INFORMATION RETRIEVAL'S FOURTH PHASE THE ENDUSER by ROGER K. SUMMIT
Address delivered at Information Institute Santa Barbara, California May 7, 1982
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL'S FOURTH PHASE - THE ENDUSER
ABSTRACT Online information retrieval has enjoyed phenomenal growth over the past ten years as librarians and information specialists from government, industry, and academic libraries incorporated this new technology into their portfolio of reference services. We appear to be entering the fourth (and final?) phase of this revolution with the emergence of the enduser; i.e., the non-librarian doing online searching for his or her own account. The causes and implications of enduser searching are explored with regard to libraries, information retrieval service companies, the professional community, and our education system. These implications are far-reaching and possibly traumatic as society adjusts to the information age.
INFORMATION RETRIEVAL'S FOURTH PHASE - THE ENDUSER
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with online information retrieval services, allow me to provide a brief description of this relatively recent technology.
Online information retrieval was one of the first examples of
the application of large-scale digital computers and random access disk storage to a field outside of engineering, mathematics and accounting. field is reference librarianship.
This
Information retrieval service companies
reprocess databases to create indexes and file structures which when associated with retrieval languages they develop and maintain, allow librarians and others to identify, according to content, and list out desired subsets of records from the files. These files can be accessed using a terminal or personal computer connected to the computer by way of an ordinary telephone call. Such services are in widespread use and provide access to millions of records, (i.e.,citations and abstracts) describing documents -(e.g., reports and journal articles); directories of people, companies and products; statistical series; and full text of source documents. DIALOG, for example, contains over 50 million records in 120 databases and services customers in 65 countries around the world. Online information retrieval has enjoyed encouraging growth in usage of the past decade, on the order of 30 percent per year.
This growth comes
from a combination of three components: •
Additional use of existing databases by existing customers
•
New databases
•
New customers
Let us focus on this last component. sistently grown at 30-40 percent.
The new customer component has con-
In the first phase, 1967-1971, it consisted
of government librarians searching government databases.
Availability of
professional society databases in the early 1970s made online searching useful to special libraries as new customers were expanding.
In the third phase
(1977-1982) academic and public libraries maintained the growth curve as special libraries leveled. the enduser phase.
Now we are beginning to see the fourth phase -
To be sure, the constituents of the first three phases
continue as customers, like waves piling up on a beach during an incoming tide, but now we see the beginning of a new and, perhaps, the final wave. Today I would like to examine the enduser phenomenon in information retrieval. There are actually three distinguishable types of endusers we observe. One group consists of individuals who have been previously served by information specialists and who have learned to use online retrieval systems directly. These people tend to use relatively small and infrequent amounts of time, and tend to concentrate on relatively few databases. Difficult, comprehensive, or broad-reaching information questions are still referred to the information specialist.
The members of this group tend to be employed by rather large,
well-organized companies with technical information centers. A second group is emerging from small business and the independent professional - the doctor, lawyer, engineer, author, teacher and consultant.
These people frequently
obtain word-processing equipment or microprocessors to assist with their business. By connecting a modem they find that their equipment can serve their information acquisition needs. Still a third group arises from the personal computer owner.
Having spent one to several thousand dollars on equipment, this person
discovers the application potential of these machines seems to far exceed the application realization.
After all, is it really worth $2,000 to become a
world-class Space Invaders player?
The magic of the modem offers yet another
chance to rationalize what may have been an impulsive purchase decision. The appeal of online retrieval within each of these groups is well described by Art Kleiner in an article entitled "Information Detective Stories" which appeared in the Winter 1980 edition of CoEvolution Quarterly; "Computer Information Systems are remote landscapes of reference material stored in computer files. They were developed haphazardly during the last decade and used mostly by corporations, lawyers and the medical establishment.
They've recently evolved into tools for
individuals, small businesses and political groups; they equalize the balance of power between those who can afford reference libraries •of their own and those who can't."
Besides CoEvolution Quarterly there are several personal computing magazines which have whetted the personal computer owners' sense of under-utilized resource potential.
