology, it is to implement new entrepreneurial oriented management structures and cultures in our ailing industrial age libraries.[12] Of course no single model will adequately meet the needs of our large and extraordinarily varied community of users, all desiring to use an ever-growing body of information, existing in an increasing set of formats and media. It is unreasonable to expect any single model to act as an umbrella for the entire set of information needs of our society. However, it is extremely disturbing that little if any movement is being made to develop models that could serve the scholarly, educational, and academic needs of our society in the coming decades. There is a desperate need for a model or a plan, so that various stakeholders can critique, amend, and amplify an initial proposal, resulting in a framework from which we might begin discussion.

Towards A Business Plan for a National Electronic Library

Principles

1. The electronic library should be "free"

But there are powerful reasons to minimize the fees directly charged to the patron or end user. This principle of relatively free access is essential to the kind of egalitarian and democratic academic environment to which colleges and universities aspire. The very nature of scholarship assumes a relatively free flow of information and an informed populace to create an environment in which the marketplace of ideas functions to sort the likely and the warranted from the unlikely and the unwarranted. -- not surprisingly the same premise is central to Jeffersonian democracy. There is no reason to move away from the model of the free library just because the economics of a paper environment are becoming untenable, or because we shift the medium on which we store our words.

It would seem very unwise to create a library system where one could only conduct as much research as one could afford. If scholarship is to be thorough, the individual researcher should not have to endure such constraints. Instead, a structure needs to be created that is open and free to end users, and supported by the institutions that have a vested interest in having such a library exist in the first place. This approach may be idealistic, but it is central to good scholarship, and has the potential of placing priority on the basic information resources rather than on overhead costs, billing structures, and other bureaucratic layers.

If we allowed ourselves to shift to a mechanism of charging users, we not only disturb research strategies, promote ignorance, and disempower users, we also would incur the inefficiencies of "chargebacks" which have haunted computer centers on our campuses for several decades. Computer centers discovered that assessing user fees demanded the expenditures of considerable resources on accounting structures, and thus reduced the slice of the pie committed to basic services.

Some critics will suspect that this analysis is "tender-minded" and that we are avoiding the hard, practical reality that there is no free lunch and that failing to reflect costs can encourage waste, unfair cost distribution, and irrational resource allocation. It is essential to realize that quite apart from the functional and ethical value of avoiding usage-based fees, the basic economic characteristics of the electronic library, even more than the traditional library, are such that the supposed economic benefits of usage-based fees are nearly non-existent, and easily outweighed by the advantages of "free" services. Specifically, the general information services of an electronic library are

(i) non-exclusive at typical volumes: one patron's use of a piece of information does not exclude another patron's also using that piece of information at the same time.

(ii) have low (or no) marginal costs at typical volumes: the cost of providing a particular service to 1000 patrons is about the same as providing it to 100.

In situations with these characteristics the supposed advantages of usage-based pricing are often outweighed by the disadvantages.

2) The electronic library must focus on the academy's most critical needs

3. This library must be part of a broader market structure

This new electronic library for academic materials needs to be focused, and if service is also part of its goal, then this suggests that such an electronic library must coexist with other structures, both commercial and public, which also provide information via the network. This library may well serve as a "gateway" or reference desk, cross referencing projects at universities or other institutions, as well as letting the end user know of commercial databases which are also available. While it is easy to become frustrated with publishers as materials become more and more expensive, the publishers are not going to disappear as these new media venues emerge. The survival or lack of survival of publishers, or any other player in this marketplace, will be a direct function of the value and resources which they add to the process. If a publisher only provides paper, it will disappear. If a publisher provides marketing, but the market structure reverses itself, with the users coming to the information via the network, rather than the marketer taking the information to the user, then failure to adjust to the new market structure will also have a business cost. But if there are still very real production and editorial contributions to be made in an electronic publishing world, as there have been in the paper world, then this value will continue to be needed, purchased, and respected.

