Manchester Electronic Branch Library

Letter of Invitation

Being sent to organizations in the Manchester community.

Suggested List of Some Records and Resources

for a Manchester Electronic Branch Library

Sampling of Electronic Libraries on the WWW

With publications and website work done by Barry Chad, Asst. Head, Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Some "Information Age" Terms and Their Meanings

Introduction

Familiarity with the ways of the Web teaches that the Web constantly transforms itself, from month to month, week to week, day to day. Not unstable, not merely changing, but rather, protean: a creative and democratic frontier where no one--not Sony, not Disney, not even the Library of Congress--has the last word on the organization and presentation of information.

Amidst the babel of images and text that is the Web, its single most important feature is the ability to provide content, readily, to those in need of it. In doing this, in providing real content on the Web today, no one model is the ideal; all models are experiments.

It is such an experiment that Information Renaissance and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh are embarked upon--an attempt to map Manchester in space and in time.

What follows is an outline of how, it is hoped, this project will proceed. What follows is a librarian's conceptualization of this website. This librarian possesses a decent organizing sense, a growing sense of the resources available, an increasing sense of how those resources might meet real needs, and a developing sense of how the technology can be shaped to accommodate the organization of the resources to meet those needs.

Creating a "Manchester Electronic Branch Library"

1. Ascertain what information exists.
(See Suggested List of Records and Resources for some of the kinds of materials being sought.) In the course of their lives organizations and individuals create many kinds of records. Often, materials which serve an important and useful purpose at one time later fall into obscurity and neglect only to be found to have valuable informational value in later years. The ephemera of today becomes the historic memorabilia of tomorrow.
This step is geared simply towards determining what kind of resources organizations and individuals possess--without infringing on their privacy--and whether they are interested in making such resources generally and more widely available.

2. What is the nature and quality of the information?
Simple assessment of what is usable and of interest--either to the institution or to the general public.

3. With an eye towards "the big picture," organize materials within each collection but being aware of how it all fits together into a portrait of Manchester.
This website will be a human construct whose final shape will be determined by the end-user and the interface.

4. Prepare and train members of the community to undertake the inputting and maintaining of databases. Share the skills acquired.
An important goal of Information Renaissance is to empower communities to develop technological skills.

5. Digitize material and create databases.
In-house and out-source. Much work can be accomplished by individuals entering text by hand or by scanning and digitizing. Extensive resources need to be out-sourced because of how labor-intensive such work can be.

6. Attach these databases to a GIS map of Manchester.
Initially, the library will be constructed using "traditional" webpages much like that you are now viewing. However, the long-term goal is to create a "map" of Manchester based on geographic information system (GIS) software which will enable Manchester to be explored "virtually" not only in space, but in time as well. Such a map, shaped by "themes," can be made to highlight and search for "churches," "businesses", "streets," "house ownership," and similar features of the human landscape. In addition, these various themes can be organized by year as well. Thus, it would be possible to gain a snapshot of Manchester's churches in 1880 or in 1920, to read sermons (if they still exist) delivered in Manchester churches in 1880 or in 1920. The information in GIS is organized by databases and can reside on more than one server--a distributed system. In this way, no one organization or institution would be cornering the market on Manchester information, but all would be contributing to the big picture

7. Create a user-interface over the Web, and using standard query language, create webpages on-the-fly from the databases.
Thus the webpages become dynamic, rather than static. They are tailored/customized to the needs of the searcher.

Postscript: The Issue for Librarians

Throughout the history of libraries, librarians have been organizers and keepers of information. With the advent of computers, databases and the Internet, it is crucial that, in addition to their traditional roles, librarians be creators, packagers and distributors of information as well. In these early years of the "Information Age," libraries and librarians have resigned themselves to be purchasers of information--often with only a begrudged and patronized input into the systems and designs they are paying for. By abdicating to the information industry their traditional roles and the roles afforded them by the new technology, librarians, as we have known them, are certainly sealing their fate. For librarians the issue raised by this Manchester project is whether they can make good on the claims of social responsibility that have repeatedly been made on behalf of public libraries in America.

Further Reflection on this Project.