The titles suggest the appeal:
"Make the Right Connection", Desktop Computing, Deccember 1981 "Information Please:, Science, January 1982 "Computers Investigate That Research Rapidly, Reliably", Personal Computing, February 1982 "The DIALOG Information Retrieval System", Datacast #2, November/December 1981 "Software and Data via Telephone:, Radio Electronics, October 1980 "Personal Computers in the 1980s", Interface Age, December 1980 "Information Please", Venture, September 1980 "Everything You Always Wanted to Know May Soon Be Online", Fortune, May 5, 1980 Not intended as comprehensive bibliography - you would have to use DIALOG and the Information Access Corporation Magazine Index for that - the above list of articles is indicative of the variety of publications that are exposing our heretofore rather well-guarded secret to the public. The implications of these three groups of endusers entering the online arena are staggering.
This phenomenon will very significantly impact online service
vendors, the education process, and society in general, each of which will be examined in the remainder of the paper. Online service vendors have enjoyed a situation wherein the training of an intermediary, i.e., an information specialist or librarian results in service to 50-100 endusers' individual need. maintaining proficiency.
Intermediaries search frequently thereby
Furthermore, they can afford to devote time to
keep up with system changes, new databases, and the increased developments associated with a threshold technology.
Our support costs per hour of
service used by librarians are relatively small. Endusers, on the other hand, require much more support per hour used.
As you are perhaps aware, after
deducting royalties from sales revenues and paying for computers, telecommunications equipment and online storage devices, only a small margin remains for customer support.
There is a real question as to whether the enduser is
willing to pay the actual costs of support required for the service to be cost effective. Tools such as "Search Helper" (under experimental development
by IAC) may help to make searching more intuitive, but they do so at a cost of loss of power and flexibility.
The question is whether this loss
will be acceptable. With regard to education, the main question is whether, or to what extent, the use of online information access will be incorporated into the general school curriculum.
If treated as an elective, it could have an impact similar to
that of typing: important as a general life skill, but learned only by those who anticipate need.
It probably should be introduced as a required course
at the secondary level in conjunction with a course on information access. We all have most of the basic skills necessary for searching, but the process itself is unique and thus requires new skills and perceptions. Although we tend to take inter-personal communication for granted, it must be realized that expressing oneself to a computer, even by way of a formal language structure, is certainly no easier than expressing oneself to other human beings.
Communicating complex, abstract ideas to another person or to a
computer is not a simple task. To what extent are these skills presently being taught?
I am pleased to
report that most every accredited graduate school of library science now offers (or requires) course work in computer searching.
The assumption of
this responsibility by library schools has greatly relieved our own relatively limited training resources, and has allowed us to concentrate more on subjectoriented seminars and advanced techniques in our classes*. Lately though we are seeing more and more non-librarian endusers in our classes who have had no formal introduction either to the reference materials we provide, or the techniques for accessing them, and yet have a vital need for information access.
The growing awareness of the need for online access to information
would seem to present a challenge and an opportunity to public and refresher education. Only a few such courses are currently being offered.
We must
extend awareness of these tools beyond the walls of the library schools, and members of library school faculties are in the best position to achieve this. Finally, what is the impact on society?
George Wald, a Nobel Prize biologist
recently stated: "The information explosion is so great that the individual scientist has been forced to follow a narrower and narrower path. science is about and whom it's for, has gotten lost." -4-
And what
Others have observed that online retrieval is an answer to the information explosion that relieves mankind of the burden of overspecialization. said, "There is no knowledge that is not power."
Emerson
There seem to be two con-
current themes in these observations: •
Online retrieval breaks down power and opportunity barriers between the information haves and the information have-nots
•
Access to information - which is after all access to knowledge - has to do with the fundamental efficiency of the intellectual and scientific processes in our society
It is my feeling that computer-assisted access to knowledge (in the form of information) is as significant to a society as its possessing a written language; that teaching its people to utilize this technology can be as significant as has been the attainment of widespread literacy among our population.
A written language allows knowledge to be stored, cumulated,
and passed on from generation to generation.
When, however, the cumulation
of the results of this capability (that is, to record knowledge) exceeds our ability to locate needed information, its significance to society is lost. Such has been the case with the so-called information explosion. Online retrieval overcomes most of the deficiencies inherent in the print medium by using a computer to process information in order to provide selective access to knowledge when and as needed. By extending our capability from storing knowledge by way of a written language to being able to process knowledge stored in machine-readable form, we have indeed entered a new era. As individuals more or less come to make universal use of this capability, the basic efficiency of the intellectual and creative processes in our society should improve. that this process has begun.
The enduser phenomenon indicates
It is up to us to rise to the challenge to
assure not only the availability of these services, but to extend an awarenss of their utility to all who might find them useful.