It seems that there has been all too much "blaming" of the publishers as the inflationary spiral has eroded our libraries. That is not to suggest that some publishers are without blame, or that some have not taken advantage of the situation. However, it is far more useful to focus our energies on what value these stakeholders are bringing to the table, which services are needed and which are not, and which of these contributions our academic structures are willing to assume to reduce costs, as the entire business undergoes dramatic transformation. We need to work with publishers, within the parameters just described, and we need to find ways in which these stakeholders can also contribute to the "circle of gifts"[13] that must be created. Just as the last principle emphasized segmenting the marketplace for these undertakings that best suit this new library, we must segment the publishing industry, identifying which publishers or types of publishers can best work as partners in this enterprise, which ones have little to do with this enterprise, and which ones are directly threatened by this enterprise. Then and only then, can we reasonably understand the ways in which partnerships in this new electronic marketplace can be forged.

4. The electronic library must anticipate the future as well as archive the past

While it is imperative to fulfill the mission of archiving existing information and making it available in electronic format, archival material in and of itself is not adequate to meet the needs of scholars. From its inception, the electronic library must support new forms of scholarship and education as well. This means that as soon as reasonable standards are established for the long term codification of material, complex documents such as hypertext, hypermedia, and other compound documents should be made available. There is a tension here that will undoubtedly cause conflict on an operational level. From a content perspective, a scholar's "multi-media" document should be added to this electronic collection, but from a logistical perspective, it is not clear how to make this document available over the network, much less store it in a fashion that will allow migration to new media and new standards. While these logistical and technical hurdles are not insignificant, it is imperative that to facilitate scholarship in this new environment, the new library be very aggressive in advancing the experimentation with, and storage of interactive documents which have embedded pictures, sound, data sets, and graphics to facilitate scholarship in this new environment.

What kind of structure would best meet these needs?

An Entertainment Model

Unfortunately there is little reason to believe that the entertainment model could successfully support electronic access to research libraries, to video collections of museum artifacts, or to a pursuit of depth or cultural value in any arena. The forces which in 1961 lead Newton Minnow, then Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, to refer to television as a "vast wasteland." will militate strongly against the delivery of academic information via the Entertainment Model.[14]

A Pay-per-Publication Model

While this may be an important intermediate strategy to offset some of the spiraling inflation costs which are being experienced, this model is not consistent with the values of the academy or of society at large. If a purchase-per-copy model were adopted, several outcomes are likely. Since it is access, not ownership that is being purchased, the cooperation which has historically occurred between libraries would no longer be possible. Since institutions with lesser means have always depended upon the wealthier institutions for access - via interlibrary loan - to more esoteric information, the schism between "haves" and "have nots" would increase even further. This also applies to the many other libraries in our communities, and in our K-12 institutions.

Information that might be available through these alternative models would not necessarily fulfill the broad range of needs which the traditional research libraries have fulfilled. Because this would be a commercial venture, it is unreasonable to expect such entities to be able to meet esoteric demands, as the sheer lack of demand associated with such materials would not cost-justify providing such access. Although such entities could make esoteric materials available, the costs would likely make such access prohibitive. This set of high costs would in turn reduce demand, thus raising costs even further, or diminish availability altogether, thus creating a deadly spiral. Such a venture would be driven by markets, not collection development policies which have long driven the acquisitions of our great libraries. If the knowledge of our civilization is to be preserved and made accessible, then dependence solely upon a marketplace philosophy would be disastrous, and most assuredly would violate the fundamental philosophies which Maurice Line espouses in his important article on the enduring values of the research library.[15] One final comment regarding the logistical problems associated with such an approach is that an undue amount of time and effort would need to be spent on metering and chargeback vehicles to effectively regulate the exchange of goods associated with this economic model. Even then, with the present state of networks, and that which is foreseeable, the openness of the network mitigates against extremely tight control to electronic information. This isn't to say that such mechanisms couldn't be developed, but it is to suggest that the time and effort associated with the development of such controls might better be spent to achieve a broader public good.

