PANEL ON MEETING THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE

AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE (ASIS) AND THE GLOBAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE (GII)

Marjorie M.K. Hlava

President, Access Innovations, Inc.
Albuquerque, NM 87196
Immediate Past President
American Society for Information Science
tnaccessi@technet.nm.org

INTRODUCTION

What kind of GII is needed? How can it be established? We have a prototype for the Global Information Infrastructure - the Internet. The ideal GII is an infrastructure that enables near universal and global access. It would be idealistic to have universal access to the individual home or workplace. In fact, not every-one needs or wants such access. It is more realistic to think of universal access through such public institutions as libraries. The priorities for implementation should be established based on local social and economic imperatives. What is appropriate for the United States is not appropriate for nations with a different telecommunications and different cultural basis. These priorities are subject to intense debate due to the multitude of perspectives, backgrounds, current usage methodologies, and the future possible usage of each group. Just as a group of Western researchers has different needs than a group of businessmen, the uses of information will vary by country, culture, age, profession, and so on. What we are sure of is that ready or easy access to reliable information is the cornerstone of a free world. Those who hold the information hold the power.

ASIS is considerably less concerned with physical aspects such as technical specifications (e.g., twisted pair vs. fiber optic vs. wireless) than with what content is available, under what conditions, and with what restrictions. This information must be available, and there must be a way to organize it so that potential users can sort through it to get the items necessary for their use.

We believe that one of the main strengths of the current Internet-type systems is that no central, preordained plan dictated either the form or the content. This phenomena probably best explains the robust vitality of the system. It appears to have the flexibility to meet an extremely wide range of needs. The lack of a top down direction has led to a considerably more responsive, flexible, and innova-tive system.

Current initiatives, for example, are leading toward a national botanical data-base, with volunteer contributors willingly dividing the task and contributing to the entirety. Other similar all-encompassing tasks are being divided as well for faster accomplishments, leading to greater and more widespread knowledge transfer, which enhances the overall depth and breadth of the system.

The U.S. sector of the information superhighway system has been and will continue to be built, owned, and operated by the private sector; it is not an omni-bus government system. Government has supplied a vision -research funding- and an environment of minimal regulation.

This model was based on the ARPANET and later NSFNET, and it is now a worldwide network of individually owned nodes. Sometimes a university owns the network, other times another kind of organization does. This model has worked perhaps uniquely well in the United States and should probably be consi-dered elsewhere. A system that enables extensive commercial, for-profit utiliza-tion will be able to maintain the support personnel necessary to enable extensive government and public interest utilization without interruption. One that depends on government funding and grants will be forever at the mercy of politics.

However, there is another aspect to an effective global information infrastruc-ture that is necessary. We were fortunate to have Anne Wells Branscomb, a noted communications and computer attorney, who coined the term information infrastructure in 1976, speak at our 1994 annual meeting. A couple of relevant quotes from Anne's presentation follow:

A genuine marketplace of information products cannot be sustained without the existence of a fairly sophisticated and mature legal system that guarantees proprietary rights to the producers and processors of information products and the providers of information services. The legal tools for protecting proprietary information are expensive and complicated.

Today less and less information seems to come to us from public funds and private philanthropy. More and more information is offered as a commercial product for which direct compensation must be paid by the user. In other words, information is not free. Public/private cooperation is necessary in the U.S. model. And, based on experience, the large producers of information, the private providers (including the Dialog databases), universities, and many others, whether U.S. or non-U.S. owned, will not make their information products and services available absent a set of legal safeguards. These safeguards are probably a crucial element in any global information infrastructure, and we have not begun to work out this entire set of issues to date. Historically, at least for the United States, we have experienced this cooperation every time there have been major breakthroughs in the information industry. The Carnegie libraries, the work of Hanns Peter Lunn for indexes, the COSATI, and the development of the first online systems are a few examples of government-private sector cooperation that have benefited everyone. Local, grass-roots, cooperative activities will provide the basis for a flexible, long-lasting, effective global information infrastructure.

