| International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle |  |
The Dichotomy of Information ManagementCan we control the flood or are we doomed to drown?Paul S. Ulrich Documents et Témoignages des Arts du Spectacle: Pourquoi et Comment? / Collecting and Recording the Performing Arts: Why and How? Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle / International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts 20e Congrès International / 20th International Congress Antwerp 4-7 September 1994. Acta. Antwerp : 1995, pp. 50-54 We've got a problem, a big problem, a problem which we generally ignore when we talk about our work. Our biggest problem is numbers - not financial numbers, but objects. It is questionable whether we will begin to come to terms with this very real problem unless we stop focusing on the individual trees and bushes we encounter in our daily work and look more closely at the forest we are living in. A new perspective might help us isolate the underlying principles of our problem. Once we understand the dynamics of our problem we might begin to see ways out of our dilemna. By way of example, let us look at a fictitious institution whose goal is to archive and document a local theatre. Our fictitious institution is lucky: there is only one relatively small theatre in the town and it has only been in operation for 10 years. For the sake of argumentation, let us assume that this theatre brings out 8 productions a year, performs 6 nights a week, is closed for three weeks in the summer and has 20 people on the staff (artistic and technical). Equally lucky for this institution is that there were no guest performances of institutions not located in the city. This fictitous institution is extremely modest compared to what most of us have to deal with, but the documentation problems encountered here clearly indicate just how immense the real-life problems each of us daily encounter really are. First of all, it is necessary to document 80 productions with a total of 294 performances a year or a total of 2940 performances over a ten year period. If we further assume that there is an average personnel turnover of 50% each year, this means that potentially data on 210 persons directly involved with the theatre will be gathered. Our fictitious institution collects programs, posters, reviews, newspaper clippings, prompt books, production notes, pictures, set and costume designs, set models, selective costumes, set pieces, lighting plots, sound recordings and properties for all the productions. Furthermore, various legal and financial documents relating to the daily business of the theatre will also be collected. If this theatre is technically well-equipped, there will also be rehearsal tapes, films and videos. (Unfortunately in the course of these ten years the recording machines do not remain the same, so various recording machines must be present to make this material accessible. And as you all know, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep these machines in running condition.) Furthermore, let us assume that there is an average of 50 pictures, 10 set and costume designs, one set model, two costumes, 5 properties and one box of legal and financial records for each perfomance (i.e. roughly 70 items per production). This means we are now talking about 4000 pictures, 800 set and costume designs, 80 set models, 160 costumes, 400 properties and 80 boxes of legal and financial records. What does this mean in concrete terms? 1) all these items must be stored so that they are preserved and this storage has to be such that the individual items are accessible when they are needed; 2) access means that there has to be an organisational structure for the storage and retrieval of the individual items; and 3) we need to have a way of identifying and finding the items quickly. To document each object, various descriptions of the physical object need to be recorded (size, shape, color, material) as well as information about the production, dates, persons involved, etc. In practical terms there will be duplicates of certain pieces of information regarding the historical/theatrical importance of each of these 5600 items. The description record (in the traditional sense: catalog card) relating to each item will need to be duplicated and made accessible for various query approaches. Conservatively speaking, at least three additional records will be created for each physical item in order to provide access to this collection. These items/records in turn also need to be administered. In other words, in real terms we will be administering 22,400 items for our 80 productions! Unfortunately, we have overlooked several important elements in this collection: the information collected on the performing artists themselves. Most of them were active both prior to and after their activity in the local theatre. Our fictitious collection will without a doubt have considerable material on at least some of the artistic personnel and not all of this will be directly related to the local theatre. Nevertheless, all of this material is relevant to the collection. Let us assume that on an average there are 5 such additional objects relating to each of the 210 persons active in this local theatre. This means that there are now an additional 1050 objects that need to be administered with an additional administrational overhead of 3150 items. In other words, we now have 26,500 items to be dealt with! These 26,500 items (6550 theatre-related objects) need to have space to be stored amd someone needs to collect and verify the data. I will make no attempt to try to tell you what this means as far as staffing and storage space goes - most of you can probably make a much better calculation here then I can. One thing, however, is very clear: just administering this amount of information is a sisyphus task, a task which none of us can really manage without either neglecting a substantial amount of the necessary work or utilizing external help in processing this material. Without computerization this sisyphus task has no way of being effective. But just a minute, before continuing we really need to go back a step and look at another aspect of our local collection. An aspect which I imagine is generally totally ignored for quite obvious reasons. Why have these 6550 objects received special treatment and been selected for inclusion in the collection? Quite simply because an historical importance has been asssigned to them on the basis of their proximity to a local theatre. Does this historical importance stop once an item has been selected for inclusion in this collection? Quite the contrary, it now acquires added historical importance by the very nature of it being included in the