Finally, it is essential to point out that this pay-per-publication approach could only result in less rigorous scholarship. Of all of the concerns expressed regarding this model, this is far and away the most serious. If scholars and/or their libraries have limited budgets, as most assuredly they will, one is likely to see cost savings at the expense of quality scholarship. If a biomedical researcher only has funds to review twenty of the one hundred available references related to a given subject, what implications does this have in the advancement of research and scholarship? It works against quality, against thoroughness, and is most likely to result in a suboptimized use of limited research funds. By failing to thoroughly conduct a literature review, duplication or unnecessary replication is likely. Worse yet, lack of awareness of known drawbacks, such as side effects, might result in conclusions or results which do harm to our society.

A Governmental Model

Today's "Information Age" demands skill, agility and speed in moving information. Where once our economic strength was determined solely by the depth of our ports or the condition of our roads, today it is determined as well by our ability to move large quantities of information quickly and accurately and by our ability to use and understand this information. Just as the interstate highway system marked a historical turning point in our commerce, today "information superhighway" - able to move ideas, data and images around the country and around the world - are critical to American competitiveness and economic strength. [16] Many in academia would quickly subscribe to the notion that information access is critical to both our academic as well as our economic futures. However, there are several serious concerns regarding the appropriate role of the government in the development of the infrastructure itself, and specifically the desirability of governmental oversight of the organization which provides electronic library access. There is already a serious debate about the role of the government in this enterprise, as reflected in the exchange between Robert Allen, CEO of AT&T and Vice President Gore at the economic summit which was recently held in Little Rock.[17]

The arguments associated with the government's involvement in a venture like the library are really quite different. While it can be strongly argued that government investment in support of an electronic library accessible to all colleges, universities, high schools, etc. would have strong impact for the common good, dependency on governmental funding is not a desirable solution. At least for the foreseeable future, the priorities of a sagging economy do not speak well for the level of funding which would be necessary to support the new library, not to mention the longer term issues of consistency of funding. While there currently is a bill in the Congress (S 626) which should allocate up to $25 million nationally to support states in establishing their own electronic library efforts, this is precisely the kind of non-leveraged investment which should be avoided. If the network becomes as ubiquitous as it looks like it will become, the idea of state owned or run libraries, only replicates the duplicative structures of our current libraries in a new virtual medium.

A second major concern surrounds the recent dialogues regarding public funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, and the subsequent discussions regarding governmental censorship have the potential of working at direct odds with the strong commitment necessary of educational institutions and libraries alike to make all information available.

Finally, the temptation to fall into the trap of ethnocentrism, creating a national electronic library must be avoided. Just as with the duplicative structure of state libraries mentioned earlier, failure to leverage our investments and make the network as rich as possible will lead nowhere. Parochial thinking must be avoided as we create the new library. The current efforts of the Bibliothèque de France, as well as major initiatives in other countries, call not only for cooperation among institutions in this country, but for cooperation across national boundaries. While it is hoped that the encouragement and financial support of the federal government would be forthcoming in support of this new structure, the government should not be the holding entity. Rather, the federal government should be one of the supporters of this initiative via a private and independent organization, one that has independent funding and avoids the dilemmas of censorship.

A Non Profit Corporation Model

The purpose of the non-profit structure is to facilitate philanthropy, and not to suggest an organization that is anything but efficient and business-like. In fact, as a matter of key strategy this non-profit corporation would be carefully structured to operate as an independent efficient business, quite unlike most of the consortia, cooperative associations, and public institutions that characterize much of higher education. The need for an independent business role is so that this "library" can act independently, decisively, and quickly, to implement a given decision.

Similarly, while it would be expected that such an entity would be highly responsive to the needs of its clients, it should not be mistaken for a member organization, which would get bogged down in process and undue deliberation to achieve consensus. It will work together with institutions of higher education and other stakeholders, and must be willing to be shaped by these academic partners, but at the same time it will actively resist the tendency to conform to the least common denominator by overemphasizing consensus -- as academic enterprises are prone to do.

While avoiding these problems, it still allows sharing amongst institutions, thus achieving the leverage and the advantages of common resources, acting as a "circle of gifts." [19] Finally, the status as an independent entity, a provider of services, allows colleges and universities to work together to keep the costs of higher education down, without running into the jeopardy of the antitrust considerations that have threaten the academic community in recent years.