What are the possible funding sources to support GII development? Of necessity, any response to this question is probably nationally biased. Funding sources and traditions vary around the world. Foundations and governments can supply seed moneys for vision and research. Corporations probably must supply the major investment capital. This means they must see a potential payback. A GII does not appear to satisfy the most basic human needs (food, shelter), nor does it supply the infrastructure needed for a higher standard of living such as electricity or good roads. Therefore, most governments around the world now and for the foreseeable future will probably not have the resources to justify this sort of investment. Again quoting from Anne Branscombe, if you read between the lines of the Clinton Administration's efforts to define a national information infrastructure, although there is an admonition to the private sector to link schools, libraries, and hospitals to the information superhighway and offer lifeline services to the needy, the primary purpose of the NII is to assure a global competitive advantage to the United States in the global economic marketplace.

The world may not have the collective will to provide universal service. It will be a long time before the private sector looks upon the aborigines in Australia as an attractive market opportunity, but we have the tools currently available to provide satellite-delivered mobile access to the global infobahn. It is currently estimated that information and communication, which now constitutes 9% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), will rise to 18% - 20% in the next five to 10 years. Usage fees or taxes, where appropriate, on this volume of usage can be used to leverage private-sector investments in infrastructure. In the United States it is proving advantageous to tolerate, even encourage, less desira-ble inhabitants on the networks (entertainment, even pornography) to generate support and funding for the more desired inhabitants (research, civic participation business, etc.). The French have had pornography on the MINITEL for years.

What are the three most significant and identifiable trends related to the use of NIT (New Information Technology) in libraries and information centers?

ASIS members are active in spreading knowledge of means, methods, resour-ces, and approaches for information internationally. It has a small scholarship program (Project Infoshare) for individuals from developing countries to receive ASIS membership, including all publications.

It has an active listserve, ASIS-L, for members and nonmembers alike to debate subjects of common interest. It sponsors joint meetings with others, for example, the International On-line Meeting, and in the near future will have a joint meeting with FID.

In light of the current information and communications environment, what is the top three most urgent agenda items?

DISCUSSIONS
 

[Marjorie Hlava]

Transfers to the year of 2000 as we [information industry] see them, are:

[Woody Horton]

Margie, I am asking this question from the vantage point of a CIO (Chief Infor-mation Officer) of a company. From all the statistics which you quoted for us, are we talking about external information flows that are sold as products and services in the marketplace? We are not talking, I assume, about internal infor-mation flows. Is that correct? Otherwise, you have left the entire MIS/DP equation out, if that is correct. This is not a criticism, but I merely want to make sure where you are coming from.

[Marjorie Hlava]

Yes, it is correct.

[Robert Hayes]

I'd like to follow up on that question. The data I have suggest that we deal with at most a third of the information flow. But, more importantly than that is that the market for commercial products is generated by those internal management information systems. Therefore, the relationship between the two is an important one, and these are not independent activities. May I however turn to your trans-parency showing the rate of growth for full text is 500%. There were so many questions generated that I'd like to ask at least some of them. One is that you mix oranges and apples, because you have all the media distribution, file distribution, and subject distribution combined in the same chart. In my analytical way, I would try to separate them out. The second thing though, which you pointed out, is that the rate of growth of medicine in particular has tailed off. I am very in-terested in seeing what that growth curve looks like, and particularly whether that will correlate with the curve of growth in other related areas, for example, whe-ther the use of CD-ROMs in the medical areas will drop off in the similar way.

[Marjorie Hlava]

Bob, I don't have the statistics on the information industry database provider side with me now, but I shall be happy to share with you. They show very little profit to the "owner" of the data. Comments on changing from connect pricing to unit pricing, or flat pricing structures is difficult to do.

[Woody Horton]

I just want to make one more point. Frankly I have been rather disappointed that the MIS/DP community and the information industry, and the library and infor-mation science community, have not been able to get together and explore more constructively and systematically the risk and opportunities that are presented by the new information technologies. These are more than just functional interrela-tionships; business opportunities are involved. I think that each community has something of value to offer to the others. I just lament the fact. So, this is more by way of my anguish that the groups never seem to get together in a more con-structive and carefully formulated way.

[Marjorie Hlava]

The truth is that they do get together, but they can't chat in a professional forum. This is really what you are asking for.

[Richard Quandt]

Thank you all very much. I shall now hand over the chair to Ching-chih Chen with thanks for inviting me to this wonderful conference, and I will rush to catch a train.

[Ching-chih Chen]

Thank you, Richard, for being so incredibly supportive throughout these past two days. Have a wonderful trip back to Princeton. Let's all thank Richard for his very substantive contribution to our meeting.