College and Research Libraries Ashurbanipal' s Enduring Archetype: Thoughts on the Library's Role in the Future Peter Briscoe, Alice Bodtke-Roberts, Nancy Douglas, Michele Heinold, Nancy Koller, and Roberta Peirce The library's basic functions have displayed remarkable continuity for more than two millennia despite major changes in communications media. On the eve of another such change-from printing to widespread electronic publishing-this article reexamines and projects into the fu- ture the library's fundamental role as a social institution. An emerging information industry is strongly challenging the library. However, it appears unlikely that the "for-profit" sector could ever permanently preserve mankind's records. The library's longevity will depend upon how resolutely it extends rather than abandons its traditional functions within an electronic environment. s a social institution the library has existed for at least twenty- six hundred years-three times longer than the university. Sig- nificantly, the first known library- Ashurbanipal' s in Nineveh, which flour- ished in the seventh century B. C.-performed the same basic functions as a library today. It (a) assiduously col- lected written texts from throughout the known world; (b) cataloged and classified them by subject; (c) conserved records by recopying; (d) used them to answer the king's questions (reference); and, (e) pro- vided him and a few other high officials with something to read (circulation). 1 Functionally, the library has been well defined and stable from its outset. History records changes in the locations, num- bers, and sizes of libraries and in their types of clientele, sources of funding, sub- ject specializations, prevailing media, technologies, and practices. But the insti- tution's fundamental work seems to have remained the same. This should be kept in mind whenever one thinks about the li- brary of the future. Nevertheles!?, anum- ber of observers believe that the library will undergo drastic changes within the next twenty to thirty years. The most out- spoken, F. W. Lancaster, flatly states that ''I see little future for the library'' and pre- dicts it will be both "disembodied" and "bypassed" by technological develop- ments.2 THE ENVIRONMENT Three environmental trends do appear likely to call into question both the nature of the library as an institution and the role of the librarian. The first is the growth of an information industry, which has been described in publications by Leigh Esta- brook, Howard Resnikoff, Anita Schiller, and Herbert I. Schiller. 3 The information industry has emerged from the computer, telecommunications, and reprographic sectors. It reaches beyond the manufac- Peter Briscoe, Alice Bodtke-Roberts, Nancy Douglas, Michele Heinold, Nancy Koller, and Roberta Peirce are at the University of California, Riverside, California 92517. 121 122 College & Research Libraries ture of machines and systems for data processing to actual ownership and con- trol of information. Already dominated by multinational corporations, the industry advocates the commercialization of much governmental publishing as well as pub- licly financed research. It is a potential competitor of both universities and li- braries; among other things, it will repack- age their services as information products. Libraries are being used to prepare new markets for the information industry. In the future we can expect more and more marketing criteria, as opposed to cultural or social criteria, to influence information access and publishing. The new industry considers information to be just another basic commodity, in spite of the fact that it possesses highly unusual economic prop- erties. The second trend is the proliferation of computer terminals in homes and offices. This will allow people to access informa- tion resources remotely and conceivably to bypass the library if equal or better alter- natives exist. The third trend is a gradual shift in pub- lishing from print to electronic media. As Peter Briscoe stated in a 1981 article on electronic publishing, the change is due to ''1) rising costs of book and journal manu- facturing; 2) need to decrease the time re- quired for publishing; 3) need to control and provide access to ever increasing amounts of data and information; and 4) recognition of some unique and special at- tributes of electronic media (e.g., interac- tion between the user and the information system; Boolean search logic, continuous updating and exceptional graphic dis- plays including superimpositions, move- ment, 3-dimensional rotation, and vari- able colors). ''4 Many of today' s printed publications also exist in machine-readable form. In- deed, in more cases than not, the former are generated from the latter. We can ex- pect the dual-media approach to continue for a long time-at least until an inexpen- sive electronic reading device with a book's portability and ease of use is per- fected. After that, true electronic