Considerations in Developing a Business Plan

1. Define a business plan based on voluntarism

Part of the reason higher education finds itself in this difficult situation with respect to libraries, is a long and fairly unproductive history of competition rather than cooperation with each other. The new electronic library would be a major step in reversing these tendencies and overcoming some of the inherent difficulties identified by Pat Battin several years ago.

Commitment to new cooperative interinstitutional mechanisms for sharing infrastructure costs - such as networks, print collections, and database development and access - in the recognition that continuing to view information technologies and services as a bargaining chip in the competition for students and faculty, is in the end, a counterproductive strategy for higher education. If the scholarly world is to maintain control of and access to its knowledge, both new and old, new cooperative ventures must be organized for the management of knowledge itself, rather than the ownership of formats.[20]

2. Focus on institutional payment for access, not individual users

What is being proposed is that each participating institution (institutions of higher education, industries, etc.) would be expected to voluntarily pay for the services provided by this electronic library. Focusing on higher education institutions for the moment, since there is no other viable solution, and since there is benefit derived from everyone cooperatively participating in this venture, it is likely that peer pressure would also encourage this sense of voluntarism. If the institutions do not voluntarily participate, the entity will die, and that will cause the inevitable reversion back to an economy that doesn't work, thus causing even more serious budgetary and logistical problems for our institutions. By having institutions voluntarily pay, this library can keep the accounting and overhead structures to the barest of minimums, thus using available funds in the most strategic manner possible in obtaining more electronic resources.

The types of corporations that would most likely have a need for or desire to use these resources would be those with large research and development requirements, and it is these very businesses that have a long history of corporate philanthropy, especially where there is the likelihood of direct benefit to the business involved. While the K-12 organizations do not have resources to contribute to support an electronic library, they also have far less demand for or need of research-oriented services, compared to institutions of higher education. Supporting these institutions becomes a service and another contribution to the "commons," as at this time, the K-12 access to the internet occurs via the cooperation of local colleges and universities. This cooperation supports the overall academic enterprise in this country and also gives the federal government a reason to support the electronic library, which would very clearly be working for the public good. Individual access could be obtained in a host of manners, but such access may well become part of the social contract that emerges between colleges and graduates, creating reason for philanthropy and support of one's alma mater, supporting educational opportunities for life.

How would one go about defining a "fair share" for an institution's fee for services in such an enterprise? In many ways, there are already some fairly solid predictors of what this share might be. As already developed, the vast amount of the money which goes into acquiring library resources is a function of a fairly small number of research institutions. They pay the most at present, because they have the greatest needs, with the most faculty, with the most research programs, and with the most graduate students needing access to academic and scholarly information. There is clearly a need for such information by comprehensive universities, but less so. This pattern continues through the various Carnegie classifications of schools, each fulfilling their own respective missions.

Altogether, our nation's colleges and university's budgets for library acquisitions would appear to be somewhere in excess of $1 billion annually. For example, if each school tithed 10% of its library acquisition budget in support of this electronic library, this would provide $100,000,000 per year to buy the rights to build an electronic library collection. These funds, supplemented by corporate donations, governmental support, international universities, other governments, and general philanthropy would provide the economic clout to turn around the economic spiral which is currently paralyzing our libraries. It should be emphasized, that no specific budgetary proposal is being suggested at this time. Instead it is imperative that a comprehensive business plan eventually be developed. Perhaps the percentage contribution should be calculated on the institution's E&G budget, or some other financial indicator, but the "fair share" should represent an indication of institutional size, complexity, and information needs.

