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Four decades of working with Scientific and Technical Information. Personal pespectives and ( some ) glances at the future By Mats G. Lindquist Associate professor, Abo Akademi University. Preamble : the 1960’s. The decade was formative for STI services.
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FourdecadesofworkingwithScientific and Technical Information Personal pespectives and (some) glances at the future By Mats G. Lindquist Associate professor, Abo Akademi University
Preamble: the 1960’s The decadewas formative for STI services. • Governmentsbecameawareof the roleof STI for research and economicdevelopment. • Policies and programswereinitiated and realized. • Scientificlibrarieswere given a fundamental role for realizing the policies. • Typical STI service: Indexing and Abstracting Journals
The 1970’s: Technologygrows The decadewascharacterized by technological optimism. • Computersbecamemore and morepowerful. • Massive amountsofdata werestored on magnetic tape - the dominant secondarystorage medium. • Typical STI service: Matchingquerieswithreferences on magnetic tape. SDI – Selective Dissemination of Information.
The 1980’s: Contentgrows The decadesawemergingtelecommunicationnetworks. • Computersbecamemoreaffordable so many new applicationswerecomputerized, for exampleofficework (wordprocessing). • Largeamountsofmachinereadable data arestored as databases on disk and tape. • Typical STI service: Online databases
The 1990’s: Networksgrow strong -Organization and Business develop The decadesaw the birth and rapid growthof the World Wide Web. • Investments in telecommunicationinfrastructure . • Developments in communicationrelated software and equipment (for example browsers). Computer clusters. • For STI business modelsdid not develop, with the exception for the ”Big Deals”. • Typical STI service: Electronic journals
The decade 2000: second waveoftechnicaldevelopment. The decadesawenormousgrowth in capacity in all technicalequipment. • ”Unlimitedresources” wereavailable for developersof systems and services. • Mobile platforms (includingphones) grew fast. • Typical STI service: Cross-domainsearchcombininglibraries, archives and museums.
The beginningof the 2010’s: New connections ThisdecadeOrganization and Business modelsarebeingquestioned. • Alternatives emerge as Open Access and OpenArchives. • Open Data and the Semantic Web begintofindits forms. • CreativeCommonslicensing as an alternative to ”all rightsreserved” gainacceptance. • Crowdsourcing for indexing and notations. • Typical STI service: Authors’ postingof articles on the homeorganization’s web site. Blogs for ”marketing”.
What do wesee in the rear viewmirror? • STI applicatonshavedeveloped as new technology has becomeavailable, and have taken advantageof the opportunities, but the full potential is not reached.
Phasesoftechnicaldevelopment • Paving the cowpath(doing the same thingbutwith new technology) • Skunk works(innovative experiments) • (New) industry Weseemuchof A. Some B, but not verymuchof C in the area of STI. Organization and Business for STI areveryconservative.
Changes can be seen • The traditionalscientificarticlewill be oneofmanyvehicles for scientificcommunication. • Traditionalpeerrevieworganized by publisherswill be supplemented (and later replaced) by iterative processes managed by scientists. The ”webification” of research is in progress.
The research library in the future • Researchers preferself-service and have versatile and powerfultools and systems. • The libraries’ main focus has developed: First ”Containers” (books) Then ”Content” (electronic full texts) Then ”Context” (integrated web services) It is nowtime for ”Community”, that is: participate in the digital workspaceof the researchers.