The Information Triangle

(Segitiga Informasi)

PENDAHULUAN

Dalam proses manajemen sekarang ini, suatu organisasi penyebaran dan penggunaan informasi, peserta dalam siklus segitiga (triangle) ini secara umum terdiri dari: Pustakawan atau Manajer Informasi, IT managers, dan Pengguna. Ini bukanlah suatu konsep baru, dimana teknologi dan meningkatnya kebutuhan secara efektif mampu diatasi dalam pengelolaan informasi yang secara radikal dijelaskan kembali mengenai peranan perpustakaan dan komputerisasi secara professional, dan cara dari pengguna dalam mencari informasi. Pustakawan memiliki spesialisasi dalam hal koleksi dan organisasi informasi berbasis kertas yang pengguna dapat mengaksesnya secara fisik, sedangkan professional komputer (IT Managers) memfokuskan dalam hal pengembangan pengetahuan berdasarkan perkembangan teknologi terkini; untuk beberapa bagian, kedua departemen ini terkadang berpikiran pendek dan “…sebagai hasilnya jarang terdapat duplikasi terhadap…dan membuang-buang sumber daya yang ada” (Rapple, 1997).

Suatu perpustakaan atau pusat informasi telah muncul menjadi pelayanan yang komples (rumit) menghadapi bahan-bahan digital sebagai imbas peralihan dari tercetak (conventional printed and microfilm materials), kebutuhan untuk berkolaborasi diantara para peserta (partisipan) dalam segitiga informasi telah tumbuh. Kita percaya dalam scenario yang tepat, “manajemen informasi yang efektif harus dimulai dengan memikirkan mengenai bagaimana pengguna menggunakan informasi bukan dengan bagaimana pengguna menggunakan mesin” (Davenport, 1994), dan sebagai hasilnya tergantung dari kemampuan semua partisipan dalam suatu siklus segitiga informasi untuk bekerjasama dengan berbagi mengenai target yang ingin digariskan dalam misi suatu pekerjaan dalam hal ini kegiatan bisnis.

Mengapa Harus Bekerjasama?

Teknologi telah menciptakan suatu situasi dimana terjadi peningkatan yang melampaui dalam hal jasa/pelayanan diantara IT dan Perpustakaan, dan hasilnya pustakawan lebih perduli dengan sesuatu yang usang sedangkan IT lebih perduli dengan pelanggaran yang melewati batasnya (Lippincott, 1998). Dalam kurun waktu beberapa decade ini telah terjadi perluasan permintaan untuk jasa komputer dan kompleksitas yang muncul dalam pengembangan dan penyediaan akses terhadap informasi elektronik (E-information). Perkembangan ini menjadi tantangan untuk merubah kebiasaan (culture) dari berbagi informasi diantara organisasi, melatih semua peserta (partisipan) dalam segitiga informasi, dan mengawasi hak cipta dalam lingkungan dimana terdapat jumlah besar yang tidak bisa diawasi dan data-data yang tidak sesuai (Internet). Kolaborasi menjadi hal yang sangat penting untuk menumbuhkan menambha modal dalam perpaduan sumber-sumber intelektual dan berbagai macam sudut pandang dari professional informasi, kebutuhan untuk mengembangkan layanan baru dan metode dalam hal manajemen informasi, kelangkaan sumber DM dan sumber financial, overlapping fungsional, saling ketergantungan anata Pustakawan dan IT staff, serta keselamatan suatu institusi dalam lingkungan yang sangat kompetitif ini.

Definisi Peranan

Dalam Proses Segitiga Informasi (Information Triangle), terdapat 3 peran penting yang ikut ambil bagian, dalam suatu proses ini, ketiga bagian ini mutlak, saling melengkapi antara satu dan yang lain, dan seharusnya pula peran ini mungkin harus mulai dibiasakan untuk dioperasionalkan dalam aktivitas implementasi informasi di suatu institusi. Peranan yang ada dalam segitiga informasi, terdiri dari:

1. Pengguna Informasi

Pengguna bisa siapa saja dalam suatu lingkungan organisasi yang membutuhkan informasi untuk menunjang kerja mereka dan menjangkau tugas dari teknis sampai dengan kepada tugas manajemen senior. Pengguna secara umum, bukanlah seorang yang ahli terhadap teknologi komputer, dan juga mereka bukanlah orang yang ahli dalam mengelola informasi. Walau demikian, dibutuhkan suatu kemampuan untuk menggunakan system yang sudah ada oleh para ahli teknologi dan informasi dan juga memiliki ketertarikan yang sama untuk memastikan bahwa suatu system yang mereka gunakan adalah untuk memenuhi kebutuhan informasi mereka. Pengguna biasanya berharap dapat memperoleh secara cepat, mudah, dan tepat informasi yang mereka inginkan dalam database yang ada (quick and easy manner). Mereka tidak memiliki banyak waktu “menelusur melalui jaringan” atau browsing menggunakan mesin pencari yang terkadang menyediakan hasil yang relevan. Keberagaman kebutuhan pengguna, seperti pentingnya untuk mempertahankan fleksibilitas dan efisien dalam pencarian informasi untuk memudahkan penyebaran informasi secara tepat waktu, relevan dan akurat.

Davenport membicarakan mengenai mengenai tekonologi informasi dan juga kekhawatiran para manager. Ia berpendapat bahwa beberapa perusahaan menerapkan teknologi manajemen informasi secara besar tabpa memperkirakan/memperdulikan bagaimana informasi secara aktual digunakan dan para teknokrat (ahli) yang menjadi ”Constantly caught off guard by the ’irrational’ behaviour of end users” (Davenport, 1994).

Berikut beberapa kelebihan dan kekurangan dari pengguna informasi:

Strengths (kelebihan)

§ Memiliki akses langsung terhadap sumber online (katalog online), ditambah akses melalui perpustakaan terhadap pangkalan data bibliografik serta online jurnal full teks;

§ Secara bertahap terdapat peningkatan dalam hal penggunaan sumber-sumber informasi elektronik secara mandiri tanpa perantara pustakawan;

§ Informasi sekarang lebih sering diakses melalui komputer (jaringan), dibandingkan dengan berkunjung ke perpustakaan;

§ Menekankan pola pikir layanan self-service, bukannya layanan melalui pustakawan;

§ Peranan pustakawan kedepan yaitu bergerak ke arah pendidikan, tetapi ”pelayanan” masih diperlukan.

Weaknesses (kelemahan)

§ Mencari hasil, tanpa mengetahui dimana mencarinya atau menggunakan pendekatan seperti apa;

§ Menggunakan perkembangan teknologi informasi terbaru, tanpa mengetahui bagaimana cara kerjanya, berikut temu kembalinya;

§ Kebingungan dengan informasi yang berlebihan (information overload);

§ Sumber informasi yang diperoleh masih kompleks, tidak sempurna, dan kurang tepat.

2. Information manager

Secara sejarah, ”Pustakawan telah menjadi seorang kolektor dan kurator buku, menyusun buku untuk di inventarisasi, disimpan dan dipergunakan, menggunakan berbagai alat serta mekanisme seperti katalog, bagan klasifikasi, sistem sirkulasi dan hal sejenisnya” (Feather, 1998).

>>> to be continued

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Sarana Manajemen dan Perencanaan Operasional Pelestarian: lanjutan

(Sudiro sudjoko)

Sarana Manajemen Pelestarian

Dalam aktivitasnya, pengelolaan pelestarian bahan pustaka melibatkan berbagai komponen seperti halnya tenaga, pengelola, koleksi, metode, sarana, dan prasarana, serta uang. Dalam konsep manajemen istilah-istilah tersebut dikenal dengan nama tools of management atau sarana manajemen. Terdapat berbagai macam pendapat mengenai sarana manajemen ini, seperti yang dikemukakan Manullang. Menurut pendapatnya sarana manajemen terdiri atas ”6 M” yaitu Man, Money, Machines, Materials, Methods, dan Market (Manullang, 1987:17), ada juga yang menyebutkan ”7 M” dengan tambahan Moral (Wursanto, 1983:27). Sedangkan menurut Martoadmodjo, (1991) berbagai unsur penting atau sarana manajemen yang perlu diperhatikan dalam pelestarian bahan pustaka terdiri atas:

1. Manajemennya, perlu diperhatikan siapa yang bertanggung jawab dalam pekerjaan ini. Bagaimana prosedur pelestarian yang harus diikuti. Bahan pustaka yang akan diperbaiki harus dicatat dengan baik, apa saja kerusakannya, apa saja alat dan bahan kimia yang diperlukan dan sebagainya.