It is recognized that in its first year or so of operation, there may not be enough electronic resources to justify the full support which might eventually be expected from the client institutions. Therefore, one could expect to ramp up fees over a five year period. Assuming that 10% of the acquisition budget were set as the fee for participation in a steady state environment, then charges could be ramped up from no fee during the initial year or so of organizing and building this entity, to 10% in the sixth year. In this way, the benefits achieved by institutions would be relatively commensurate with costs, and this would also allow institutions to shift these costs with a minimum of disruption. In an ideal world, an initial influx of philanthropic or external support could leverage the "start up" of this venture, with a ramp down, ramp up of funding, thus providing strong incentive for more institutions to get involved earlier, and providing maximal leverage for this electronic library in a very short period. Before going further, it is imperative to emphasize that the figure of 10% is merely illustrative of the concept, and a detailed business plan would have to be developed to suggest what the actual figure might be. However, it is not reasonable to think that whatever charges were finally determined, that universities should consider these as an add-on to the present acquisitions budget. Just as everything else in the new economic climate in which higher education finds itself, these new costs must be substitutional, not additive. The notion of diluting acquisitions, even for the purpose of "buying access" to electronic information will likely be counter-cultural to many librarians, and this will likely be the biggest obstacle which will be faced in getting such an enterprise off the ground.

One final comment about costs and continuation of the current model seems to be in order. Not only are the costs of information skyrocketing, there is the "hidden" cost of storing this information. Forgetting entirely about the personnel costs associated with storage and retrieval, the capital costs of constructing buildings to house this information also will rise in this same exponential fashion. In 1975, a conference of librarians unanimously cited this storage problem as a major area of concern.[21] The problem has subsequently gotten so dire, that the California State University System has declared a moratorium on building any more libraries at all, and several other campuses have forecast such a moratorium by the end of the decade. Assuming that these capital needs for library construction were included in the fiscal plans of our campuses (which they are probably not), then this would also provide a source of substitutional funding. Irrespective of whether these capital funds had been planned for, they are very real factors in motivating campuses to consider alternatives to the present model.

3. Employ the existing infrastructure

All of this implies the end of primary depositories and the retention of much data in its normal place of origination ... The advance filtering of such data in order to assemble the particular data one things will be wanted into static collections in research archives is a massive operation that can only be economically justified for data for which there will be a predictable high volume of use. Wasteful activity in archiving can be reduced if network permits data to be accessed from its natural habitat, where it accumulated in the process of daily work.[22] If the storage of information is stored and backed up in such a distributed fashion, the perils of loss of information and library "downtime" are minimized. This model of distributing the operations to colleges and universities in the long run will likely result in reducing expenses by avoiding long term personnel costs. It also provides a revenue stream to universities which would want to provide such services. However, it should be emphasized that such contracts would have to be justified on the ability of an institution to provide highly reliable services at a cost effective price. Mechanisms would need to be developed to allow institutions to compete on the basis of a request for proposal (RFP) rather than on entitlement, status, or any other basis.

4. Increase leverage via cooperation with other stakeholders

5. Focus on the academic information which is most strategic

A primary strategy of the electronic library must be to change the publication paradigm for serials to the maximum degree possible. It is the cost of serials which has most added to the inflationary spiral, and scientific serials are the biggest problem. The irony of the inflationary spiral of costs is that our universities and colleges allow the intellectual property which was developed and paid for by these institutions to be given away to professional societies and other publishers (sometimes even contributing "page charges", only to have to purchase it back at higher and higher prices). One of the primary purposes of the electronic library must be to provide a coherent and stable environment for electronic journal publishing to flourish. Faculty are less likely to be willing to publish in an electronic format if it is perceived to be quaint, experimental, or otherwise not standard and acceptable. This new library provides some of that stability, and at minimum, a coherent outlet by which research and scholarship can be disseminated and obtained. This library may indeed become a "publisher" in some instances, or it may only provide a vehicle for collection and dissemination in others. However, the most fundamental change that must occur is a change in the manner in which rights are given to publishers for the academic information which is generated within the higher education community. This basic premise is not new, but it has become of greater and greater importance in the last few years, and is well summarized in the Mellon Report.

