Disruptive Technologies, Innovation, and Digital Libraries Research– The Case of a Billion-Dollar BusinessYi-Tzuu Chien
World Technology Evaluation Center, Inc
Baltimore, MD 21224, U.S.A.
www.wtec.org; ychien@wtec.org
Abstract
After nearly a decade of research in digital
libraries (DL) since the first major government
sponsored initiative (DLI) launched in the UnitedStates and other similar programs elsewhere, thepublic is beginning to see the many fruits of thecollective accomplishments from this research.
Innovations in technology, testbeds, and contentbased tools rank among those that have resulted
from the scientific progress made in that period.
The road ahead, however, requires a broader andbetter connection of DL research to othertechnologies and to society. If DL is to become aviable field of study and a permanent institution, it
has to be sustainable not only technologically but
also socially, politically, and economically.
This paper makes the arguments of chartinga more sustainable course for the future of digital
libraries research. A key argument here is the needto create a content-based business model that makes
effective linkages between the “disruptive” forces ofenabling technologies and the changes of directionthat must be made in future DL research. How tomake those linkages are the main challenges of the
DL community for the coming decade.

Keywords:

Digitallibrary,
roadblocks,
innovation, business model, disruptive technology

1. Introduction
Around the time the Internet and the World
Wide Web became popular in the early 1990s, it also
became clear that the role of “information” or“electronic content” will be increasingly importantin ma king the computational and network
infrastructures more useful to the society. The High
Performance Computing and Communications(HPCC) program in the United States recognized thesignificance of this shift and established a task force
on “Information infrastructure technology andapplications” (IITA). A goal of the IITA task force
is to develop a research agenda and implementation
plan for an expanded HPCC by adding a new“information” component.
After months ofdeliberation, this task group published a report in

February 1994, entitled appropriately, “Information
Infrastructure Technology and Applications”[1].
This report became an influential document that
helped re-define the HPCC program andsubsequently its successor program. In that report,“Digital Library” was listed as one of the nine major“national challenges”, defined as “informationintensive applications that have broad and direct
impact on the nation’s well-being andcompetitiveness”.
The report also outlined ageneral vision and research agenda for Digital
Libraries. It stated (p. 18 of [1]):“Digital Library includes work in bothtechnologies and applications which will lead tosignificant advances in the generation, storage, anduse of digital information of different kinds acrosshigh speed networks.
A digital library is aknowledge center without walls, open 24 hours a
day and accessible by way of a network. Researchareas range from advanced mass storage, online
capture of multimedia date, intelligent filtering,knowledge navigation, effective user interfaces,
system integration, to prototyping and technology
demonstration”.
These words indeed sowed the early seeds for amajor Federal R&D effort known as the Digital
Library (DI) research initiative in the United States.
Many other programs at the national and local levels
have been launched since that time around theworld. In the ensuing 10 years of intensive researchand sizable funding from both government andprivate sources, the collective accomplishments by
the DL communities are both numerous andsignificant. Among the tangible accomplishments,
briefly stated, are:•••Advances in scientific knowledge for content
creation, store, search and retrieval
The development of scaleable testbeds forexperimental research and software tools, suchas metadata and standards, for managing
electronic contents in a variety of knowledge
domains
Technology innovation and integration,
including those that succeeded in making it to
the commercial market

•

•

•

Role in the development of literally thousandsof operational digital libraries worldwide, far
beyond the mere digital equivalents of
information services provided by traditional
libraries
A hand in the transformation of traditional
library science schools into academic programs
that offer modern digital curricula for training
future librarians and knowledge workers
Role in the creation of many DL byproducts,
including many technical publications, literally
countless workshops and conferences held
every year to report on the latest advances