2. Tenaga (SDM) yang merawat bahan pustaka dengan keahlian yang mereka miliki. Mereka yang mengerjakan pelestarian ini hendaknya mereka yang telah memiliki ilmu atau keahlian/ keterampilan dalam bidang ini. Paling tidak mereka sudah pernah mengikuti penataran dalam bidang pelestarian dokumen.

3. Laboratorium, suatu ruang pelestarian dengan berbagai peralatan yang diperlukan, misalnya alat penjilidan, lem, alat laminasi, alat untuk fumigasi, vacuum cleaner dan sebagainya.

4. Dana untuk keperluan kegiatan ini harus diusahakan dan dimonitor dengan baik, sehingga pekerjaan pelestarian tidak akan mengalami gangguan. Pendanaan ini tentu tergantung dari lembaga tempat perpustakaan bernaung.

Berbagai sarana manajemen tersebut merupakan suatu modifikasi dari sarana manajemen yang dikenal dalam dunia ekonomi pada umumnya. Selain itu sarana manajemen merupakan suatu potensi yang perlu diatur dan dikelola dengan baik sehingga tujuan perpustakaan sebagai wahana layanan informasi bagi penggunanya dapat dicapai secara efektif dan efisien. Dengan kata lain unsur-unsur tersebut diatas perlu diperhatikan keberadaanya dalam menggerakkan perpustakaan, khususnya dalam hal pelestarian untuk mencapai sasaran atau tujuan yang telah ditetapkan, sehingga keberadaan perpustakaan ditengah-tengah masyarakat dapat berhasil dan berdaya guna, khususnya dalam hal menyeleksi, menghimpun, mengolah, memelihara sumber-sumber informasi, dan memberikan layanan serta nilai tambah bagi mereka yang membutuhkannya (Sutarno, 2004:3).

Perencanaan Operasional Pelestarian

Perpustakaan, kearsipan, dan museum bertanggung jawab tidak hanya sekedar untuk mengumpulkan, menginterpretasi, dan memamerkan koleksinya yang bernilai sejarah, tetapi institusi tersebut juga bertanggung jawab dalam hal pelestarian koleksinya untuk jangka panjang (long-term preservation), keamanan dan aksesbilitas terhadap koleksinya tersebut. Pelestarian merupakan bagian integral (menyeluruh) dari misi suatu institusi, maksudnya perencanaan mengenai kegiatan pelestarian haruslah menjadi bagian dari keseluruhan rencana strategis yang akan dibuat. Seperti yang diuraikan sebagai berikut:

1. Perencanaan pelestarian merupakan suatu proses dalam penentuan kebutuhan baik umum dan juga khusus (spesifik) yang digunakan untuk perawatan koleksi, penentuan/pembentukan prioritas perawatan koleksi, termasuk sumber daya untuk implementasi/pelaksanaannya.
2. Tujuan utama pelestarian yaitu menggambarkan suatu tindakan atau aktivitas yang diambil oleh suatu institusi dalam menetapkan agenda kegiatan pelestarian koleksinya untuk masa mendatang.
3. Sebagai tambahan, pelestarian mengidentifikasi tindakan yang akan diambil oleh institusi dan pengalokasian sumber daya yang sewajarnya.

Cunha (1988:1-2) menganjurkan agar dalam pembuatan rencana operasional pelestarian bahan-bahan pustaka untuk kepentingan jangka panjang, hal-hal berikut sebaiknya diketahui terlebih dahulu:

1. kondisi fisik koleksi bahan pustaka yang dimiliki dan telah menjadi bagian dari tanggung jawabnya;
2. ciri-ciri dan keadaan di dalam serta di luar lingkungan kerja;
3. efek atau pengaruh lingkungan terhadap koleksi yang ada; dan
4. perkembangan informasi mengenai buku-buku teks yang membahas persoalan pelestarian dan tujuan pelestarian dalam jangka panjang.

Sekalipun diakui pentingnya kegiatan pelestarian bahan pustaka dan kompleksnya permasalahan pelestarian, namun sampai saat ini belum ada satu modelpun yang cocok untuk di terapkan di Perpustakaan. Pada konferensi “Book in Peril” pada tahun 1976, Pamela Darling (1976:2343-2347), memberi petunjuk umum berdasarkan hasil analisisnya, sebagai berikut:

Darling menyarankan agar pembagian tugas dan tanggung jawab pelestarian sepenuhnya dan sebagian ikut dipikirkan, baik dengan atau tanpa tambahan tenaga. Semua rencana harus dikoordinasi oleh seseorang penanggung jawab. Adapun proses penetapan rencana dan pelaksanaannya disesuaikan dengan pembagian tugas dan tanggung jawab, yang akan terdiri dari lima langkah pokok, yaitu:

1. Menetapkan sasaran pelestarian;
2. Menaksir koleksi yang ada;
3. Mengidentifikasi unsur-unsur program pelestarian, berikut sasaran masing-masing yang sudah dikategorikan sebelumnya;
4. Menetapkan prioritasnya; dan
5. Menerjemahkan program ke dalam rencana-rencana pelaksanaan, berikut jadwal-jadwal waktunya.

Setelah arah dan lingkup program pelestarian ditetapkan, selama proses pelestarian dilakukan kontrol dan penilaian-penilaian ulang secara berkala. Kegiatan tersebut di muka itu secara singkat disebut ”Manajemen Pelestarian”; (Feather, 1991:76). Sebagaimana umumya aktivitas manajemen yang lain, kegiatan-kegiatan itu meliputi pengadaan dan penyiapan sumber daya manusia, materi dan dana untuk mencapai tujuan yang telah ditetapkan.

Sedangkan Dureau dan Clements (1990:3) mendeskripsikan jika setiap perpustakaan, setelah menentukan maksud dan tujuannya, perlu menengaskan sejauh mana ia akan memperoleh bahan pustaka dan memelihara bahan-bahan yang ditambahkan ke koleksinya. Penentuan kebijakan ini akan berdampak pada perencanaan keuangan.

Penentuan kebijakan pertama dilakukan pada tahap seleksi, yaitu memutuskan apakah perpustakaan akan menambahkan suatu bahan pustaka atau tidak ke dalam koleksi. Kebijaksanaan selanjutnya ialah menentukan lamanya waktu yang diperlukan untuk menyimpan bahan-bahan tadi. Keputusan ini perlu diambil dengan penuh kesadaran akan segala akibatnya. Menyimpan bahan-bahan pustaka untuk selama mungkin memerlukan biaya besar untuk tempat penyimpanan, persyaratan penyimpanan khusus, dan pada waktunya pembiayaan untuk pengawetan atau perbaikan.

Lebih lanjut Dureau dan Clements mengungkapkan, bahwa tidak ada satu pedoman umum bagi suatu perpustakaan mengenai bahan apa saja yang harus dipilih untuk pengadaan dan pelestarian di masa yang akan datang; ini tergantung pada kebijakan masing-masing perpustakaan. Akan tetapi, perlu diketahui bahwa bahan yang tidak dipilih untuk penambahan koleksi perpustakaan mungkin tidak akan tahan lama untuk generasi berikutnya.

Perpustakan tidak selamanya harus melestarikan bahan hanya dalam bentuk aslinya, tetapi juga dapat melestarikan informasi yang terkandung dalam suatu bahan tertentu dalam bentuk lain (misalnya, mikrofilm, piringan optik, atau fotokopi). Lagi pula perpustakaan dapat mencegah kerusakan bahan asli dengan menarik kembali bahan tadi dari pemakaian umum atau bahkan melaksanakan beberapa tindakan perlindungan seperti meletakkan bahan dalam kotak atau menyediakan kantong-kantong.