publish- ing (online, downloaded, or packaged) will probably begin to prevail. We should bear in mind, however, that technologies March 1986 generally overlay rather than eliminate each other. Daniel Boors tin has com- mented that "People expected print to displace the use.of memory, the telephone to displace the postal system, the automo- bile to displace the bicycle and television to displace radio, movies and books. But that's not .what happens. New technolo- gies transform the use of old ones. They don't replace them." 5 THE LIBRARY AS AN INSTITUTION There seems· to be some question about whether the library of the future will be an institution of knowledge or a broker of in- formation. The words information and knowledge are often used interchangeably, but for this discussion they are different. The biologist Paul Weiss, in an article enti- tled "Knowledge: A Growth Process," states that Information is but the raw material, the precur- sor of knowledge .... Knowledge emerges from the distilling, shaping, and integrating of the raw material into concepts and rules, and in the process of condensation and generaliza- tion, the number of bits of detailed information dwindles, rather than mounts. 6 Daniel Boorstin, historian and current Librarian of Congress, is even more em- phatic in an article entitled "Gresham's Law: Knowledge or Information?": I would like to focus your attention on the dis- tinction between knowledge and information, the importance of the distinction, and the dan- gers of failing to recognize it .... While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous. We are flooded by messages from the instant- everywhere in excruciating profusion. In our ironic twentieth-century version of Gresham's law, information tends to drive knowledge out of circulation. The oldest, the established, the cumulative, is displaced by. the most recent, the most problematic. The latest information on anything and everything is collected, diffused, received, stored, and retrieved before anyone can discover whether the facts have meaning . 7 Let us also define the terms institution and broker using Webster's Third: Institution-a significant and persistent ele- ment (as a practice, a relationship, an organiza- tion) in the life of a culture that centers on a fun- damental human need, activity, or value, occupies an enduring and cardinal position within a society, and is usually maintained and stabilized through social regulatory agencies. Broker-an agent middleman who for a fee or commission negotiates contracts of purchase and sale (as of real estate, commodities, or secu- rities) between buyers and sellers without him- self taking title to that which is the subject of ne- gotiation and usually without having physical possession of it . Probably the most critical strategic deci- sion a library will make in the next ten to twenty years is its definition of itself. As an institution it has been unique for twenty-six hundred years; as a broker, it will likely join a mob . Information and knowledge are not mutually exclusive concepts. They are the extremes of a con- tinuum, or the beginning and end of a pro- cess. Knowledge subsumes information, but the converse is not true . By extension, a knowledge institution can include an information-brokering function, but not the other way around. Why is this? Let us look at their differ- ences. By definition, a broker neither takes title to nor usually physically pos- sesses the commodity it negotiates . In the case of information, this would mean that someone else owns and controls the ulti- mate source-an archive, collection, or database. F. W. Lancaster's prediction that electronic publishing will disembody the library-i.e., eliminate the need for collecting-does not mean that the func- tions of collecting, archiving, or database maintenance would vanish. They couldn't. The functions would simply transfer to, and most likely be centralized in, other organizations-generally profit- making organizations. Society's need to collect, preserve, and maintain the integrity and availability of records in all media is permanent, which is why it makes perfect sense for a public institution to be given the responsibility. Businesses can go bankrupt, merge, and be swayed by political and economic fac- tors. And a business, no matter what it does, must ultimately be profitable . When the profit margin for a product or service declines, either a solution is found to sta- bilize or reverse the trend or the product is withdrawn. Even the most idealistic pub- lishers do not reprint books that have Ashurbanipal's Enduring Archetype 123 stopped selling. Consider then, that since records of information and knowledge never cease to grow, average use per rec- ord must steadily decline . In the long run, profit cannot be made from permanently storing records . Some records must be purged. Any permanent collection /ar- chive/database of records can only exist in the not-for-profit