Despite these impressive accomplishments,
however, there are signs of stagnation, uncertainty oreven setbacks of DL efforts. In a way, DL as a fieldof research is at a crossroads of two conflicting
paths, one pointing to continued excitement andgrowth; the other leading to insignificance and evenpossible distinction. Nowhere is this dilemma moretelling than the reports at the 2002 ASIST
conference held in Philadelphia. There we heard
how two equally credible DL programs faced twocompletely different outcomes regarding their
future: one being eliminated from the university(state) funding altogether, and the other thriving on a
successful operation and management, completewith a business model and financial plan. There is alesson to be learned from this. The society (and thefunding sources consequently) clearly demands
more tangible evidence when it comes to continued
support for research in any field of study. For the
future of DL, the research community must meet thechallenge of making its work sustainable over time,
not only technologically but also socially,
politically, and economically.
In this paper, we first discuss the roadblocks infurthering the advances in DL research and inachieving real innovations. After reviewing how
other information technologies went from concepts
to products and to a multi-billion business as amodel for sustainable innovation, we propose asimilar path for DL. A key element of this path is
the integration in future DL systems of “disruptive
technologies ”, which have the potentials ofdramatically changing the conventional mindset
either for new technologies or for applications.

2. Roadblocks for DL Innovation
If stagnation of progress, real or perceived, in
any field of research occurs, it is important to
identify where the roadblocks are in the path
towards advancement or innovation.
For DLresearch, we see several global factors that havemade or are making further progress difficult.

First and foremost is the ill-formed public
perception towards digital libraries. This is perhaps
the most serious roadblock for DL’s future. The
general public by and large continues to view adigital library as the electronic version of the
traditional library – where you get to use books andother materials in electronic forms either online orfrom the local library, for free. The broader vision
for the DL circa 1994 has hardly had much effect onthat outdated perception. Second, part of this illformed public perception is due to the overemphasisof research on the development of basic science andtechnology, and not enough priority given to userneeds. This is reflected in what the researchcommunity do more and best, for example,
technical conferences and publications. Few, if any,reallarge-scale
open
experiments
anddemonstrations for the benefits of the public or theindustry have been done in the last ten years. The
third roadblock is from a source outside the current
DL arena - the commercial success in non-publicdomains where such e-contents and services asmusic and gamesare being made readily available
online at lost cost. Such successes overshadow asimilar need and opportunity for e-contents in the
public domain. The fourth roadblock, perhaps themost important, is the lack of a business model andincentives for making public e-contents moreaccessible and profitable. Without such models in
the DL research agenda, the path of innovation willcontinue to lack a sustainable force andconsequently less progressive or even selfdestructive.
None of these roadblocks poses a direct
threat to a particular research program or project in alaboratory or to a R&D project at a company at thepresent time. But together, if allowed to continue,
their negative impacts will have a serous
consequence for DL’s future.

3. The Innovation Pipeline
How do we remove these roadblocks in orderfor DL research to move forward and meet the newchallenges of the knowledge-based society? Are
there models or experiences in other areas of
information technology that we can learn to jump start the innovation process? To find answers tothese questions, we take a look at the 30-year historyof the innnovation pipeline for information
technology.
In information technology (IT), as in manyother technologies, innovations occur on the pathfrom a new concept to a new product. This path,unfortunately, is rarely linear and predictable.
Indeed, many IT innovations that we haveaccustomed to have followed a path with duration,complexity, and a diversity of players, institutions,and financial support. In a 1995 report on the High
Performance Computing and Communications
Initiative,theComputer
ScienceandTelecommunications Board (CSTB) of the National
Research Council demonstrated this phenomenonusing a number of examples in key IT technologies
developed over a period of some 30 years (from1965 – 1994). In that demonstration, which was later
extended to include developments in the subsequent
decade in a recent 2003 NRC report [5], theinnovation pipeline is characterized by a collectionof key IT technologies from their initial conception
to mufti-billion dollar businesses or industries.
Many of these technologies were developed in the
1960s and 1970, but nearly all of which continue tobe critical to our present day economy . They include
time-sharing, computer graphics, Internet, LANs,
workstations, graphical user interfaces, very-largescale integrated circuits (VLSI) design, relational
databases, and reduced instruction set computing(RISC) processors. More recent innovations, suchas data mining, parallel computing, redundant arraysofinexpensive
disks(RAID),
portablecommunications, world wide web, speechtechnology, and broadband in last mile, followed asimilar path, though reaching their commercial
successes much later.
In each of these technological innovations, there
was invariably sustained government funded
research, usually done at university labs andresearch centers.
Such research focused on
fundamental ideas and technical challenges, which
would then lead to industrial research anddevelopment. A commercially successful product or
products then followed. In all cases, university
teams were involved from the beginning and in thetransition of research into industrial quality work.
The creation of a billion-dollar business is often theoutcomeofasoundbusinessmodel,
entrepreneurism,
technical
andcommunity
leadership, and in some instances, pure luck.
Is DL research following a similar path fromconception to a successful technology? What are thechances that the future of DL research can besustained both technologically and financially?

