ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 4 9 8 /C & R L News Ownership and access: A new idea of "collection"The W ay i See It By Michael Gorman Integrating electronic resources into the collection A ccess not ow nership” always had more o f the bum per sticker than of insight about it. This slogan, so popular at the water point of digital hype, derived from a business practice known as “in time, not in case.” The idea was that the actual physical presence of spare parts and the like in expen­ sive on-site warehouse space was immaterial and the only thing that mattered was their avail­ ability w hen needed. (It is worth noting that strategic strikes paralyzed large parts of the auto industry w hen the “in time, not in case” phi­ losophy was put into practice.) In any event, the equation of library materials with widgets and libraries with warehouses should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. As in most such cases, the analogy with business was faulty and shallow and the importance to li­ brary users of accessible physical collections remained unexplored. There is an arrogant elitism in the whole “v irtu a l lib r a r y ” idea; an elitism that says, irrespective of As anyone with the slightest feel for library service will tell US, ownership more often than not equals availability equals unqualified access. th e d esire s o f li­ brary users, elec­ tr o n ic s to ra g e , transm ission, and access will be their only available re­ course. As anyone with the slightest feel for library service will tell us, ownership more often than not equals availability equals unqualified access. The time has come to look upon library materials as di­ vided into the classes of available and not avail­ h able; to cherish physical collections because they meet real needs and make possible a va­ riety of services; and to integrate electronic re­ sources into our idea of “collection.” The card catalog had many defects. Perhaps the greatest of these was its division of materi­ als into two irrelevant (to the user) classes. The igcha-r d catalog, in effect, said, “This library owns (or believes it owns) this item”—a response that did not address the user’s implicit ques­ tion, which was, of course, “Can I have this item?” Online systems, in marrying circulation and cataloging records, are a great improve­ ment, not because o f their form (electronic) but because of their responsiveness to real user needs. The time has come, it seems to me, to redefine the idea of “collection” and to rethink the ways in which users gain access to docu­ ments in the redefined “collection.” The modern library collection Looked at from the point of view of availabil­ ity, a modern library collection has four main components: 1) Tangible objects (books, sound record­ ings, videos, etc.) ow ned by the library and h o u se d in the li­ brary. 2) I n ta n g ib le e le c tro n ic d o c u ­ m e n ts ( o n CD- ROMs,. mounted on the library’s com ­ puters, etc.) owned by the library and available without a fee at terminals connected to the library’s sys­ tems. 3) Tangible objects owned by other librar­ ies and available through interlibrary loan and other resource-sharing systems. M ich a el G o rm a n is d e a n o f library services a t C a lifo rn ia State University, Fresno; e-m ail: m ichaelg@ csufresno.edu mailto:michaelg@csufresno.edu J u ly/A u g u s t 1 9 9 7 / 4 9 9 The equation of library materials with widgets and libraries with warehouses should have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing. 4) Intangible electronic documents owned and maintained by other agencies and available electronically for a fee or without payment. It is evident that the first tw o categories are the likely first choice of most library users— they have the merit of being instantly available (in most cases) and free. They are also listed in the online catalog or, in the case of the second class, somewhere else in the library’s integrated system. Increasingly, information about classes 3 and 4 is available in online systems through connections to databases as diverse as the OCLC online union catalog, Melvyl, CARL, ERIC, etc. Many systems are also giving their patrons easy access to the Web. Given the ready accessibil­ ity of these four concentric circles o f library materials, the discussion o f w hat constitutes a “collection” becom es som ew hat metaphysical. From an accountant’s point o f view, a “collec­ tion” consists of items bought and paid for; from the librarian’s and, most important, the library user’s point o f view, the “collection” is that universe of materials that is readily and freely available. The keys to availability and the factors that m ake this new definition of collection possible are bibliographic control and preservation. Li­ brarians have mastered the art of bibliographic control for the tangible objects they ow n and have built complex systems to make the w here­ abouts of those objects known. We have also m ade great strides in the preservation of frag­ ile materials and, by virtue of our stewardship, have ensured that the recorded know ledge and information of the past and present will be avail­ able to future generations. Are w e up to the challenge of extending that bibliographic con­ trol and preservation to electronic documents? I believe so, if w e have the necessary determi­ nation, organization, and confidence. ■ (Midas coni, fr o m page 469) C om m ent: A p l a c e c a ll e d c y b e r i a New nations express themselves first by writ­ ing a constitution, and then by founding a na­ tional library to define a national culture and literature. By 2030 new forms of community and modes of education will evolve, reflecting the increasing cultural diversity o f civil society and new economic conditions. How will these new communal forms reinvent the library to manage their knowledge currencies— as a func­ tion or as a place, or both? Cyberia, that is, the new social forms and communities w hich are taking shape within computer mediated communication,4 may pro­ vide a hom e for a new kind of public place which might deserve to be called a library in this sociological sense. Even today there are promising experiments in network-based com­ munities, including: the collaboratory experi­ ments sponsored by the National Science Foun­ dation; game spaces, such as Lambda Moo; Web pages, lists, and e-mail used as social glue by social movements such as Greenpeace. New media might serve as a m edium of public education as 18th-century art once did, art historian Barbara Stafford argues, but only if they are linked to “com mon rituals and pu b ­ lic concerns.”5 This is precisely what libraries have done for print in creating public spaces, and by shaping collections that reflect commu­ nity interests and concerns. This has yet to be done for digital information and cannot be ac­ complished by markets alone. Notes 1. Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Ba­ bel,” Ficciones (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 84. 2. Walter Wriston, The Twilight o f Sover­ eignty (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), xii. 3. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Vir­ tues a n d the Creation o f Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). 4. Arturo Escobar, “Welcome to Cyberia,” Current Anthropology 35 (June 1994), 211-31. 5. Barbara Maria Stafford, A rtfu l Science: Enlightenment, E ntertainm ent a n d the Eclipse o f Visual Education (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984), 311. ■