sector. ''Knowledge- institutions, II says Boorstin, "do not pay the kind of dividends that are reflected on the stock market. They are sometimes called 'philanthropic', which means that they profit nobody except everybody and their dividends go to the whole commu- nity.''8 The problem with businesses keeping archives is classically illustrated by the American film industry. According to two articles in the Los Angeles Times , twenty- one thousand feature-length films were produced in the United States between 1900 and 1951. Half of them no longer ex- ist. In addition, declares Robert Manby, president of RKO Pictures, "more than one-third of all filins and television pro- grams produced since 1950 are also gone.' ' 9 The second article quotes Audrey Kupferberg, assistant director for the Na- tional Center for Film and Video Preserva- tion at the American Film Institute head- quarters in Washington, D.C., as follows: ''Thousands of films that are the most be- loved by archivists and film scholars have been found only in the collections of pri- vate individuals .... These film docu- ments are very important to our cultural heritage. They just don't coincide with profits for the studios. 11 Many losses are described, including this one: "Several film collectors interviewed for this article reiterated stories of how Universal Pic- tures destroyed all of its silent films in 1947, without offering them to any of the local or national film archives. 11 10 Lately it has become fashionable to say that access to information, not ownership, is what is important. This is a dangerous oversimplification. Access always presup- poses or depends on ownership-by some party. At present, libraries can more or less guarantee unrestricted, continuing, affordable, and integral access to records because they collectively own them. Re- search libraries in particular have a funda- 124 College & Research Libraries mental responsibility to collect virtually all of recorded knowledge and make it ava.il- able for use. Local self-sufficiency is not implied. This goal can only be achieved by coordinated, cooperative collection devel- opment.11 In the future, research libraries will collect databases just as seriously as they collect books today-and they will safeguard both. However, safeguarding electronic pub- lications will not be an easy matter. There are two sides to the problem, which this article will merely identify: maintenance of record integrity and physical preserva- tion. To put it mildly, databases are ex- tremely vulnerable to improper additions, deletions, and revisions. Security mea- sures notwithstanding, they are inher- ently revisable, and thus conducive to pla- giarism, forgery, fraud, censorship, and propaganda attempts. Briscoe's article "Electronic Publishing-Its Darker Side" provides additional analysis, including this observation: With printed documents the greatest deterrent to forgery is the existence and wide dispersal of other copies, which can be produced to confirm or deny authenticity. There are also scientific methods of studying paper, ink, typefaces, handwriting, and other physical features of a document to establish its authenticity . Are there analogous methods for validating a data base, when data can be erased, added, or al- tered with the press of a button? We know that it is possible to break the external security of a data base system, or to have unscrupulous per- sons actually controlling the system (e.g., the $200 million Equity Funding case of 1973).12 Downloading or depositing archival copies of databases in nonprofit, politi- cally neutral, widely dispersed research li- braries may still be a valid mean~ of detect- ing and proving electronic forgeries. In regard to preservation, newer media have severe problems. Their current lon- gevity appears to be considerably less than that of pulp paper. Judith Mi- chaelson reports in the Los Angeles Times (June 20, 1983) that "today virtually all production for film and television consists of color film in single-strip emulsion. Un- like the Technicolor three-strip process, experts say the single-strip film can fade irretrievably in as few as five years .... Videotape's shelf life ranges from 5 to 25 March 1986 years, essentially due to the constant changes in the chemical composition of magnetic tapes.' ' 13 Gordon R. Williams, in an article entitled ''The Function and Methods of Libraries in the Diffusion of Knowledge," states that "Storage on magnetic tape, at least as of now, is quite impermanent. The records on many tapes less than a decade old are now frequently so dirty from print through, stray mag- netic fields, impermanence of orientation, radiation, and other factors, as to be virtu- ally unreadable. Records to be preserved for centuries will probably have to be transferred to a more permanent medium at some now-unknown cost, and this cost will have to be included in the balancing of choices. " 14 Even the very promising digi- tal optical disk has an estimated archival life of only 10 to 30 years. 