The Problem of Access in Contributor-Run Digital Libraries
The advent of digital libraries (DLs) inspired Utopian thinking in their early advocates. Among the virtues of these on-line collections, developers cited novel modes of presenting materials (Hauptmann et al. 1995), new ways to do research (Sperberg-McQueen 1994), and more efficient means of
collection management (Arms 1995).
In other words, the idea of access was central to digital library utopianism. Insofar as they enabled computers to digest large quantities of data into meaningful forms (whether by divorcing content from material, by representing semantics in full-text databases, or by automating authentication and acquisition protocols) DLs, their proponents argued, offered
users a new form and degree of access to information.
While in large part these promises were accurate, practice has shown that DLs complicate the idea of access even while furthering its cause. Access has proven to be an active pursuit; merely placing materials on-line does not make them accessible in any meaningful way. Moreover, providing access implies an a priori definition of information that binds the user. For example, information retrieval technologies depend on a collection's definition of what constitutes a document--will we represent documents by key words, abstracts, full text? Thus providing access is inherently a matter of
representation (Furnas et al. 1987). As a type of representation, access can be understood as a form of useful exclusion; we show users what they want by hiding everything else. Thus the question of art becomes, "who does the excluding?"
Understanding access has entered a new phase in light of a recent development: the appearance of contributor-run digital libraries (Jones 2002). In contrast to traditional libraries (either physical or digital), contributor-run DLs solicit their users to perform tasks usually performed by administrators or librarians. Services such as Slashdot, Epinions, and Amazon enlist their readers to write, catalog, and review the information they provide. By loosening the reins on document representation and collection development, contributor-run DLs change the answer to the question, who does the representing? Whereas traditional libraries rely on administrators to represent the collection, contributor-run DLs rely on democratic data representation.
This paper describes the recent redesign of Ibiblio.org, a digital library that depends on its users to create, catalogue, and manage its collection. In particular, we describe the design and use of Ibiblio's collection management software, which uses author-generated metadata to provide access to information. We argue that allowing users to run their own library is useful, especially insofar as the practice admits a democratic, bottom-up definition of access.