About

The weblog -=( In Between )=- started somewhere in 2003, but has been on several servers with different URL’s. Hopefully the current address will turn out to be a stable one.

With the address changes the content has changed too, perhaps because the digital library field has changed over the years. Although a lot is going on, there is much that is not that interesting, at least not in the long run. In this weblog I try, no doubt with many failures, to focus on developments that do matter.  On -=( In Between )=- there has been a shift of focus from “keeping up” with all new developments to developments that, in my humble opinion, matter.

So, what matters?

The library is all about giving proper answers to questions. The library should be become a system that can serve all those who have questions to ask. That is the, very long term, goal. But it has many implications. For one, it implies that librarians should try to open up the scholarly literature, and describe or formalize the content in a way that will present answers to questions asked in stead of lists of documents that may (or may not contain the answers. This may, or may not, imply too that the prevailing mode of publishing scholarly and scientific results, namely to produce “documents”, will (have to) change. The most important developments in the digital libary field, given the goal just stated, can, I think, be found in artificial intelligence, in the semantic web, in text and data-mining, and in the design of principled architectures for information systems.

In other words: processing content and producing content, most likely in new forms, is what matters.