We’re enjoying a snow day today so I’m trying to catch up with some research I’ve been putting off–an environmental scan on digital libraries (what the term means these days, what sorts of support infrastructure others are building, what staffing levels look like, what services are contemplated or already offered, current standards and practices, and so on). Pulling many megabytes of reports, white papers, conference presentations and the like into my DEVONthink database but I haven’t yet hit upon the essence of what these documents are trying to tell me. I’ll keep hoping there is a unifying thread in there somewhere.
Digging out this information did give me a chance to find and re-read Vannevar Bush’s “As We May Think” article from 1945. Really an amazing vision when you consider what the world around him looked like: no networks, digital computers, or digital storage devices. Much of the article digresses into discussions of crazy analog devices (desktops with glowing surfaces that display microfilmed information) but when he begins describing the “memex” device, the clarity of his vision is scary. For example, here’s his description of how the memex machine would organize information:
“...associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another.“
It’s a good thing Ted Nelson invented “hypertext” eighteen years later or the world might have completely forgotten about this concept.