Lebih jauh dikemukakan bila suatu perpustakaan akan membuat kebijakan pelestarian koleksinya, terdapat beberapa keputusan yang perlu diambil atau diperhatikan , seperti:”

a) Hubungan dengan kebijakan pengadaan misalnya ketika memutuskan untuk membeli kopi tambahan untuk maksud pengawetan, membeli copy dalam bentuk mikro atau menyiangi, dan membuang judul tertentu;

b) Hubungan dengan kegiatan katalogisasi dan pencatatan dengan menyarankan para pemakai lebih baik menggunakan bahan pengganti daripada bahan asli, atau menyediakan suatu daftar induk bahan-bahan yang tersedia dalam bentuk mikro;

c) Hubungan dengan kebijakan penyimpanan seperti menjamin penampungan yang baik dan peralatan penyimpanan yang sesuai;

d) Hubungan dengan kebijakan pelayanan umum, seperti larangan memakai bahan asli, membatasi fotokopi, atau memberi petunjuk mengenai cara memegang buku dengan baik;

e) Hubungan dengan program pameran untuk menjamin bahwa bahan tidak akan rusak, misalnya dengan melaksanakan perbaikan seperlunya, menyediakan bantuan yang memadai untuk pameran secara fisik, dan menjamin lingkungan yang memadai (Dureau - Clement, 1990:5)”.

Berbagai saran ilmiah dan teknis maupun kebijakan dan teknik pelestarian dan pengawetan juga harus turut dipertimbangkan. Semua ini akan mempengaruhi biaya dan keuangan.

Daftar Pustaka:

Chapman, Patricia. (1990). Guidelines on preservation policies in the archieves and libraries heritage. Paris: UNESCO.

Cunha, George M. (1988). Method of Evaluation to determine The Preservation Needs in Libraries and Archieves: A RAMP study with Guidelines. Paris : UNESCO.

Dureau, J.M. dan D.W.G. Clements (1990). Dasar-dasar pelestarian dan pengawetan bahan-bahan pustaka. Jakarta : Perpustakaan Nasional.

Kusuma, Hendra (2006). Pengelolaan koleksi terbitan Berseri di Perpustakaan Nasional RI (skripsi). FIB UI: Depok

Manullang (1987). Dasar-dasar Manajemen. Jakarta: Ghalia Indonesia
Sulistyo-Basuki. (1991). Pengantar Ilmu Perpustakaan. Jakarta: Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

Wursanto, Ig (1983). Dasar-dasar Manajemen Umum. Jakarta: Pustaka Dian.

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Pelestarian : Definisi dan Permasalahan

Definisi

Di lingkungan perpustakaan, arsip dan museum belum ada kesepakatan dalam menafsirkan istilah pelestarian (preservation). Perbedaan ini dapat dilihat dalam beberapa buku yang membahas berbagai definisi mengenai pelestarian atau preservasi. Dalam The Principles for The Preservation and Conservation of Library Materials yang disusun oleh J.M. Dureau dan D.W.G. Clements, preservasi mempunyai arti yang lebih luas, yaitu mencakup unsur-unsur pengelolaan keuangan, cara penyimpanan, tenaga, teknik dan metode untuk melestarikan informasi dan bentuk fisik bahan pustaka. Sedangkan definisi lain menurut Introduction to Conservation, terbitan UNESCO tahun 1979 disebutkan bahwa istilah preservasi berarti penanganan yang berhubungan langsung dengan benda, kerusakan oleh karena udara lembab, faktor kimiawi, serangan dari mikroorganisme yang harus dihentikan untuk mencegah kerusakan lebih lanjut (Perpustakaan Nasional, 1995:2).

Menurut Hazen sebagaimana dikutip oleh Gardjito (1991:91), istilah pelestarian meliputi 3 ragam kegiatan, yaitu:”

1. kegiatan-kegatan yang ditujukan untuk mengontrol lingkungan perpustakaan agar dapat memenuhi syarat-syarat pelestarian bahan-bahan pustaka yang tersimpan di dalamnya;
2. berbagai kegiatan yang berkaitan dengan usaha-usaha untuk memperpanjang umur bahan pustaka, misalnya dengan cara deasidifikasi, restorasi, atau penjilidan ulang; dan
3. seluruh kegiatan yang berkaitan dengan usaha untuk mengalihkan isi informasi dari satu bentuk format atau matrik ke bentuk lain. Setiap kegiatan menurut kategori-kategori tersebut itu tentu saja masih dapat dikembangkan lagi ke dalam berbagai aktivitas lain yang lebih khusus dan rinci”.

The American Heritage Dictionary mendefinisikan preservasi sebagai usaha untuk melindungi dari segala macam kerusakan, resiko dan bahaya lainnya, menjaga agar tetap utuh dan menyiapkan sesuatu untuk melindungi dari kehancuran. Sedangkan pengertian pelestarian bahan pustaka yang dikemukakan oleh International of Federation Library Association (IFLA) dan ditetapkan sebagai pedoman pelestarian oleh Perpustakaan Nasional Indonesia, mencakup 3 aspek, yaitu:”

1. semua aspek usaha untuk melestarikan bahan-bahan, cara-cara untuk pengelolaan, keuangan, sumberdaya manusia pelaksananya, metode, dan teknik-teknik penyimpanan bahan-bahan pustaka;
2. semua kebijakan dan kegiatan yang bersangkutan dengan pengawetan atau konservasi, yaitu cara-cara khusus untuk melindungi bahan-bahan pustaka demi kelestarian bahan-bahan pustaka tersebut;
3. semua langkah untuk mempertimbangkan dan melaksanakan pemugaran atau restorasi, yaitu cara-cara yang digunakan untuk memperbaiki bahan-bahan pustaka yang rusak (Soedarsono, 1989) dan Sulistyo Basuki (1991)”.

Lebih lanjut dinyatakan oleh Sudarsono (1989) dan Sulistyo-Basuki (1991), bahwa salah satu cara pelestarian bahan-bahan pustaka itu adalah juga dengan cara mengalihkan bentuknya, dari bentuk media yang satu ke bentuk media yang lain untuk keperluan masa kini maupun mendatang. Kalaupun tidak mungkin dikerjakan demikian, haruslah diupayakan dengan berbagai cara agar bahan-bahan itu tetap dapat didayagunakan secara optimal.

Meskipun terdapat berbagai perbedaan dalam mendefinisikan istilah pelestarian, namun dapat kita tarik suatu benang merah dari keseluruhan definisi yang ada, yaitu pada dasarnya inti pelestarian bahan pustaka yaitu untuk melestarikan kandungan informasi (intelektual) maupun fisik asli suatu koleksi. Pelestarian fisik biasanya dilakukan dalam rangka menghemat tempat, dan juga untuk menyelamatkan fisik asli dokumen dari seringnya penggunaan yang tinggi oleh pengguna dengan cara mengalihkan bentuknya. Sedangkan pelestarian kandungan informasi biasanya dilakukan untuk bahan pustaka yang mempunyai nilai khusus, misalnya nilai sejarah, nilai keindahan, nilai ekonomis, dan juga karena sifatnya yang langka.

Pelestarian bahan pustaka merupakan salah satu hal penting bagi keberadaan perpustakaan selain pengadaan, pengolahan, dan pelayanan yang diberikan oleh perpustakaan. Keberadaan bahan pustaka yang patut dilestarikan merupakan salah satu unsur penting dalam sebuah sistem perpustakaan selain ruangan atau gedung, peralatan/perabot, tenaga, dan anggaran. Unsur-unsur tersebut satu sama lain saling berkaitan dan saling mendukung untuk terselenggaranya layanan perpustakaan yang baik (Martoatmodjo, 1993:1).

Sedangkan konservasi adalah teknik yang dipakai untuk melindungi bahan pustaka dan arsip dari kerusakan dan kehancuran (Dureau and Clements, 1990:2). Selain itu konservasi mempunyai arti lain yang lebih luas. Konservasi dalam Perpustakan adalah perencanaan program secara sistematis yang dapat dikembangkan untuk menangani koleksi perpustakaan agar tetap dalam keadaan baik dan siap pakai (Perpustakaan Nasional, 1995:2).