4. Disruptive Technologies for DL
A positive or encouraging answer to thesequestions may hinge on our collective abilities tosteer DL research towards true innovations,departing from conventional wisdom, if necessary.
What we need foremost are “disruptive” forces inemerging technologies that are not considered partof the mainstream research (in this case DL
research) and yet are likely to help create drasticallynew advances for the field and ultimately change thefield in a dramatic way. Technology historians often

refer to them as the “disruptive technologies”.
These are the technologies – such as Marconi’s
wireless invention a century ago, the internal
combustion engine, transistors, and the modern day
Web browser – that not only led to new commercial
products and industries but eventually change theworld. One of the important features of disruptive
technologies is that they often come from outside themainstream. For example, the light bulb was notinvented by the candle industry looking to improve
its product, centuries ago. Similarly, in information
technology, the concept of a Web browser for theInternet did not come from the telecommunications
or network industry or even a typical computerscientist. The mainstream owners – researchers andpractitioners alike – tend to focus on incremental
improvements to their own research themes or
products, often missing the opportunity to truly
innovate.
DL’s future needs to look to the disruptive
technologies outside of its mainstream research.
Potentially, the set of such technologies is both large
and under specified. In this discussion, we’ll limit
ourselves to only examine a few of those that are
emerging technologies and, if integrated with DL
research, will most likely have a significant impact
on where DL is headed in our society.
Untethered Communications. The capabilities for“untethered communications” usually refer to theunion of wireless and mobile technologies. Included
here are a variety of personal information appliances
and wearable computing devices, which have shown
extraordinary growth in the last decade. An example
is cellular telephones. Nearly unheard of in 1980,
they are now used by several hundred million
subscribers worldwide.
According to market
research, the subscriber base for wirelesscommunications services is growing 15 times fasterthan the wired services and in another five years,
wireless and wired systems are expected to haveequal numbers of users. Such public demand for
untethered communications is causing intense
activities in R&D, technical standards and policies
both in industry and government.
What are the disruptive forces that could
impact DL of the future?
Developments in
untethered communications will most likely help toachieve the vision of “anytime, anywhere” access todigital content, removing the walls we still have inthe traditional library setting, despite a decade of DL
research.
Broadband Internet
The term “broadband”
sometimes refers to information services other thanthose via Internet connectivity, which is what we
consider here. Broadband Internet is a more general
concept, depicting high performance for information

