Cliff's Notes - Ken Roberts Interviews Clifford Lynch

:: One of the sessions I attended on Friday dealing was Cliff's Notes, featuring Clifford Lynch of the Coalition for Networked Information. The format of the session was an interview, with Ken Roberts, Chief Librarian of Hamilton Public Library, posing the questions. Lynch covered a lot of ground, offering detailed opinions on the US Patriot Act and its effect on libraries, suggesting, for example, that if libraries gave patrons a set of choices in which they can opt in to having behavioural history captured, with their full knowledge that this was being reported, the library, in trust, would treat this information responsibly (a no-brainer, I suppose).

He spoke at length about institutional repositories and data sets, noting that the US-based National Science Board recently approved a set of policies on archiving data sets, including funding, how to maintain, etc. Institutional repositories are becoming more prolific in academia, but not as much in US gov't based areas. Lynch believes we need both institutional and disciplinary repositories. In discussing disciplinary, or subject-based repositories, he noted differences in how data and information is disseminated, based on the discipline. In astronomy, for example, national and international virtual observatories are being created, allowing for the quick sharing of astronomical data. In contrast, the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls was limited to a small number of scholars, and access was locked up to others for decades.

On the changing nature of reading, he said that there is some movement away from print with regards to reading more online - the advent of better screens and display technology is having an impact on this. No large scale study has been done to confirm this is happening. Other developments include an increased confidence in users' abilities to save and/or relocate documents found online. Initially, we were "printing to read intensively", now we are printing a working document and discarding afterwards. (Comment: has blogging had some impact on this?)

Wireless is becoming more ubiquitous, (except, as a good friend and colleague noted, at large conference centres in Canada!) More campuses are going full wireless, but there are some professors who "push back", not wanting their students to surf or IM during classes. The result of more wireless access is a shift in social behaviour in group settings, such as classes and meetings. Information can be verified or obtained quickly in meetings or classrooms equipped with wireless functionality.

One problem for the public library is, what is the public library's responsibility if a user is accessing a wireless network in said public library that is not the library's network itself? It's one thing to have a policy, it's another to enforce it, with numerous headaches that can multiply.