Prinsip-prinsip sebagaimana tercantum dalam ”Introduction to Conservation” terbitan UNESCO tahun 1979, menjelaskan bahwa ada beberapa tingkatan dalam kegiatan konservasi, yaitu prevention of deterioration, preservation, consolidation, restoration, dan reproduction, yang masing-masing dapat diterjemahkan sebagai berikut:

• ”Prevention of deterioration” yaitu tindakan preventif untuk melindungi benda budaya termasuk bahan pustaka dengan mengendalikan kondisi lingkungan, melindungi dari faktor perusak lainnya termasuk salah penanganan.
• ”Preservation” yaitu penanganan yang berhubungan langsung dengan benda. Kerusakan oleh karena udara lembab, faktor kimiawi, serangga dan mikroorganisme harus dihentikan untuk mencegah kerusakan lebih lanjut.
• ”Consolidation” yaitu memperkuat benda yang sudah rapuh dengan jalan memberi perekat atau bahan penguat lainnya.
• ”Restoration” yaitu memperbaiki koleksi yang telah rusak dengan jalan menambal, menyambung, meperbaiki jilidan yang rusak dan mengganti bagian yang hilang agar bentuknya mendekati keadaan semula.
• ”Reproduction” yaitu membuat ganda dari benda asli, termasuk membuat mikrofilm, mikrofis, foto repro dan fotokopi.

Selain itu Wendy Smith dari The National Library of Australia membuat definisi yang lebih sederhana mengenai konservasi, yaitu kegiatan yang meliputi perawatan, pengawetan dan perbaikan bahan pustaka dan informasi yang ada di dalamnya.

Dari uraian di atas, dapat kita simpulkan bahwa kata preservasi dan konservasi sebenarnya masih rancu. Namun demikian kita anggap saja kedua kata ini mempunyai arti yang sama yaitu pelestarian, yang selanjutnya pelestarian ini mencakup kegiatan pemeliharaan, perawatan, pengawetan, perbaikan dan reproduksi (Perpustakaan Nasional RI, 1992:3).

*DAFTAR PUSTAKA:

Dureau, J.M. dan D.W.G. (1990). Clements. Dasar-dasar pelestarian dan pengawetan bahan-bahan pustaka. Jakarta : Perpustakaan Nasional.

Gardjito. (1991). Preservation and Conservation of library materials in tropical countries with particular reference to the National Library of Indonesia. Tesis untuk memperoleh gelar master bidang Library Science di Loughborough University.

Martoatmodjo, karmidi. (1993). Pelestarian Bahan Pustaka. Jakarta: Universitas Terbuka.

Perpustakaan Nasional. (1992). Keputusan Presiden Republik Indonesia No. 11 Tahun 1989 tentang Perpustakaan Nasional. Jakarta : Perpustakaan Nasional.

Sudarsono, B. (2006). Antologi Kepustakawanan Indonesia. Jakarta: Ikatan Pustakawan Indonesia.

Sulistyo-Basuki. (1991). Pengantar Ilmu Perpustakaan. Jakarta : Gramedia Pustaka Utama.

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10 Top Tools for Doing Research Online

http://www.degreetutor.com/library/choosing-school/research-tools

As a distance/ online student, you probably have one or more reasons for choosing your mode of study, including the ability to balance study time and family time or to study at your own pace. As well, there may be a school that you would like to study at, but for whatever reason, being there in person is not possible.

However, just because you are a distance student and possibly have a more relaxed study pace doesn't mean you don't have as much research to do. Since you are likely spending a fair bit of time on the Internet to complete your distance/ onlinestudy requirements, you probably want to have a nice set of tools for making your research easier and more efficient.

As a person whose entire week consists of intense research on the Internet 5-7 days per week, followed by the writing of 80+ articles of various sizes, good online research tools are crucial to me. I've been collecting new tools on an almost weekly basis, trying them out for a while, then discarding a tool if it doesn't really improve my efficiency. But the tools I'm using are just as relevant to distance students.

As a result of over two years of regular online research, first as a Master's student candidate, then as a professional online writer (aka blogger), I've come up with a set of tools that I've been using regularly, sometimes daily. While I did set aside my bricks-and-mortar Masters degree plan, I do plan to complete a Masters degree online in the future. So the tools I've been collecting have also been selected with the intent that they will be used for research for an online degree.

Further below in this article is my list of ten very useful online research tools. They're not the only tools I use, but they're probably the most important to me. Many of these should be valuable to you as well if you are doing distance/ online learning, or even other types of research.

There is no significance to the order of the tools below, but there is an abundance of Google products and services. That's often because I came across them first, and became used to them. There are alternatives, and I recommend you explore them as well. Some of the tools listed overlap in functionality, but most are fairly distinct. Each tool falls into one of the following categories:

• Viewing information
• Seeking information
• Subscribing to information
• Comparing topic popularity
• Networking with peers
• Writing
• Sharing information

Here's my brief review of ten extremely useful online research tools:

Firefox Web Browser

Without a web browser, you simply cannot do online research or even online tests. But one browser isn't the same as any other. Everyone has their favorite, though power surfers and researchers typically pick either Mozilla or Mozilla Firefox. Once Firefox became available, I stopped using Mozilla, so I can only tell you about Firefox: it quite simply is one of the most powerful web browsers around. From multiple tabs to skinnable interface to XUL-based add-ons to literally hundreds of free plugins useful for research, it can't be beat.

If you intend to do serious research on the Internet, this is a must-have free tool. Here's a link to Firefox, skins, and extensions. In fact, some of the tools referred to below require Firefox to function.

Emailed Topic Alerts Service - Google Alerts

One of the fastest ways to find online information about a topic and its related terms is a search engine. But that actually takes effort, because once you get a page of search results, you feel impelled to look at the links right away. A more efficient way, which gives you control, is to use one of the available Alerts services. An Alerts service delivers snippets of web pages to you, in your email inbox, so you can followup at your convenience. (Each snippet contains a link to the source web page.) It's basically a step above using just a search engine.

I've been using Google Alerts to great effect, but Yahoo! is now offering their own service - although it's accessed differently. With Google Alerts, you enter a simple or complex search query, and it emails you the search results with whatever frequency you indicate (as-it-happens, daily, weekly). Alert emails are sent to you until you delete an alert.

You can use Google Alerts with any email address, but I highly recommend getting a Google GMail account. If you are using Google GMail, you can build a list of Alert queries in your control panel. Google GMail also displays related emails as a collapsible collection, which makes it easier to browse through multiple Alerts. I find browsing my Alerts - or just any thread of related email messages - much faster with GMail.

There are only two ways to get a GMail account: sign up with a mobile phone number or get invited by someone who already has an account. Once you signup, you're allowed to give out 15 invites. I suggest you get one, because you can also use the account as a file storage service. (See "File Sharing Services", the last section of this article.)

Website Subscription: Bloglines News Feed Aggregator

As you do research for your distance and online courses, you'll find that some topics simply have have hundreds of websites covering them. Keeping track of all that information is an absolute chore. You need the information, but you don't really want to check in daily to each and every website of interest to you. If you're a typical distance student, you're probably taking more than one course simultaneously. You could potentially be tracking several dozen websites for new articles. Is there an easier way? Yes.

Several years ago, two separate web-based projects were seeking to accomplish the same result: a simple means of subscribing to your favorite websites. So, every time your favorite website added new articles or news, you would get some sort of notification in a stream of "headlines". Each feed item would consist of the article title and the first X words of the article, as well as a link to the original web page containing the article. [In some cases, websites will publish what is known as a "full-text" web feed, in which case you can read the entire text of an article through your feed reader.]

In a nutshell, the result was something now called RSS (Really Simple Syndication), which is both a file format and a technology. An alternative file format that accomplishes the same thing, with some added functionality, is Atom. Atom is actually both a file format and an online publishing protocol, but we don't need to know what's under the hood to use either RSS or Atom.

Collectively, some people (supposedly Microsoft) started calling information/ headlines distributed in either RSS or Atom file formats as "web feeds". Other people prefer the terms "RSS feeds" or even "news feeds". Either way, feeds are incredibly useful for research. Note that not all websites publish web feeds. However, most "weblogs" and large news sites do.

Of course, if you are going to subscribe to a website's feed, you need a way to track the "headlines" you'll receive. Some sites offer a feed-to-email service, which sends new article snippets to your email box. Most, however, just offer their web feed, for which you'll need either a standalone feed reader or a web-based feed aggregator to browse headlines with.