access and delivery over the Internet.
The
technology is more than that associated withparticular facilities or transmission modalities used
for implementation: DSL, HFC, fibre, wireless, andso on. It is really a high-performance infrastructure
capable of supporting a multitude of applications
and services, a means to many ends that encompass
people, work, and community. Thus, for example,
grid computing, which provides high end computing
by connecting resources via a network, is also a key
ingredient in this technology. Worldwide demandfor broadband Internet has grown rapidly in recent
years, with impressive penetration rates in the homesof many developed countries, especially in East
Asia. By and large, up to now, broadband services
have only succeeded in enabling entertainment or ecommerce applications where the contents aremostly proprietary. The next territory for broadband
to conquer is the Internet’s exploitation as a public
space [4]. Theoretically, the technology can makedigital government, education, life-long learning,
personal health care, and other applications richer
and more compelling and useful.
Why is Broadband Internet is disruptive
technology for future DL research and innovations?
Partly this is because it can provide dramaticallynew modalities for communication, especiallywithin families and communities. With convergenceof video, audio, text, images and so forth, thetraditional library materials, plus new Internet
resources, all become a digital stream that can beaccessed where the high-performance network is.
Old library functions can be reinforced or improved
and new uses and applications, unforeseen at thispoint, can be invented in the future.
Distributed storage and retrieval
A newtechnology known as “distributed storage”, still in
its infancy, has the potential of storing and retrieving
data files in the nooks and crannies of the Internet.
The idea is to free data from dependency on specificcomputers or systems, much in the same way books
and other knowledge resources depend on traditional
libraries for storage and access. The technology inits simplest form already exist – music sharing
services, for example, which let people down-loadand trade songs from Internet-connected PCs, are acrude distributed-storage system.
Pushing thistechnology into including all sorts of data and media
forms is one crucial aspect of this new technology.
Another important feature is for such systems to beeasy to use while providing security and protectionof the data from being destroyed or tempered with.
Theoretically, distributed storage technology would
eliminate the threat of catastrophic events that makepreservation of materials in traditional libraries a
constant challenge.

The disruptive force behind this technology
for DL is that it could fundamentally change the way
digital or traditional libraries function – fromacquisition, maintenance, and distribution of
information resources, all the way to preservation.
The power of distributed storage is yet to be
explored in the research laboratories at this point,
but its potential impacts on the future of DL demand
our attention.
E-payment Micropayment technology has been in
the market place for some time. It is associated withthe concept of letting Internet users to buy digitalcontents and services with digital pocket change –transactions of about a dollar or less. The concept
is simple and appealing in theory. Many start-up
companies in the last ten years or so have tried andfailed to make this technology work in the market
place. Up until recently, most Internet based
businesses still can’t support micropayments
because the processing fees from banks and credit
card companies erase any profit. Then of course
there is the question of demand – the question ofwhether consumers are willing to pay for digitalcontents, such as games and songs that they could
get for free via the Internet.
Two recent
developments have changed this perspective. First,
major IT players are beginning to use micropayment
technology with clear success. In 2003, Apple
computer announced its online music store, whichsold, according to Forrester Research, more than 10
million 99-cent songs in the first four months.
Second, new start-up companies are making
renewed efforts to develop the next generation
micropayment technologies that are easier to use,
more economical, and safer. And the hope is thatthese new technologies will give consumers the
freedom to try out new kinds of commerce on theWeb, and to buy or sell an ever wider variety ofdigital contents.
Why is e-payment a disruptive force that
could lead to dramatic innovations for DL? First,
contrary to the conventional wisdom where all thecontents in the libraries - digital or otherwise should be free, micropayment technologies offer analternative to this century old, free of charge model.
By charging pennies for the bits one wants or for
faster delivery of the bits, we’ll be able to extend thelibrary functions and range of information services
far more beyond the traditional libraries have tooffer. Selling public owned contents would be ahard sell, but it provides a business model for DL asa sustainable technology and as a financially viablepublic institution. A second impact is on the supply
side of DLs. With micropayment on the Web, we’ll
be able nurture a new generation of artists andcontent innovators who could create, sell and trade
their creative works directly to the users withfinancial rewards. This would be a dramatic change

from how we used to create contents, publishingbooks, and selling them in the market place.
The four disruptive technologies discussed
above are just a few examples of a much longer listof possibilities.
Nonetheless, it is worth
summarizing their key features and what theirpotential impacts might be on the future of DLs andto the knowledge-based society. This summary isgiven in Table I below.

outside reaction we must discern carefully and use it
to guide our future work. This paper has proposed a
way to develop the next research agenda, not toincrementally improve what we have done before
but to push the envelope of what is perceived
possible in relation to other technologies, models of
success, and to the society as a whole.

References
1.

