Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
The introduction of microprocessor based computer systems in the 1980s, combined
with the increased connectivity of college campuses to the Internet, led to a transi-
tion from large scale, mainframe-based technologies to low-cost distributed systems,
making it possible for widespread access to and use of scientifi c data. The wiring of
universities for the Internet connectivity was a prerequisite for receiving data via, for
example, the Unidata Internet Data Distribution System and the Local Data Manager,
which use Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communication
standards for data transport.
The advent of the World Wide Web (or simply the web) in the 1990s brought
about a revolution in information services. It was directly responsible not only for the
explosive growth of the Internet and increasing its numbers of users, it also accom-
modated the ability to provide interactive, remote services. In the process, the web
radically transformed the sharing of data and information and resulted in greater use
of communication infrastructures to create and store information and then to deliver
it from providers to end users. The web also brought with it a massive proliferation
of online educational materials, many of them based around extensive use of interac-
tive services. Services and tools were created to help one communicate, search for
information and data, and make information and data available on the Internet. In the
process, library services evolved from local traditional collections to global resources
provided on demand via the web, ushering in the era of digital libraries.
The 1995 NSF-sponsored Digital Libraries Workshop entitled “Interoperability,
Scaling, and the Digital Library Research Agenda” defi ned digital libraries as: “An
organized collection of multimedia data with information management methods that
represent the data as information and knowledge.”
Even though effi cient retrieval of information is arguably the most important role
of digital libraries, a potentially even more valuable contribution of digital libraries
is their ability to preserve, catalog, and curate information, extend discourse, build
communities that provide richer contexts for people to interact with information and
each other, all toward the creation of new knowledge. According to Griffi n (1998), the
real value of digital libraries may ultimately prove to be their ability to “alter the way
individuals, groups, organizations etc, behave, communicate, collaborate, and conduct
business.” In essence, digital libraries, much like other aspects of the web, are becom-
ing powerful instruments of change in education and research.
The digital library era has also spawned a movement toward open access to schol-
arly literature. Suber (2003) defi nes open-access literature as one which is digital,
online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions, whereas
the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), an international effort to make research
articles in all fi elds freely available on the Internet, provides a slightly different defi ni-
tion: “literature with free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to
read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles,
crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other law-
ful purpose, without fi nancial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable
from gaining access to the Internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and
distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is to give authors control
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search