collection which is also of historical importance. This value is increased each time the individual item is placed in proximity to other items, each with it's own historical importance. Each exhibition in which it is shown, each article or publication in which it is mentioned adds to the value it brings to the institution. To what extent, however, do we seriously pursue the documentation of what we do, of what we have? All of us regularly complain about the lack of interest theatre people have in documenting what they do - they are concerned about the current production, the momentary solution to production problems; they don't care about posterity - at least not when they are involved in a production. Let's be quite frank with each other - are we really much better? In one sense we are worse, we are (or at least should be) professionals in information management and documentation, but very seldom do we really apply our professional skills to ourselves and our jobs. This is considered too time-consuming to warrant the investment of documentary resources. Let's ask some other questions: how cost effective is that which we do? Actually none of us likes to think in such terms. Our justification for the collection of theatre material is more in having it, rather than doing anything with it. How extensive is our collection usage? Besides the intrinsic value of a collection per se, a collection accrues value to the extent to which it can be used. Our overhead of 210 items per production is only justifiable when they are considered as added-value items for access to the collection, when they can be used as additional information about what the collection contains. In the past we have to a large extent only been able to answer certain types of questions, and we as a rule determined the way we made our material accessible and the amount of time it took to access the information we had. With the use of computerization we no longer need to confine ourselves to the traditional types of questions, but with careful planning should be able to answer many new and different types of questions and this with less time for the query process. The ramifications here are great. Should we meet this challenge, we should not only be able to get better returns for the money and energy we invest in making our collections accessible, we can contribute greatly to an enhanced awareness of the value of our collections. With network access to our data we can reduce the amount of time spent on answering certain repetitive questions by letting the person involved seek the answers himself; in the process we will have more time for preparing the as yet unprocessed material in a form which is open to all types of queries. Let's not try to predict what the questions will be, but rather gather and prepare data so that any query can have a reasonable chance of being answered. Our conditioning to only permit certain types of questions still dictates how we approach the collection and preparation of data. If we aren't carefull, we may very well price ourselves out of the very information market we at the moment prize ourselves as controlling. Even if presently we only think in terms of our stand-alone PC, we can not ignore what is happening in the world around us. Networks are becoming commonplace, even if this is not necessarily the case in most of our institutions at the moment. But this will most certainly come about very shortly. In planning what we are doing with our data, we must keep our eyes open not only to what we consider to be our own present needs, but also to what demands are going to be made on us in the future. We cannot afford the costly mistake of not making long-range plans and orienting ourselves to long-range needs. We will want information which others have produced (i.e. we want to import data); this means, however, that somebody has to provide it. Conversely, others will want information which we have. The exchange of this data will in turn alter the way in which we view information. The prerequisite for this, however, is that there must be a means of incorporating such data in our databases and this means that duplication / redundancy control is extremely important. There is a big change going on in the world of information technology and we need to be aware of it, for developments here will have far-reaching consequences for us. While most of us are still trying to cope with single workstations; the world around us is rapidly connecting to and using networks. This development means that we will not only eventually open up our applications for others (and this means that we have to accept and adhere to standards no matter how limiting they may appear to be to us), we will also have to open up our minds to the resulting ramifications. Last year a new buzz word was introduced in the United States: the information superhighway. While much is being done in the US laying the groundwork for this, we in the rest of the world are probably many years behind these developments. The long-range effects of this development are great: we are really on the threshhold of a world with new possibilities for us. Global networking will require that we rethink our activities within a larger framework and this at a time when we are having more than enough problems with our traditional roles. Over the internet various services are already being offered (in particular library catalogs and indexes) and many more are being offered every day. Those with access to the internet already have some inkling of some of the possibilities; some of you are probably already using e-mail, which makes communication even more rapid and convenient - in fact, in many ways this service is already beginning to replace the fax. Within our own ranks there are isolated databases which are already available to us. For example, at the University in Leipzig there is a theatre database accessible via modem as well as a mailbox for transferring information. This is certainly not the only example which can be mentioned. In the United States there are already various film databases available via the internet for anyone with access to it. Once we become more aware of such possibilities and have the necessary facilities, it is hard to imagine that we will not want to have our databases made available to others throughout the world. We must begin to realize that we are no longer living in a glass house isolated from the rest of the world, but now are part of an electronic village, and this electronic village has structures which not only open up new possibilities for us, they also place new demands on us. Access, not location, is what is important. This requires a rethinking on our part. We must reevaluate our role within this grander framework and