Standalone feed readers are software packages that you download to your computer and install. They often resemble email software such as Microsoft Outlook in that they have three panes: one listing all your feed subscriptions at far left, one at top right to show a list of headlines for a given feed, and one at bottom right to show the details of a specific feed item.

Web-based feed aggregators require no software download. They work straight from a suitable web browser, but have a slightly different viewing paradigm. It's this type that I've moved to, after nearly 8 months of trying various standalone readers. I find Bloglines to be mostly superior to the other feed aggregators. (I've tried a lot of them.) What's more, many websites have a "Bloglines" graphic subscription button.

I recommend that you register with Bloglines from the same browser that you do most of your web site browsing from. Then, when you see a "Bloglines" subscription button on a web page, clicking on it will take you to directly to Bloglines. From there, you specify a couple of details, then click the "Subscribe" button. Voila, the site's web feed is added to your Bloglines subscription list. You can now browse your subscribed web feeds by clicking on the name of a feed from the left pane. (Bloglines has only two panes.)

One thing to take note of. If a site you're subscribed to publishes a "full-text" web feed, you'll be able to read entire articles directly from Bloglines. If the site only publishes a "partial-text" web feed, you'll have to click on the item title to see the rest of the article. The item title is a link to the original web page where the full article ilves. So clicking on the feed item title will open either a new web browser window or a browser tab, depending on the browser you are using. (Simply for convenience, this is why I almost exclusively use a tabbed browser such as Firefox. Internet Explorer is hopelessly beyond in this regard.)

Because of this browser behaviour, some power users of Bloglines only subscribe to "full-text" web feeds. It's a decision you'll have to make for yourself. I personally don't like the font used in Bloglines, so I subscribe to both partial- and full-text web feeds, browse items, then click on those I want to read in entirety.

By the way, there are a couple of different Bloglines subscription buttons. If you want to see an example of one, visit Performancing. Then look at the top right for a "Sub Bloglines" button.

You can register for Bloglines free of charge with any email address. If you are going to use one browser primarily for your research (I highly recommend Firefox, as noted above), then you should register at Bloglines from the same browser.

Google News Search Results Feed Subscription

If you've discovered the usefulness to your research of Google Alerts, described above, you may like to try an alternative method of delivery. It's not precisely Google Alerts, but the source is the same: Google News delivered as a web feed to your Bloglines subscription.

First, go to Google News to search for terms of interest. When the results page is generated, look at the navigation menu at left. There is a link underneath the menu that says "RSS". Right click your mouse on it and copy the URL. Then go to your bloglines subscription page and "Add a feed".

The only drawback to viewing Google News search results this way is that all of the unread headline items in the web feed show in Bloglines all at once. (True of any web feed in Bloglines.) If you don't click the "mark all new" link for the feed, the next time you return to browse the feed, the items will be gone. With Google Alerts delivered to your email, the items remain until you delete them from your inbox.

What I do is subscribe via Bloglines for search results I use daily. For less frequently used results, I use the Alerts-to-email method.

Topic Popularity Comparison - Google Trends

Not everyone is going to need this tool, but I use Google Trends regularly. For those of you taking courses which require you to choose a topic for an essay or project, you might like this tool. Given a set of up to five search terms, Google Trends comes back with two line graphs and a series of geographically-defined bar charts.

The first line graph shows you the relatively popularity of each search term over a specified period of time - up to two years. The second line graph shows you the relative quantity of web pages that refer to each search term. This is particularly useful if you plan to write your research paper based on online materials. Obviously, if one topic has more web pages discussing it, then you'd probably find it easier to find relevant references. Finally, the bar charts show you the relative interest for each term by the most popular cities in the world, or countries, if you prefer.

Google Trends is thus a powerful tool that helps you narrow down a topic of research. I often use it to choose niche topics within a broader, more general area of interest. Since the line charts show you up to two years of relative popularity, it's a great tool for choosing topics that are currently of interest, based on searches performed using Google Search. So while one term may have been more popular than another a while back, it may not be so popular now. Meaning that you might not find recent references for the topic. Though sometimes using related terms will produce more favorable results.

Instant Messaging and VoIP Software

When you are doing a diploma or degree online/ distance, you don't always have the live support group of select classmates that you'd have if you were in actual bricks-and-mortar classes. For this reason, some distance schools team people up to work remotely with each other, and offer a dedicated instructor for small groups of students. But if the school doesn't have a toll-free phone number, what are your choices? Emailing someone doesn't always cut it, especially if you need to discuss something in real time. And being a distance student means that talking to your study mates on the phone is probably costly anyway.

Fortunately, there are dozens of free IMs: Instant Messaging clients. Some of these are well-known, others very new. If you've been using the Internet for anything length of time and have signed up for a free email with AOL, Microsoft or Yahoo, etc., you might already be familiar with IM software (aka "clients") such as Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger), Yahoo! Messenger, or even AOL's AIM Pro. Originally, these text IM clients had only text-mode real-time chat, whereby you'd communicate with one or more people by typing in your conversation.

More recently, these IMs are now enhanced with voice-mode chat, also called pc2pc (pc-to-pc) calling, and even video calling. That means that you can talk to a distant study buddy or instructor via your computer, as if you were on the phone. Free of charge. Unfortunately, you probably have to both have the same software, although this requirement is changing. For example, the latest versions of (Windows Live) MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger can communicate with each other.

Some of these IMs also let you call from your computer to a regular telephone. This is sometimes referred to as pc2phone or net2phone calling. There are also some voice IMs that assign you a real phone number so that people can actually call you from a telephone to your computer (phone2pc). (Hullo is one such VoIP IM, which for now provides a free telephone number and extension. Skype is another, but they charge for a real number - no extension, and you can choose from several cities' area codes.)

All these types of calling over the Internet (pc2pc, pc2phone, phone2pc) are referred to collectively as Internet telephony, IP communications, or VoIP - Voice over Internet Protocol. (Services like Vonage are also called VoIP, but they do not require a computer They use regular phones routed through the Internet. Thus such calls are known as phone2phone, but strictly in reference to VoIP. We're not discussing this type here.)

The popularity of video- and voice-calling software such as Skype has forced many formerly text-only IMs into offering at least pc2pc calling. Some VoIP IMs often allow you to share files. So if you are working jointly on a project with another distance student, VoIP IMs make it easy to collaborate. AIM Pro and Windows Live Messenger even allow you to share applications. So if you need to show your study partner some document or media file or program in real time, you can run "application sharing" on these IMs.

The best part, at least for some students, is that Skype currently has free SkypeOut calls for users in Canada and the United States until Dec 31st, 2006. I actually use the SkypeOut service several times a week, and I use one VoIP IM or another almost every day. The quality of pc2phone/ phone2pc calls are usually lower than pc2pc or phone2phone, but here are some call quality improvement tips.

If you want to learn more about VoIP, including the hardware-based versions, please visit the website VoIP Now. I've also linked, above, to particular articles from the site, for specific IMs. A few more VoIP IMs not mentioned above are Sightspeed and Gizmo Project. There are many more, but all of the IMs mentioned here are the ones I use most regularly. A general overview of some of these and other VoIP software and services is discussed in the article How To Make Free VoIP Calls - A Reader Q+A.

Consider one last benefit of using a VoIP IM over calling on the phone. Some IMs not only let you talk to someone in audio mode, but you can often type messages simultaneously. So if you need to pass information for later reference, or info better deliver in text mode, then this beats a phone call. Especially since such hybrid conversations are free.

Zap Reader Web-Based Speed-Reading Service

Inevitably, when you're taking courses or simply doing research, you'll find yourself with a ton of reading to do and the feeling that there just isn't enough time. Speed-reading is often the answer, provided you are not consuming overly technical content with lots of formulas or diagrams.

I've read many speed reading books and found that while I was able to achieve higher speeds, the effect was not permanent. (That is, I couldn't always maintain my high speed.) To really benefit from speed-reading, start by doing a quick browse of new text, then follow up later with a more thorough read. This method will often result in persistence of the knowledge gained, whereas a single speed-read will not. If you like, you can re-read a third time, with speed.