Alternatives to current copyright management can be imagined. For example, universities could claim joint ownership of scholarly writings with the faculty they pay to produce them, then prohibit unconditional assignment to third parties, thus becoming important players in the publishing business themselves. Or universities could request that faculty members first submit manuscripts to publishers whose pricing policies are more consonant with larger educational objectives. Another possibility is that university-negotiated licenses grant unlimited copying to libraries and individual scholars and specify said permission in the copyright statement. All these proposals are extensions of the broader idea under current discussion, that universities should reclaim some responsibility for disseminating the results of faculty scholarship. [23] The authors of the Mellon report go further to suggest that in an electronic world, at least some of the functions of publishers may be obviated, as the faculty editorial and review efforts can become part of the "circle of gifts" which may fuel such an enterprise. The value which is added by publishers needs to be more fully understood, but clearly some costs can be avoided, and some of the value-added contributions of traditional publishers can be contributed directly in this electronic world. Additional study of these processes and the economies which are associated with them is essential in order to attack the problem of spiraling costs. However, an active effort must be mounted to stop our current practices of giving away exclusive rights to the developments which come from our institutions of higher education.

While the provision of an outlet through the electronic library is very important, this effort must also include active lobbying by our academic leaders to change this cultural norm. The presidents of our institutions must provide the necessary leadership in AAU, ACE, NASULGC, etc. to explain the quandary in which we find ourselves, and provide the scholarly justification to stop these practices from further undermining our libraries, and hence the academy at large.

6. Work with publishers to develop models for national and international site licenses

7. Define technical standards

Fortunately, many of the required standards have been or are being developed. These include the bibliographical query and retrieval standard Z39.50, text encoding standards such as the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML ISO 8879), the SGML application for literary and linguistic texts proposed by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and character set standards such as Unicode and ISO10646. But there is much work to be done applying and refining these standards and developing others. As various front-ends and search engines are developed, standards will only become more critical, in order to provide relatively seamless support in a heterogeneous hardware and software environment.

8. Support the development of tools to organize and search massive amounts of information

9. Socially engineer these societal changes via tax incentives

Changing copyright law should not be the focus of our efforts. We must be creative in looking at alternative vehicles to achieve the kind of social engineering that is desired in creating an economic and educational environment which is more sound for the nation. If it is desirable from a national perspective to invest in such a structure, supporting traditional education in the K-12 and higher education structures, as well as non-traditional learning throughout one's life, then the government might well see benefit from making investments in this enterprise. While direct support may be a possibility, one should also consider proposing tax incentives to encourage the owners of electronic information to make contributions for the public good. There is a long history of attempts to socially engineer all sorts of outcomes via tax law. If appropriate incentives could be created to have publishers and owners of intellectual property make contributions, the nature of the exchange may become simplified and probably less adversarial. Taking a leadership position in trying to implement such legislation would certainly be of benefit to many publishers, who happen to already own many of the holdings which would be desired in this library.

In the mid-1970s, there was a massive change in the world of scholarly communication because of accounting and tax law changes, resulting from the Thor Power Tool decision. The ruling in this law case changed how inventory was to be valued, and the ramifications that spread though the publishing industry were very significant, dramatically reducing the availability of books in print. This court decision resulted in many libraries losing their ability to purchase materials via a "backlist". Publishers were essentially encouraged to destroy intellectual property, even though its potential value would have been nowhere near what it would have had to be booked. This is part of the reason (along with storage costs) that the time that books remain in "print" has been reduced so dramatically. Perhaps now is the time to change the model, not destroying information (or at least access to it), but rather encouraging its long term preservation by donating these materials to this electronic library, and getting rewarded for doing so.

There are certainly some problems to be overcome with this concept. Not only would a solid case need to be made as to why this advances the common good, but a number of critical logistical issues would have to be worked out. There would need to be a vehicle for determining if the items which were made available were in fact desirable and appropriate for the library. A means of valuation of the donation would have to be developed, because it would not be analogous to the giving of a single volume of a given work. Just as in the case of developing national site licenses, new models and business formulations will have to be developed. While these are not inconsequential matters, they warrant the attention if a new paradigm is to be developed.

