Speaker Details

First Name:	Jean Claude
Last Name:	Guédon
Abstract:	How to unleash the full potential of digital cultures" Guédon, Professor, Comparative literature, Université de Montréal Back in the early '60's J. C. R. Licklider (Libraries of the Future) powerfully reconceptualized the library device into a "procognitive" apparatus. Much more recently, various researchers have begun to come to grips with the fact that the transition to the digitization process was generating profound changes in the ways "documents" "work" and how humans react with these documents. However, despite these long-standing efforts, our understanding of what is happening to the knowledge sphere through digitization remains limited, partially because we are still caught in the print paradigm. We are still thinking in terms of "libraries" rather than "procognitive systems" Open access is an essential element in the reorganization of knowledge. that accompanies digitization. In particular, it permits a better implementation of new information processes. More fundamentally, because some of these new processes can be implemented in networks and computers with adequate algorithms, part of the information flow can take place without human intervention, thus allowing new points of access in the general system of knowledge production, reproduction and dissemination. The explosive growth of search technologies is the most spectacular dimension of this more general trend. This means that regions of the world that were essentially cut off from the more important groups, networks, centres, etc. of knowledge activities can now begin to exploit this new situation and develop autonomous centres of scientific and scholarly activities. Present science and scholarship can be viewed as modern guild systems based on apprenticeship and strict hierarchies. Digitization and open access will move us beyond the guild system of science and new forms of knowledge production, reproduction and dissemination(sharing) are beginning to emerge (e.g. Wikipedia). In short, digitization and open access point to an alternative concept of scientific development.
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