To give you an idea of how effective speed-reading can be, I used to read 3-4 novels per week, 1-2 non-fiction books per week, and several newspapers daily. And I did most of that while riding the subway to work in the morning and home in the evening, with some extra reading on weekends and occasionally at night.

The problem is, speed reading traditionally requires you to run your finger across a printed page in a variety of patterns, often dependent upon the width of the page. Obviously, this isn't going to work when you are researching articles online. Besides smearing your finger oils across your computer screen, it really doesn't work.

Enter Zap Reader, a handy little web-based tool that lets you paste in blocks of text and set the playback speed in words-per-minute. I can't tell you what an optimum speed is. It's different for each person. Also, you won't be able to read formulas. But assuming you're reading pure text, non-technical material can be read and absorbed fairly quickly.

Try different speeds and see what's comfortable for you. If you are going to try the double-read method, start with a high speed, making sure you can at least catch some of the key concepts. Then later (day, week), read at a slightly slower speed, for better concept absorption. If you feel the need, read a third time at an in-between speed.

Note: apparently women seem to be able to more consistently read at faster speeds than men, at least for print. But this is purely based on my observations of speed readers I've met (or read about) while I was a teaching assistant at college. It may or may not apply to online text. Hopefully, a tool like Zap Reader will level the playing field. Or not.

Web-Based "Office" Software

Once you've done all your research for a project and are ready to start writing your paper, you have a couple of choices for tools. Typing on a typewriter is obviously something of the past. That leaves using one of the popular word processing tools such as Corel WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, or Open Office (free, and also has spreadsheet and other software included).

With the exception of Open Office, these packages cost money. Sometimes, a word processing program might have been included on your computer when you bought it. But if you are collaborating with another distance student, there's a better option: web-based office software. A web-based word processor allows you to share your document and even collaborate. Just assign "write" access to a document to each virtual team member.

There are actually quite a few contenders, but this time, I'm not favoring Google's. Instead I'm recommending Zohowriter. I find it easy to use, and easy to share files. The interface is sort of a cross between Microsoft Word and an HTML editor for creating web pages. In fact, if you intend to create web pages, you can actually post directly to certain free blogging platforms. Or you can export to a number of formats including HTML, Microsoft Word and others.

Performancing For Firefox (PFF) HTML Editor

On rare occasions, your online studies might require you to create web pages on a type of website known as a weblog. But even if this isn't the case for you, there's a tool that's great for accumulating information from one or more websites, simultaneously, for your research, regardless of how you'll use your finished document. The tool is called PFF, or Performancing ForFirefox.

PFF, which requires the Firefox web browser to function, is one of the simplest yet most versatile HTML editors designed for weblog-style websites (aka blogs). But you can use it to accumulate research and write documents for other purposes.

PFF was created by the guys who founded Performancing, a community website for people who want to make a living writing online for weblog (blog) websites. (Something you might consider after you finish your studies.) PFF was created to give bloggers a robust tool for collecting information, writing articles for web pages (i.e., including formatting and hyperlinks), and then easily publishing them to a variety of blogging platforms.

Keep in mind that the Firefox web browser has "tabbed" browsing, which lets you browse multiple web pages one at a time from a single browser window. PFF uses this to advantage and can be used in three different configurations:

1. From a Firefox tab.
2. From a separate window than the browser.
3. From a pane of the browser window. This pane splits the window in two, vertically.

I regularly use all three forms on a daily basis for a variety of reasons. The form that beats all other HTML editors hands down is the 3rd form, the pane. If you are writing a research paper and need to include quotes and URL references from a web page, you cannot beat this tool. You don't have to be writing for a weblog or website to use it.

You can view your document edit window at the same time as a web page in configuration 3. From there, using your mouse you can highlight text or links from the browser pane and drag and drop the text it into the PFF editor. Any link information will be preserved. Imagine now that you have multiple tabs open in Firefox, each showing a different web page relevant to your research. Consider how quickly you can drag and drop quotes from each page, one at a time, into a single edit window that stays put.

It's incredibly easy to use and time-saving besides. In my ten years as a webmaster and Internet consultant, I've never seen a document editor like it, HTML or otherwise. I research at least 6-8 hours daily, and write 4-8 hours daily. So I use PFF all day long, even if I'm not writing for a weblog or website.

File Sharing Services

Once you have finished your research, maybe you want to share it (or a draft copy) with friends, an instructor, or possibly yourself (between computers). There are loads of file-sharing services, but two that work from within Firefox are GSpace and AllPeers. Both are "drag and share" services, making them very easy to use.

GSpace is incredibly clever in that it takes advantage of the free multiple Gigabytes of storage space that you get when you sign up for a Google GMail account (described earlier, under the "Google Alerts" section). What a brilliant idea. If you are on a computer that for some reason will not let you save files to a diskette, you can install the GSpace extension for Firefox, navigate to the directory that the file is in, login to your GMail account from the GSpace multi-panel window, and drag the file into your account. Or maybe you just want to share files with someone else. If they trust you with their email account password, you can login into it with GSpace and drop in files for storing.

When you check your (or your friend's) GMail account, there will be a new email with details about the saved file, as well as a .ZIP attachment. As long as you do not delete the email, the file will stay saved in your GMail file space. GSpace doesn't keep the shared file in its native form, but rather compresses it into .ZIP format to save space.

AllPeers works similarly, but uses a social network and doesn't require GMail. You can add people under your own group categories (friends, family, colleagues, study team, etc.), tied to their email address. They must be registered with AllPeers with that same email address. (Provided you and they are both registered with AllPeers, and both have the other in your respective AllPeers contact list, you can actually tell when the other person is logged in and using the Firefox browser.) You can select files from your computer and share them with one or more contacts. According to the AllPeers site, there is no file size restriction - something that many free email services have (usually 10 Mb attachment size). In fact, according to the info on their website, you can share hundreds of gigabytes if you want to.

A word to the wise: if you have any sensitive/ private documents, you might not want to use file-sharing services. While they offer some measure of security, anything really sensitive should be encrypted and sent to the intended party by other means.

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Jenna Freedman - Future of Librarians Interview

http://www.degreetutor.com/library/librarians-online/jenna-freedman

Jenna Freedman is the Zine Librarian and coordinates reference services at Barnard Library, she is also a librarian for Radical Reference and blogs at Lower East Side Librarian. But let's pretend for a minute that you were not involved in libraries. How do you personally use the library and search for information in general?

I have access to Columbia University's vast circulating collection, and avail myself regularly of books from Barnard and Columbia. I also check out books, videos, and DVDs from my neighborhood branch of the New York Public Library. I go there almost every Saturday and have their weekly schedule memorized, as I do my 14-digit library card number. I use NYPL primarily for leisure reading and viewing.

I use the electronic resources at Columbia for my professional research and to help friends and family with theirs. (FYI Barnard librarians are not faculty, so my professional research is, in a way, personal in that there is no requirement or reward for publishing, presenting, or contributing to the profession.) I use Barnard and Columbia's resources, and also NYPL's to answer questions for Radical Reference. I often use WorldCat.org to refer to books in email messages about this and that.

As to how I search for and access information in general, I'm sorry to get all reference librarian on you, but it depends on the information I need. In the course of a day I'll use web search engines, search interdisciplinary and subject specific databases, employ IM or the telephone to contact experts, consult reference books (print or online), etc.

In general, what are the most useful features of libraries today?

Same as yesterday and I hope tomorrow - their employees.

What would you say are the most useless features of libraries today and what can libraries do to eliminate them?

Employees that don't live up to librarianship's reputation for good service. Administrators who adopt a business "customer service" or IT "technical support" model. The solution is to remember what libraries are here for and what librarians do better than anyone else - serve the information wants and needs of our communities. We are not here to be slick (though we can be), and we are not here to make money (though donors do seem to favor us over dorm rooms and parking garages). If we remember and prioritize our service mission and design our programs, budgets, and buildings based on that, we should be fine.

Is Web 2.0 technology changing your role as a librarian?

It's just adding to my job description, like everything else. I bet the reference librarians of yesteryear griped when they had to add telephone reference to their list of responsibilities.