5. A Transformational Research Agenda
If we add up the key points discussed above,
what we come up with is a proposal for a newresearch agenda capable of transforming DLs into asustainable technology and permanent institution.
This agenda includes the following three key
elements:•

Link up with disruptive technologies: Futurecontent – and media-based research must
consider integrating these technologies into its
research paths as a basis for innovations•

Focus on “DL middleware”: Government andprivate research programs should placeincreased emphases on standards and softwaretools that serve the foundation of DL“middleware” across disparate domains ofknowledge,
computingplatforms,
andcommunications channels.

•

Create a Business Model: Public e-contents canbe and need to be made vastly more accessible
by following a technologically and financiallysustainable path.

Table 2 below depicts a possible scenario where
we can add DL middleware, for lack of a better
generic title, as a new entry into the IT innovation
pipeline. The milestones of past DL research andthe projected future research and development
leading up to the birth of a billion-dollar business are
merely suggestive. Turning this scenario into reality
is the challenge for the entire DL community.

6. Concluding Remarks
The first decade of DL research invokes tworeactions. The first calls for a self-assessment ofaccomplishments by the research community, whichby any measure are impressive and successful. A
second reaction usually comes from the public andthose who have provided funding and otherresources for the research. It is the second andRandy Katz and Y.T. Chien, Eds., “Information
Infrastructure Technology and Applications”,
Report by the IITA Interagency Task Group,
HPCC National Coordination Office, February
1994.
2. Y.T. Chien, “The role of digital libraries in thetransformation of society: a perspective fromthe United States”, Proceedings of the 23rd
Digital Library Workshop, University ofTsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, November 2002.
3. Y.T. Chien, “Whither Digital Library Research?
The Case of a “billion-dollar” Business,
Presentation at the Research Center for
Knowledge Community Colloquium, Universityof Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, October 31`, 2002.
4. Jean Camp and Y.T. Chien, “The Internet as
Public Space:
Concepts, Issues, andImplications in Public Policy”, in: Readings in
CyberEthics (Eds. R. Spinello and H. Tavani),
Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2001; Also
published in ACM Publication of Special
Interest Group on Computers and Society.
September 2000.
5. Report of the National Research Council,
Innovation in Information technology, National
Academy Press, 2003.
6. Report of the National Research Council, Theevolution of untethered communications,
National Academy Press, 19997.
7. Report of the National Research Council,
Broadband – bringing home the bits, National
Academy Press, 2002.
8. NSF CISE Report on Revolutionizing scienceand engineering through Cyberinfrastructure,
January 2003.
9. Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s
Dilemma – When new technologies causes
firms to fail, Harvard Business Press, 1997.
10. Gregory Huang, “The Web’s new currency”,
MIT
Technology
Review,
December
2003/January 2004.
11. Wade Roush, “Computers that speak yourlanguage”, MIT Technology Review, June
2003.

s Table 1. Contribution of Disruptive technologies to DL’s Future
Technology
Untethered communications andPlatforms

Broadband Internet

Components or Functionalities

Potential Innovations andImpacts on Society (examples)

•
•
•
•

Wireless and mobile
Wearable computing
Satellite communications
Portable Information appliances

•

•
•
•

High speed networks
Grid computation
Embedded computers

•

•
•

•
•

Distributed Storage andRetrieval•••

E-payment

Table 2.

Freely moving and replicating digital
files across machines
Making files easier to access andmaintain while eliminating the threatof damage•

Charging customers for using econtent without incurring costlytransaction fees

•

•
•

•

Access and assistive tools forthe disabled
Anytime, anywhere DL access
Personalized computing
platforms
Streaming of large, high quality
audio-video and date files
DL access for home or distanceeducation, life-long learning
Computer-mediatedcommunications
DL Middleware track distributed
data files
Software and programming
systems for DL preservation
Personalized computing
environments anywhere,anytimeMicropayments for public econtent in exchange for vastly
improved information services
New generation of e-content
suppliers: artists, writers, etc.
motivated by the economic
potentials of e-payment

Adding a new entry to the Innovation Pipeline – DL middleware