15 So, like the scribes of Ashurbanipal, future librarians will recopy in order to conserve knowl- edge, but will use a laser instead of a sty- lus. One thing is certain. Technology has al- ready changed the traditional way in which libraries operate, and this trend will continue. But how it continues, what di- rection it takes, and how those in libraries apply available technology is up to them. Above all, librarians must not let technol- ogy be the dictator. The library needs to persist in its role as a knowledge institution-mankind's archive and encyclopedia-while providing the neces- sary services of an information broker: computer literature searching, informa- tion retrieval, and document delivery. PUBLIC POLICY AND ECONOMIC CHOICES National public policy on information is still unformed, in contrast to policy on an- titrust, labor relations, and food and drugs. Without a doubt, it will receive . enormous attention in the future, and li- brarians must get ready to engage in the debate. The Information Industry Associ- ation says that its primary goal is ''to pro- mote the development of private enter- prise in the field of information and to gain recognition for information as a commer- cial product. " 16 But as Marc Porat points out, Information is unlike most other economic goods . The same piece of information can be si- multaneously owned by two people without denying-either the benefits of ownership. Cer- tain types of information can be infinitely repro- duced with very low resource costs. Informa- tion does not depreciate with use ; to the contrary, certain types of information (theoreti- cal knowledge) increase in value the more they are used . Informational services, unlike per- sonal services, do not vanish when the service ceases. Also, unlike personal services, informa- tional services can be stored in inventory . The most serious characteristic of information is that it lends itself so poorly to the classical economic and legal concepts of property rights . One cannot easily own information, because the act of theft is difficult to detect and even more difficult to prove. As simultaneous own- ership is possible, there is no clear way of claim- ing or proving sole ownership. 17 The information industry may be trying to do something like bottle and sell air. Certainly it is "thinking big." But one wonders if its goals are compatible with a democratic society, dependent on a free flow of information and an educated, in- formed electorate. Everyone knows that "free" library services do not exist. These services are provided by taxpayers, tuition payers, philanthropists, and others. But "free access" has long existed. As Richard De Gennaro has said, ''the arguments for pay libraries may be made in the name of economic theory, efficiency, or inevitable economic trends, but in essence it is a po- litical idea, just as the concepts of free pub- lic library service or free public education are political ideas.'' 18 After admitting this, it becomes easier to explore possible accommodations be- tween the private and public information sectors. Governmental regulation will probably be needed. First, broaden the depository principle . Copies of electronic publications derived from databases, or the databases them- selves, should be deposited by law in re- gional library consortia or library utilities, as well as in the Library of Congress. This would ensure (1) database integrity, (2) physical preservation, and (3) public right - to access. Recognizing the time value of information, it would be agreed that non- profit libraries would access the databases at generally lower institutional rates for a Ashurbanipal's Enduring Archetype 125 certain period of time, after which the in- formation would go into public domain. Second, recognize in copyright law that fair use includes reuse. The information in- dustry would like to charge a fee for every use that is made of its publications: every retrieval, every reading, every consulta- tion, every printout . Such a pricing sys- tem can only have a chilling effect on crea- tivity and research. As RichardS. Halsey says, "much scholarly inquiry must be lei- surely, inefficient, nonlinear, superficially wasteful in the manner of its accomplish- ment. Because the cost of remote access is charged by the second, speculative behav- ior and 'time-outs' are disallowed." 19 On the other hand, traditional library economy is based upon reuse of publications-the more, the better. Reus- ability is not a trivial principle. The library should defend its right to circulate elec- tronic publications that have been downloaded or printed out. In any case, librarians must become so- phisticated, knowing when it is cost- effective to own rather than access infor- mation, or vice versa, and also when slower but cheaper methods of access are good enough for the intended use. Big li- brary systems should certainly consider purchasing and mounting databases on their own. One crucial policy issue remains- whether to charge user fees. If there is eco- nomic pressure for doing so now, that pressure will increase immensely as more and more publishing goes online. ''The American Library Association asserts that the charging of fees and levies for informa- tion services, including those services uti- lizing the latest information technology, is discriminatory in publicly supported insti- tutions providing library and information services." 