Companies trying to figure out how they will manage the flow of information in the 1990s and beyond might begin their research with a trip to the library-not to take out a book but to study the ways in which libraries are preparing for the 21st century.
In the vanguard of information technology, today`s librarians are as likely to be experts in work stations, networking, communications protocols, electronic imaging and fiber optics as they are in books.
The information technologies and techniques being explored by libraries will probably serve as models for businesses in the years to come.
Information is becoming the most precious commercial resource, and the company that can gather, evaluate and synthesize information ahead of its rivals will have a competitive advantage.
Technology also will enable workers to collaborate on projects regardless of their physical locations, so the ability to exchange information on data networks is crucial. Libraries have addressed these issues for years.
”With their mission of organizing information and serving users, libraries are an ideal platform for broad-based technology development and implementation,” said Lloyd G. Waterhouse, vice president for academic information systems at International Business Machines Corp.
And Richard M. Helms, IBM`s chief architect for image-systems management, added, ”Librarians are working with standards ahead of everyone else.”
As those standards evolve, industry will be able to take advantage of them in a broad range of areas in information management.
The libraries themselves are evolving, too, as computers, mass data storage and information networks erase the physical requirements of storing documents.
Whether corporate or public, tomorrow`s library will not necessarily be a place to go, some librarians say, but rather a focal point for a variety of services.
Such ”libraries without walls” are beginning to appear in schools and businesses, and the silent, musty stacks are giving way to high-technology centers, available to personal computers everywhere, that offer data, graphics, animated illustrations, video clips, recorded voices and compact-disk quality music.
In non-technical terms, ”libraries are getting funky,” said D. Kaye Gapen, dean of the library system at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Gapen is chairman of the steering committee of Informa, a group of academic, corporate, government and public librarians that assembled in Austin, Texas, earlier this month for a conference sponsored by IBM.
The purpose of the conference was to give the librarians access to the expertise of IBM managers.
The conference also provided an opportunity for librarians to tell the company of their strategic needs.
While the conference focused on IBM technology, many librarians said they, like their counterparts in the corporate world, must deal with multiple, incompatible systems of hardware and software.
The librarians also said they were often called upon to develop seamless computer systems linking many different departments, some of which might have set up their own information centers.
”Our interests are the same,” Gapen said of the academic libraries and the business world.
”They are able to move ahead in some areas because they have more dollars and because their applications are smaller. On the other hand, there is more momentum in the universities.”
She said the University of Wisconsin library system, with five million volumes distributed in 14 libraries, was planning to spend $50 million to $70 million on information systems in the next few years.
Much of that investment will go into areas of interest to businesses. A major contribution will be in the definition of standards.
Libraries are leading the way in creating the tools that will be used for information access in the years ahead, and businesses will benefit as they copy those standards within their own organizations.
One area of interest is imaging, the term for making electronic copies of physical documents.
Just as some libraries have tens of thousands of older books printed on acidic paper that are now discolored and crumbling to dust, many companies have endless crates and filing cabinets filled with old documents.
And just as some industries are buried each day by incoming paper forms and documents, some libraries are running out of room.
Paper documents take up valuable space, they are hard to search with accuracy or speed, and yet they contain information that some day may turn out to be important.
The problem is a familiar one to executives.
Kathleen Wiegner, in a recent issue of Forbes magazine, recounted the story of the movie producer Sam Goldwyn, whose files were overtaking his office.
”Get rid of all this,” Goldwyn ordered his secretary.
”I can`t,” she replied. ”Some of those are important papers.”
Goldwyn answered: ”All right, then. Make a copy of everything before you throw it out.”
Libraries cannot throw everything out, of course.
Displaying images on a computer screen would solve the space problem and make material available to anyone who has access to a PC. In business, that`s practically everyone.
Libraries are under tremendous pressure to come up with a solution, especially since so many books on their shelves are badly decayed.
But until imaging standards are set that will guarantee that the images will be read by future technologies, libraries are reluctant to commit vast resources to the project.
Optical technology is appealing; entire shelves of books can be captured on a single compact disk. Because the disks are never physically touched, the image will never degrade. But before such tools can be widely used, standards must be developed in the software used to search and retrieve these images.