10. Leverage the trend toward common library holdings

Conclusion

We must heed the warning signs and come up with new models for the 21st century, not try to sustain our old structures for their own sake. As Pat Battin suggested several years ago,

The persistent and futile attempt to finance contemporary information services from the conceptual and financial perspectives developed for a pretechnological age can only frustrate our aspirations and surely dilute the quality of research and instruction in our society.[24] The library of the future will be less a place where information is kept than a portal through which students and faculty will access the vast information resources of the world. This new library needs to bring together scholars and information resources without necessarily bringing either one to a physical building with a card catalog and books. The scholar may be at home or in her laboratory or in her classroom and the information may be in Kyoto or Bologna or on the surface of Mars. The library of the future will have the daunting task of helping scholars discover what relevant information exists, anywhere in the world, and in variety of formats and media. The library of the future will be about access and knowledge-management, not about ownership. The hurdles which will be faced in creating this new electronic environment will most likely come from our unwillingness to break from our competitive tendencies, our parochialism in glorifying the past and our unwillingness to accept the inevitability of change. Almost 150 years ago, Thoreau suggested that "Books are the treasured wealth of the world - The fit inheritance of generations and nations." It is yet to be determined whether our society is committed to making this inheritance a reality in the age of information.

[2] Building the Electronic Superhighway, The New York Times, Sunday, January 24, 1993, Section 3, p. 1

[3] Time, May 3, 1993, Vol 141, No. 18 p. 13.

[4] Richard M. Dougherty, and Carol Hughes, Preferred Futures for Libraries: A Summary of six workshops with University Provosts and Library Directors, The Research Libraries Group, Inc. Mountain View, California. 1991.

[5] Richard M. Dougherty, and Carol Hughes, Preferred Futures for Libraries: A Summary of six workshops with University Provosts and Library Directors.

[6] The data provided annually by the Association of Research Libraries were analyzed, focusing on the eighty-nine ARL schools in the United States, which reported data in 1981 and in 1991. Source: ARL Statistics 1980-81, and ARL Statistics 1990-91.

[7] Anthony M. Cummings, Marcia L. White, William G. Bowen, Laura O. Lazarus, and Richard H. Ekman, University Libraries and Scholarly Communication, The Association of Research Libraries for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1992.

[8] Harlan Cleveland, "Information as a Resource," The Futurist 16 (December 1982): 34-39.

[9] Vannevar Bush, "As we may think," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 176, no 1 (July 1945) pp. 101-108.

[10] Cleveland, "Information as a Resource," p. 95

[11] Patrick Suppes, "The Uses of Computers in Education," Scientific American (October 1966)

[12] Richard De Gennaro, "Technology and Access: The Research Library in Transition," in Organizing a Research Agenda: Information Studies for the `90,'" Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1990.

[13] Ann Okerson, "The Missing Model: A `Circle of Gifts'" Serials Review, Vol. 18, Number 1-2, 1992.

[14] Newton Minnow, speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961.

[15] Maurice B. Line, "Preserving the Eternal Values of the Research Library in a Throwaway Age," Library Review 40: no 2-3: 44 - 51.

[16] William J. Clinton and Albert Gore, Jr. Technology for America's Economic Growth, A New Direction to Build Economic Strength, Office of the President of the United States, February 22, 1993.

[17] "Building the Electronic Superhighway," The New York Times, Sunday, January 24, 1993, Section 3, p. 1

[18] Paul Evan Peters, "Making the Market for Networked Information: An Introduction to a Proposed Program for Licensing Electronic Uses" Serials Review, Vol. 18, Number 1-2, 1992.

[19] Ann Okerson, "The Missing Model: A `Circle of Gifts'" Serials Review, Vol. 18, Number 1-2, 1992.

[20] Patricia Battin, "New Ways of Thinking about Financing Information Services," in Organizing and Managing Information Resources on Campus, (Ed. Brian L. Hawkins) EDUCOM, 1989, p. 382.

[21] Farewell to Alexandria: Solutions to Space, Growth, and Performance Problems of Libraries, (Ed. Daniel Gore) Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut, 1976.

[22] Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies without Boundaries: On Telecommunications in a Global Age, Harvard, 1990, p. 95.

[23] Anthony M. Cummings, Marcia L. White, William G. Bowen, Laura O. Lazarus, and Richard H. Ekman, University Libraries and Scholarly Communication. The Association of Research Libraries for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1992.

[24] Patricia Battin, "New Ways of Thinking about Financing Information Services," in Organizing and Managing Information Resources on Campus, (Ed. Brian L. Hawkins) EDUCOM, 1989, p. 382.