1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Multimedia technologies deal with the recording, storage, and dissemination of information in the form of visual and audio images. Though this view of the field includes older technologies such as photography and analog recording of sound, our concern in this report is with the enormous impact of the new digital representations of visual and audio images. The digitization of these images has enabled computers to handle them in ways closely related to the ways in which computers have, for decades, handled digitized text, with the result that textual, visual, and audio images can now be freely joined within computer-based processes.

The World-Wide Web is the best known example of this joining of digitized, computer-processed textual, visual, and audio images. But the digitization of all kinds of images has implications that extend far beyond the Web. Technologies for the digitization of images have undergone enormous, rapid advancements during the last 15 years, as have technologies for the storage and display of the images. In the same period computer technologies for processing digitized images have undergone enormous, rapid advancements, as have the techniques of telecommunications.

Much of the development during the past 5 years has been due in large part to the explosively rapid increase in the popularity of the Internet, which has provided commercial incentives for rapid development of Internet-related computer and telecommunications technologies. In his fascinating book, The Road Ahead, Bill Gates writes:

When the Internet really took off, we were surprised, fascinated, and pleased. . . . People complained about the Internet's irritating deficiencies, but that didn't stop them from using this exciting new way to communicate. It was too much fun to ignore! All it had taken was for modems to get fast enough, communications switches to get cheap enough, PC's to get popular and powerful enough, and there was no turning back. I can't tell you exactly when this point-of-no-return was reached, but by late 1995 we had crossed the threshold. More users meant more content and more content mean more users. The Internet had spiraled up in popularity, achieving critical mass. [1, pp. x-xi]

Today (1997) we can acquire, process, store, and disseminate digitized images-textual, visual, and audio-on a scale that was not even dreamed of 20 years ago. We can fit into a shirt pocket an encyclopedia or an atlas that can display every street address in the United States; via the Internet, even with typical home-telephone connections (viz., 28.8Kbps modems), we can listen to radio broadcasts from any part of the world or hold telephone conversations with people all over the globe; we can store gigabytes of information in our home computers; and terabytes (indeed, probably already petabytes) of information are available to us via the Internet.

Probably within 5 years, certainly within 10 years (2007), we will be able to create and store--and to transmit and receive in real time--digital, high-definition-television-quality visual, aural, and textual images using what will then be typical small-office or home-office (SOHO) computers and typical SOHO Internet connections. Individual authors and movie-makers will be able to send copies of their works from their own Internet sites to anyone anywhere, and they will be able to receive a fee for doing so. Digital libraries will have been developed by individuals and by academic, public, and commercial organizations to such an extent that via Internet telecommunications almost any recent book, picture, article, movie, sound recording, or television broadcast will be available for transmission on demand to any individual who is interested in viewing the item (and, in many cases, willing to pay a fee to do so).

The developments just sketched mean that the LIS profession must be prepared to deal with quantities of information on an almost overwhelmingly larger scale. We claim to be the profession that is best suited to managing information as a whole. We claim that other professions tend to see only the narrower concerns of the technologies alone or are concerned only with specific types of information, e.g., financial information.

To manage information as a whole in the new information world that is currently developing, LIS professionals and, especially, LIS students must be knowledgeable about the technologies of multimedia (viz., the technologies of digitized textual, visual, and aural images) and about the related technologies of telecommunications.

LIS professionals and students should follow the development of standards closely. Where possible, they should make sure that the infrastructure, applications, and data standards they use conform to widely accepted standards and reduce the need for frequent migration. They should also become involved in creating information systems and standards that support backwards compatibility and other archiving features.

LIS professionals should continue to improve access to multimedia and electronic materials in general. Setting pointers to useful information collections, including metadata information, helping to design better search tools, and increasing the interoperability of systems by selecting standards will be more and more important as the amount of electronic information increases. Moreover, as a lot of useful information will be available only transitorily, efforts to archive such information for future research should be encouraged.

With respect to copyright, LIS professionals should follow the developments carefully and should participate in shaping future copyright practices. Defending fair use rights and helping to simplify the system of clearing rights will continue to require a lot of work and continual alertness.

In closing, we quote again from Bill Gates's The Road Ahead:

Some people think that the information highway . . . is simply the current version of the Internet or the delivery of hundreds of simultaneous channels of television. But today's innovations are just the beginning. The revolution in communications will take place over several decades and will be driven by new "applications"-new tools often meeting needs we don't even foresee now. Today's Internet only hints at tomorrow's. [1, p. xiv]

Truly we cannot even imagine today all of the effects of the development of digitized imagery, and of accompanying computer and telecommunications technologies, 20 or 25 years from now. But students studying library and information science in the next 5 years will probably still be working as LIS professionals in 2035, or even in 2040. All we say for sure today is that though the information world will be enormously vaster then than it is today, it will continue to need people who can help to organize 2040's information stores and to help others access them.

[1] Gates, Bill; Myhrvold, Nathan; Rinearson, Peter. The Road Ahead. 2d edition. New York, NY: Penguin; 1996. 332 p. ISBN:0-670-77289-5.

Go to the next section, Section 2, of this Report.
Go to the Table of Contents