Although I do blog, tag and chat, most of the library users with whom I interact (professors and college students at a fairly elite institution affiliated with an Ivy League university, i.e. young, privileged, and smart) don't yet tend to avail themselves of my attention in those ways though. I do have some IM exchanges with students. I've communicated with zinesters and zine researchers, other librarians, and even been contacted by a reporter via or because of my use of MySpace and LiveJournal. However, even with these and other technologies, I don't feel that my role has changed in the six years I've been a librarian. I see my role as being that of listener, teacher, sharer, selector, developer and strategist. I use any and all appropriate tools to accomplish those many goals.

If you had to name a single most important technology to the future of libraries, what would it be? Any additional thoughts on L2, the future of libraries or anything else?

Again, it's not the technologies that are important. It is the people developing, implementing and teaching them. I think technology without humanity is what is going to destroy librarianship. Unless library administrators and communities, as well as society at large can learn to value public service as much as they do shiny new tech tools, the library of the future may replicate the experience of shopping at one of those chain electronics stores where the sales people don't listen; speak only to lie, exaggerate or up-sell; and you can't get a human on the telephone, but maybe their web interface is pretty good. This, rather than a library, where in addition to a good web interface you've got people with genuine people skills and subject expertise, who aren't working on commission.

Thank you Jenna for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. You can keep up with Jenna Freedman at Lower East Side Librarian.

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Michael Hart - Interview on the Future of Libraries

http://www.degreetutor.com/library/librarians-online/michael-hart

Michael Hart invented the eBook, and founded Project Gutenberg, one of the world's largest online collection of free eBooks. Michael, what was your inspiration for starting Project Gutenberg?

Even I would have to say the whole thing was very serendipitous. I learned a bit about one of our local mainframes simply because a good friend was one of the operators, so I used to hang out in the computer room a lot, doing my homework in air conditioned comfort, and because it was closer than going back to my place.

One day I saw one of our favorite patrons come to the little stainless steel window, and because it was too busy a time for anyone to load and run it, he couldn’t get his program run. I volunteered. Everyone, even my best friends, looked at me somewhat in shock. I said, "It is not that hard, is it?" So they asked me how I would do it, then they decided that this was not going to kill the computer, so they let me try. It all worked fine, and I was eventually kind of the first "hitchhiker" on the Internet.

Eventually, however, the big boss operator got worried that I would actually do damage, and insisted that I be given may own account and password; that way I wouldn’t always be logged in with operators' privileges, able to delete all the files, he he. It just so happened that the day this account came through was July 4, 1971, complete with more money in it than I ever dreamed of, something like $100,000. It hit me that I should do something worthy of this much time and effort it took to give a computer account to me.

Instead of walking home after the fireworks, I camped out in the computer room. I pondered the situation, realizing that the hope of me writing program material that would still be around in a decade was slim to none, so I tried out a few ideas of what I could do that would be worth this kind of investment. I had just learned that we were on the Internet, and that we could send files to Berkeley and Harvard and many places in between, but that no one was doing an introductory message such as "What hath God wrought?" as via telegraph, so I decided to try to come up with something that would last like that.

Well, back in 1971 they were already doing things for the upcoming United States Bicentenniel in 1976. Someone had handed me a faux parchment copy of The Declaration of Independence, and, literally, just like in the comics and cartoons, the light went on over my head! I knew that if I typed in The Declaration of Independence that it would never, ever disappear from the Internet. I typed it in that very night, so technically it was July 5, by then, and the file was available for download after that, and that was the beginning of the efforts of Project Gutenberg, every year some new "History of Democracy" file was added for the rest of the 70's, and not always by me, either. The snowball had started down the mountain.

What are the major differences between Google Book Search and Project Gutenberg?

The major differences are that Project Gutenberg eBooks are yours to own, to edit as you see fit, to create new editions from, read in any font you choose, in any color you choose, any margins you choose and a host of other variables that are under your control. With Google's eBooks, it's more like reading over someone's shoulders - you pretty much have to leave most of the control to them. (I hear that Google has constantly been promising changes to some things of this nature, but I haven't actually seen the results). Also, Google does not provide a catalog of their eBooks. They don't copyright research on their eBooks. They don't make it trivial to download their books. They don't proofread their eBooks -

Why would proofreading be necessary if Google is just scanning print books into digital form?

Google eBooks do not have the integrity of a single work, they are in fact two indpendent works, one a graphicial/pictoral representation and the other the actual kind of computer text we are all used to in the email. These are not at all the same. You can't search the text in a picture. A picture of a book is NOT an eBook. I like to quote Magritte's famous painting here: Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe), under a depicted pipe.

What Google does is to make a quick and easy scan of the books, and then make a quick and dirty OCR pass [Optical Character Recognition] but then instead of cleaning up the OCR output as Project Gutenberg does with the army of Distributed Proofreaders volunteers and others, instead Google's solution was to write a "fuzzy search engine" that would put up with the sloppy full text file created by their OCR programs.

This is why they didn't want people to download their files, it would be all to easy to see where the discrepancies were, and to realize that the Google Print Library or Google Book Search wasn't up to snuff, when it's compared to the eBooks that were already populating the Internet.

After Project Gutenberg initially set the standard for 99.9% accuracy in for the first edition of an eBook, The Library of Congress raised it for their own later operations to 99.95%, and later Project Gutenberg raised it again to 99.975% and we are currently working to get to 99.99%. As time goes on, we hope to keep moving to an increasing accuracy level. However, from Google's point of view it is much easier just to leave the quick and dirty OCR output.

Project Gutenberg eBooks are designed to be completely searchable end to end with any search engines, used with any word processor, cut and paste should work into emails, research papers, or what have you...and would be an easy source material for new paper editions or eBooks. Google has intentionally avoided all these valuable considerations for a more "Limited Distribution" philosophy that kept too many of their eBooks out of circulation, from being quoted, etc.

Remember, Google eBooks are TWO entities. . .one is an unproofread e-text output of their OCR transcription program, the other is a set of graphic files that usually number one for each page, are much more difficult for the user to download, store, recall, etc. than a plain text eBook with a single book in a single file that can be read, quoted, edited, etc. by a vast majority of the hardware and software combinations out there.

Try downloading "The Balcony Scene" from Shakepeare's Romeo and Juliet - from both Project Gutenberg and Google Book Search, and you'll see.

It will take me only a minute...I got it on the first Google hit by searching "Project Gutenberg" "Romeo and Juliet" "wherefore art thou". Now, just think of how much time it would take to do the same thing from a graphical representation where you had to retype or OCR their files!!! This didn't even take me a minute to find, highlight, cut and paste!!! That is what eBooks should be all about. . . .

You should own your own eBooks, correct any errors you find, cut & paste the entire play into a script for your own production, and so on.

Even with Google Book search, Project Gutenberg is still necessary, more than ever, because Project Gutenberg wants you to own the library in the same sense you can now own your own computer, or "supercomputer" as most of the computers being sold today would have been considered supercomputers not that long ago. Today you can add a brand new terabyte drive to any computer for under $400 as an internal drive, or a few dollars more in an external box. This is enough to hold a million eBooks without using compression, two and half million with the best compression.

A million books!

And there have been a million books freely available on the Internet, perhaps for the last two years or longer. Before The Gutenberg Press the average person could own zero books. Before Project Gutenberg the average person could own zero libraries, speaking only of the words, of course, not the physical entity or the library staff, etc.

Would you say Project Gutenberg inspired Google Book Search?

I got an email or phone call from most or all of the various eBook projects around the world, asking for advice. This goes all the way back to The World Library [the first eBook CD] which was my honor to present at the 1990 ALA Midwinter Conference in Chicago along with various other aspects of eBook presentation, Project Gutenberg, etc. It also includes Voyager, the first model commercial eBook vendor with classic modern books such as Jurassic Park.

I gave them all friendly advice, and if Google had taken my advice the whole legal copyright suit issue probably would not have come up, nor the huge redefinitions of their projects as Google Print Library to Google Book Search, since their early philosophy was definitely not print and not library. I quote from their public response to these issues: "Google Book Search is a means for helping users discover books, not to read them online and/or download them."

It was obviously a commercial endeavor from the outset, and if they had made a serious attempt to show the publishers that they were trying to sell books for them to a wide public audience, perhaps that would have ameliorated situations that soon went out of control and into the lawsuit arena. The trouble is that Google wanted to pretend to be a public library without an equally sufficient effort to BE a public library, so it was all to obvious, sadly to say, that their real goal was more that of a commercial library. If they had gone either way, much more public library or much more commercial, or even both, with two separate projects, I think they could have made it.

