Mumbai

I recently attended a digital library conference in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India (http://www.icim2005.org/).  I gave a tutorial, mostly about FRBR, that didn't elicit much response at the time, although a former IFLA Fellow emailed me later saying she was inspired to start some FRBR research because of the talk.  I also gave a plenary talk which seemed to resonate with the audience, although I shared the time with a man who actually controls some federal money (and has firm ideas on how it should be spent), which is always strong competition.

The main theme of the plenary talk was the progression of digitization from the data itself, to metadata, reference works, journals, and now books.  A librarian told me a story that put this in some perspective:  When she attended library school in 1990 they were taught about Medline and other online search services.  I assume with little or no actual use of the services themselves (it reminded me of being in library school in the US in 1970 trying to learn and program in COBOL with no access to a computer!).    At the time she thought how useless it was -- she was sure there was no way she would ever be able to afford such services.   Now, online searching is what she does all day as a librarian.  In fact, with projects such as the Million Book Project, it can be expected that a lot of the digitization of books will be in India.

The progressive digitization of materials has had a large impact on scholarly communication in the developed world as it becomes easier and faster to get information.  It must be having even more impact on the less developed world as, in only a decade, they go from only very limited access to information to access that approaches ours.

Of course what people really want to do is talk to each other.  One of the delegates told the story of seeing a manual laborer working outside his home pause from his landscaping job, reach into his pocket and pull out a cell phone.  Here is someone, probably working for $2/day, that finds it possible to have a cell phone!  In fact, cell phones (and their use) were in constant use during the conference.  In the past I've found it annoying when a cell phone rings during a talk, but once you've heard twenty of them ring during one talk, it just becomes accepted.

--Th