Four decades of working with Scientific and Technical Information

1. FourdecadesofworkingwithScientific and Technical Information Personal pespectives and (some) glances at the future By Mats G. Lindquist Associate professor, Abo Akademi University

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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”.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.