focus our attention on acquiring the prerequisite facilities for operating within this new structure. Not only will we make use of resources independent of their location, we will also make our own resources available to others. Information and data transfer will become an essential part of our lives. As professionals in the area of documentation and information, we must begin now to prepare our activities for these new demands which will be placed on us, and they will be placed on us, either from within our own ranks or from outside. It is in our own interest that we take the initiative and not leave it to others who will dictate to us what we have to do. Let's not forget that the biggest industry in the United States is the entertainment industry. The developments taking place here will effect us. Without knowledge of these developments, we will lose a potential market for our product which is the preservation of an important aspect of the world of entertainment. Equally important in our electronic village is knowing what is available and how to access it and passing this knowledge on to others. Here is an area where SIBMAS could and should play an important role. When any of you learn of the presence of such information sources, it should be passed on to a central gathering agency which regularly updates and distributes this information to all interested parties. (Just how this should be organized I leave open to debate. One possibility would be to include this as an appendix to the SIBMAS Directory; another would be to make it available in the FIRT/SIBMAS Newsletter and the SIBMAS Brief.) This brings me to a last, really a central point: data transfer. If we want to be ready for the future, then it is imperative that within SIBMAS we agree on data-exchange formats for the data which we need and produce. Why the importance of developing such a standardized format? The only really valuable asset we have with our computerization is the data we have gathered. In the past this data was traditionally stored on cards and was relatively static. Nobody thought of trying to make this material readily available either for internal or external use, simply because the costs made it prohibitive. The duplication processes which computerization make feasible are such that we can expect major developments here in the future. The technology we use to key in our information today is already obsolete - the migration of our data to future systems is as basic a prerequisite to our work as doing regular backups and having the ability to restore a database in the case of a catastrophy. Let's not forget that the developments in hard- and software are so rapid that this is something which will happen. None of us will be immune to it; neither are we any longer satisfied with hardware which is 5 years old - it is too slow and in many instances can not be used for the software which is now on the market. Each institution with a computer system can assume that at some point in the not-too-distant future it will have to transfer it's data to another system. At the moment the bulk of our data is text; in the future we will be adding multi-media data (i.e. a combination of pictures and sound) to our textual data. Have any of you really given a thought to how you will get your data to another system? Or do you assume that someone will do it for you? What about importing data from another source? Do you have the facilities for doing it? Or will it be necessary for a programmer to write a costly import program to accomplish this? Furthermore, you will probably need a new program for each source of information. Can you afford this? Or will you have to pass up the opportunity to use this data simply because you cannot import it into your system? Even if none of you wish to import data from someone else at the present, I seriously doubt whether in the near future you will still be able to maintain this position. Quite frankly, you can't afford not to use outside sources for data - the costs of entering it all yourself is too prohibitive. When I think of the experience librarians have made with computerization, I see many parallels to our situation. Initially the only concern was handling current acquisitions. Within a very short time retrospective conversion became all-important. The amount of data which was needed was so great that the advantages of using machine-readable data from other sources quickly became readily apparent. We will most definitely find ourselves in a similar situation. Quite frankly, we can't afford not to make use of any data which is already available in machine-readable form. The prerequisite, however, is a standardized data-exchange format. Otherwise we will spend too much time and money reinventing a wheel. Just as librarians have an exchange format for their data (MARC), we need to have one for our data, whereby I suggest that we not reinvent the wheel for bibliographic data, but use the MARC format which the librarians have already developed - after all, all of us will incorporate bibliographic data as part of our data and there is really no need for us to ignore this readily-available source. For other aspects of our data there is at the present no universally agreed-on format for the additional material we have. We must decide for ourselves what information we need. Our decisions must not only reflect that which we have at the moment, but also what information we have and will need in the future. Certain groundwork has already been done: the TANDEM rules provide certain suggestions for what we might incorporate into our exchange-format. In France and the United States there are projects which are formulating formats for the storage and transfer of data. Certainly those of you who have done some computerization of your holdings have suggestions which should be incorporated. We cannot afford to each go his own way. We must make our decisions available for others so that we have consistency in our data. SIBMAS needs to constitute a committee to develop a data-exchange format for us all and to work as a clearing-house for passing this information on to any institution in the process of computerizing. We with our relatively new discipline of an old institution still do not really know what information we need or even want. We are so interdisciplinary that anyone looking at us must shake his head in amazement at our lack of discipline when it comes to defining what we are really doing. It is clearly time that we begin looking toward the future and how we are going to manage our own flood of material so that we don't end up drowning. 20th Congress URL: http://www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas94/antw_15.html |
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