As it was, there were too many obvious shortcomings, and not just shortcomings in the traditional sense, but obvious attempts to sabotage efforts of readers, so the readers could neither read the average Google book, nor even download a small portion to read.

The limitations placed on the readers were just too great, and when combined a bit with their huge media campaign of December 14, 2004, in which every medium I could find was saturated with what appeared to be a new public eLibrary from the likes of Oxford, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, NYPL, etc, well, the seeds of a great disappointment were sewn.

With free eBooks online from Project Gutenberg, are libraries still important?

It is not that I think libraries are not important, I would like to think that they will change as much due to eBooks as they did via The Gutenberg Press; i.e., there will be more eBooks in periods of 50 years after eBooks showed up than paper books, just as when Gutenberg books arrived, there were more paper books published in the next 50 years than all the manuscripts of previous history. In addition, with the advent of RAMsticks, thumbdrives, etc. and terabyte hard drives for under $400, I think "Personal Computers" are rapidly evolving into "Personal Libraries."

Personally, I think that libraries containing music, movies, etc, as they have for decades now, is no different from containing eBooks. After all, the discs are the same, only the bits are different. I think that the library should preserve whatever the current media used, and that this obviously has changed throughout history I am quite certain the same kinds of conversations took place when it was the change from stone tables to clay tablets, or clay to papyrus, or to linen, rag, or what we call "paper" today. We still use the phrase "written in stone" to emphasize a huge truth, but when is the last time you heard of anyone really going to stones, when searching for the original text?

We have "books" from the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Chinese - not to mention that so many of these came to us through Arabic, Arabic numerals included, not to mention the great libraries of the Moors in Spain that gave us so many of the classics in science and literature. However, the authors of those "books" would not recognize our books just as books in the future will not be as physical as before - just as our books today aren't as physical as ancient tablets, scrolls, etc. were.

How will libraries change in the next 50 years?

The changes will be so great, just as The Gutenberg Press changes, that there will be forces at work beyond what perhaps anyone other than myself will even try to say today. However, my own predictions are measured in terms of 2021 which is the 50th anniversary of doing The Declaration of Independence. Let's just say that there will be 10 million public domain eBooks, if not more, by 2021.

Now here's the kicker: automated translation is a new factor that will be introduced by 2021, one that will convert those 10 million public domain eBooks into 100 languages, thus creating, in terms of sheer number of volumes, a library larger than any the world has yet considered, A Billion Book Library and and eBooks in this library will all be free of charge, if I can manage it. Of course, by then I predict there will also be petabyte drives at a cost the average computer owner can afford, that will hold these billion books, should anyone want to own the entire library.

Of course, at this moment, there is more resistance to translation by machine than I would have liked to see, and even more to adding 100 languages to the list they are working on. But I have my hopes, and I intend to do all I can to encourage the machine translation industry to use Project Gutenberg eBooks for a test bed, and to encourage each project to add one more language.

And how will these changes affect librarians?

Well, I can remember when librarians thought film was the greatest and latest thing they had to offer, and when many of them refused, or were simply unable, to work the various projectors, so, library "audio-visual" assistants were added. I can also recall when this same sort of thing happened with the telephone and certain members of the library staff who were more comfortable with the telephones ended up taking care of that end of things. Most people don't see that kind of turmoil, but it happens with almost every huge change in technology, it's just usually kept behind the scenes.

However, the computer revolution is going even faster than phones, movies, or anything other than music's switch from vinyl to CD and the result is that these changes are becoming more obvious.

No one I know has been talking about terabyte drives, and I say it loudly and clearly that they should have been, and should talk now about how long it will be to petabyte drives. Why? Because every word ever published could be stored on one petabyte. Now that is a library! Point is that individuals can download a million book files today, without undue expense to the average household budget.

Thank you very much Michael for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. You can learn more about downloading free eBooks online at Project Gutenberg.

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Daniel Lee - Future of Librarians Interview

http://www.degreetutor.com/library/librarians-online/daniel-lee

Daniel Lee is a Research Librarian at Navigator Ltd, a research-based strategy firm, and is President-Elect for the Toronto Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. For those who don't know you, could you talk a little bit about your background?

Sure. Prior to joining Navigator, I was the Internet Content Coordinator at the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS). Before CIPS, I was the Research Coordinator for the Marketing and Communications department at Knowledge House, a Halifax-based e-learning software company. I have a Master of Library and Information Studies degree from Dalhousie University and I also have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and Portuguese from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Let's pretend for a minute that you weren't involved in libraries. How do you personally use the library, search for and access information?

My main interaction with libraries outside work is using the public system. My local branch of the Toronto Public Library (1 of 99 branches) is amazing. I am there all the time browsing the shelves, taking out books, movies, magazines, etc. And TPL has a great online system for holding items and having them delivered to your local branch for pickup. I also access their Virtual Reference Library online for personal resource recommendations and research.

I primarily search for and access information using the Web. If the Web fails me, I go to either my own personal print collection or the one I manage at work. Failing that, I turn to one of my colleagues for assistance. Instant messaging is great for that. I have a crew of experts in various fields on my contact list who are only one instant message away.

What are the most useful features of libraries today?

The librarians and inter-library loan. I am finding that there is a refreshing attitude of fun and experimentation out there in libraryland. Many of my colleagues recognize the chaotic world we live in and the difficulties to be surmounted in delivering quality products and services to their users. Their approach is to experiment with new ways of working and I love that. Libraries are buildings and they don't do anything - it's the librarians and staff that make things happen in any library. They are what's most useful.

Why inter-library loan? Because it's an underused service that can open up an entire world of print and electronic information, if you just ask for it. If my branch doesn't have what I'm looking for, they'll get it for me - and it's usually free!

What are the most useless features of libraries today, and what can libraries do to eliminate them?

The librarian who cannot utter the words, "I don't know." I travel around North American fairly regularly and I make it a point to stop into the local branch of the public library wherever I am. I also make it a point to ask a reference question at the reference desk to see how my colleagues respond. Call it my own secret shopper program. I am always amazed by the number of professionals out there who flub their way through a response just to appear intelligent instead of simply saying, "I'm not really sure. Let's go take a look." In my opinion, it's doing a serious disservice to users to point them in a direction that will end up being a goose chase because of one's own pride.

Most OPACs suck. There are a number of librarians out there who have had enough with vendors and have decided to take matters into their own hands. While not everyone can build their own OPAC from the ground up, this work is inspirational and we, as a profession, should aspire to learn the skills required to take back the OPAC! Of course, the ultimate is to work towards integrating the various systems in a library of which, the OPAC is only a part, but considering most people out there are increasingly more comfortable doing their own research and go to the library's website and then the catalog, the OPAC should, without fail, lead people to what they're looking for.

What are the biggest challenges to libraries, and librarians' jobs. How can these challenges be overcome?

Fiscal ignorance (i.e. money is not manna from heaven - it's a line item in a budget usually approved by a bureaucrat, politician or CFO), invisibility, lack of metrics to put a value on information, lack of research from the practitioner community and a lack of access to published research in the library science field. Politically saavy librarians are successful librarians. I have often found there is a huge disconnect in librarians' understanding of where their funding comes from. And it's shocking to me when my colleagues say, "But I don't understand they they are closing my library." Or, "Why has my budget been cut?" I don't have the answer for the research aspect, but I would suggest that bring the practitioner community more into the research that is happening at the universities would certainly help. And I am thrilled to see open journals appearing like Evidence Based Library and Information Practice. This opens up avenues for practitioners who wish to contribute to the intellectual capital of the profession without having to return to the unversity or joining a faculty as an adjunct.

What does Library 2.0 mean to you?

To me Library 2.0 means users interacting with library-related websites they visit, generating their own content that blends seamlessly.

Why are librarians still important?

The infoverse is becoming increasingly complex and we put structure where there is chaos. This is what we have always done and what we will always continue to do. It's sense making. This combined with our service orientation makes us the perfect fit for tackling the infoglut that's out there right now - both online and offline.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights on librarianship with us.

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