20 Students, faculty, and staff, upon admission or appointment to a uni- versity, for example, have every right to expect free access to information as a nec- essary condition of intellectual work. But here, as elsewhere, the solution does not lie in simply diverting currently budgeted funds (personnel, equipment, and books) into new areas, not while traditional areas show no decline in use and need. Some entirely new funding is necessary. Fur- thermore, as argued above, many of the 126 College & Research Libraries assumptions of the information industry demand serious questioning, not budget- ary acquiescence. Public policy on information is gradu- ally being formed. The question: will it be a liberal policy-will it even be nondis- criminatory? In the past one would have known exactly where librarians stood on such issues, but now many seem en- thralled by a kind of technological deter- March 1986 minism being promoted by the informa- tion industry. The glamour and novelty of automation are conducive to a substitu- tion of means for ends. To keep things in perspective, librarians should remember that their ancient profession, in carrying out its mission, has comprehended and used many technologies, from clay tablets to computers. REFERENCES 1. Mogens Weitemeyer, "Archive and Library Technique in Ancient Mesopotamia," Libri 6:217-38 (1956); A. Leo Oppenheim, "Assyriology-Why and How?" Current Anthropology 1:409- 23 (Sept.-Nov . 1960) . 2. F. W. Lancaster, "Future Librarianship: Preparing for an Unconventional Career," Wilson Library Bulletin 57:747-53 (May 1983) . See also F. W. Lancaster, Laura S. Drasgow, and Ellen B. Marks, ''The Changing Face of the Library: A Look at Libraries and Librarians in the Year 2001,'' Collection Management 3:55-77 (Spring 1979). 3. Leigh Estabrook, "Productivity, Profit, and Libraries," Library Journal106:1377-80 Ouly 1981); Howard Resnikoff, ''The Information Technologies and Institutions of Higher Learning,'' in Uni- versities, Information Technology, and Academic Libraries: The Next Twenty Years, ed. Robert M. Hayes (UCLA, Lake Arrowhead Conference Center, December 13-17, 1981), p .127-212; Anita Schiller, "Shifting Boundaries in Information," Library Journal106:705-9 (April1, 1981); Herbert I. Schiller, Who Knows: Information in the Age of the Fortune 500 (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1981). 4. Peter Briscoe, "Electronic Publishing-Its Darker Side," Technicalities 1:14 Ouly 1981). 5. Quoted in Edward B. Fiske, "First of the Three R's Isn't About To Go Down the Tube," Riverside- Enterprise, September 9, 1983. 6. Paul Weiss, "Knowledge: A Growth Process," Science 131:1717 Oune 10, 1960). 7. Daniel J. Boorstin, Gresham's Law: Knowledge or Information? (Washington, D .C.: Library of Con- gress, 1980), p.1-3 . 8. Ibid., p.2. 9. Quoted in Judith Michaelson, "Push Is On to Preserve Film History," Los Angeles Times, June 20, 1983. 10. Dale Pollock, "Collectors: Film Heroes or Villains?" Los Angeles Times, September 16, 1983. 11. Paul H. Mosher and Marcia Pankake, "A Guide to Coordinated and Cooperative Collection De- velopment," Library Resources & Technical Services 27:417-31 (Oct.-Dec. 1983). 12. Briscoe, p.15. 13. Michaelson. 14. Gordon R. Williams, "The Function and Methods of Libraries in the Diffusion of Knowledge," Library Quarterly 50:74 Oan,. 1980). 15. William R. Nugent, "Optical Disk Technology," in In Service to Scholarship : Minutes of the One Hun- dredth Meeting of the ARL (Scottsdale, Ariz., May 6-7, 1982), p.78; Surachai Suthasinekul, "Micro- film vs. Optical Disc as Storage Medium for Document Retrieval and Dissemination," in Commu- nicating Information: Proceedings of the 43rd ASIS Annual Meeting 17:101-2 (1980). 16. Quoted in Anita Schiller, "Shifting Boundaries," p.706. 17. Marc U. Porat, ''Communication Policy in an Information Society,'' in Communications for Tommor- row: Policy Perspectives for the 1980's, ed. Glen 0 . Robinson (New York: Praeger, 1978), p.35. 18. Richard De Gennaro, "Pay Libraries & User Charges," Library Journal100:366 Oan. 15, 1975) . 19. Richard S. Halsey, "Recall-Research-Renewal: A Message of Necessity for the University Li- brary," in Future of Libraries: Panel Discussion by Librarians, Administrators, Faculty, and Students, Papers from the Millionth Volume Celebration (SUNY-Albany, September 24, 1982), p.23. 20. ALA Policy Manual, Section 50.4, in ALA Handbook of Organization 1984/85 (Chicago : American Library Assn ., 1984), p.214.