U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

3-56 

APPENDIX 20. LINKING THE INFORMATION LIFE CYCLE CONCEPT WITH 

DIGITAL LIBRARIES 

NCLIS POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ON LINKING 

THE INFORMATION LIFE CYCLE CONCEPT WITH DIGITAL LIBRARIES 

Written by Satadip Dutta, Virginia Institute of Technology 

Reviewed by Edward A. Fox and Shalin Urs16

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY17

The aim of this paper is to provide recommendations that would be used in the study of reforms to the 

Federal Government's public information dissemination laws, policies, programs, and practices. The 

paper describes the information lifecycle that outlines the process of creation, retrieval, and utilization 

of information. Salient features of government information are then discussed. The paper then 

explores the issues relevant to government information that include distribution of government 

information artifacts, issues in standardization of publishing formats, remodeling the information 

publishing model, and digital preservation of these artifacts. The scope of the paper is limited to 

exploring issues and making recommendations related to government information artifacts that would 

help the scholarly community. 

THE INFORMATION LIFECYCLE MODEL 

Information stored in libraries passes through a definite lifecycle that involves major phases like: 

• Information Creation: This phase primarily targets the creation of any kind of information. It 

involves authors and other creators actually preparing and modifying the information. The 

organizing and indexing of this information to facilitate retrieval in later phases is also a part of 

this phase. 

• Information Search: This phase deals with retrieving the information stored in (digital) libraries 

and other repositories. Activities like distribution of information also may be involved in ensuring 

widespread retrieval of relevant information. 

• Information Utilization: This phase deals with issues in accessing the distributed warehouses of 

information. Information selected may be utilized for creation of new information. Issues related 

to preservation and mining of information also are relevant to this phase. 

Figure 1 illustrates the lifecycle of information. This portrayal was prepared in 1996 at an NSF-funded 

workshop on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries, hosted by the Department of Information Science, 

University of California, Los Angeles. The report proposed a definition of digital libraries that 

encompassed two complementary ideas: 

 

16 Created by Satadip Dutta for Virginia Tech CS6604 term project ("Digital Libraries"); reviewed and edited by E. A. Fox 

(Professor) and Dr. Shalini Urs (visiting Fulbright scholar). 

17 Available at http://www.nclis.gov/govt/assess/assess.appen20.pdf. Interim revision October 16, 2000; final revision 

November 28, 2000. 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-57 

1. that they extend and enhance existing information storage and retrieval systems, incorporating 

digital data and metadata in any form; 

2. that digital library design, policy, and practice should reflect social context. 

Creating, seeking, and using information are socially situated human activities. Some activities may 

evolve in the predicted directions as defined by the information lifecycle. However, there also are 

many less regular information activities that: switch back and forth between phases, skip phases, or 

end before the cycle is complete. 

Figure 1: Information Lifecycle18

 

18 Adopted from Christine Borgman, editor. NSF Workshop Report on Social Aspects of Digital Libraries, 1996, http://wwwlis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL/. 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

3-58 

Details relative to the information lifecycle with respect to particular types and collection of 

publications may vary according to the particular social or institutional contexts. Government 

information has distinct properties that are not always present in other information artifacts. For 

example a government information artifact is always produced in a context related to the political, 

technical, administrative, legal, and temporal setting. A context can be defined as a certain timedelimited environmental and social state. For example a foreign trade policy forged during a time of 

war should be understood in the context of war. The information artifact may not, however, contain 

information about that context. If contextual information (e.g., being at war) is not captured, the 

significance and rationale behind document creation may be lost when the document is viewed at other 

times (e.g., in times of peace). Therefore production and publishing of government information 

artifacts involves not only the development of the material but also recording the context of production 

(e.g., in metadata or a hyperlinked document). 

INFORMATION CREATION 

This section contrasts the current information publication model with a digital library based scheme. 

Creation of metadata to facilitate information retrieval, and some issues related to document standards, 

are then discussed.

 

Information Publishing Model

The current information publishing process goes through a series of phases. Beginning with author, it 

moves on to the editors, then to publishers, and thence to catalogers and librarians, who add value and 

enable published information to be consumed by the general public. Figure 2 illustrates this sequential 

model and describes the steps required therein for authors and readers to communicate over space and 

time. 

Figure 2: Sequential Information Publishing Model 

A different model (see Figure 3) may result when all communication occurs in the same cyberspace 

(e.g., Internet), or, equivalently, in the same (federated/distributed) digital library. Participants in the 

process, regardless of their role, may simply be thought of as "users", who play different roles at 

different times. This "users direct" approach allows submissions to become available at point/time of 

creation, perhaps with improved/approved versions resulting later. The current revolution in electronic 

publishing also allows us to aggregate users/roles differently. Using Internet terminology we have: 

Author 

Editor Reviewer 

Publisher 

A & I 

Consolidator 

Library

Reader 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-59 

authors/creators, data providers, and service providers. In this model the data provider is responsible 

for managing collections/archives that follow content creation. 

Figure 3: Internet Enabled Publishing Model 

In the Open Archives model,19 data providers need only support a simple harvesting protocol and 

provide extracts of metadata in a common minimal-level format in response to requests from service 

providers. The Open Archives Initiative is currently formulating an interoperability framework that 

would support both e-prints and a wide variety of other types of (scholarly) data archives. Service 

providers use extracted metadata to build higher level, user-oriented services, such as catalogs and 

portals to materials distributed across multiple content-bearing sites. Figure 4 illustrates service 

provision and data provision as the two main aspects of the digital library. Thus from a sequential 

model, we may shift to an Internet enabled publishing model where the participants, their roles, and 

the distribution of responsibilities may differ. 

Figure 4: Service Provision Using Metadata 

Figure 4 illustrates that users create, interact, and use data through a layer of services. These services 

may enable the user to create/modify information artifacts as described in Figure 3. 

 

19 The Open Archives Initiative, OAI, was launched Oct. 1999 and aims to support interoperability of archives. The current 

emphasis relates to a harvesting protocol and architecture of very simple data collections ("archives") that have digital 

objects, metadata objects, and support the protocol. It focuses on a middle, or harvesting, layer, assuming a lower document 

model layer, and services in layers above. Open Archives Initiative, web site, http://www.openarchives.org/. 

USER 

SERVICE 

PROVISION

DATA 

PROVISION

DIGITAL LIBRARY 

DIGITAL 

LIBRARY USER

Author 

Librarian 

Reader 

Editor 

Reviewer Learner 

Teacher

ROLES 
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

3-60 

Metadata Repositories

The move from a sequential information model to an Internet enabled publishing model may shift 

more of the responsibility for metadata and index creation to the creators of information artifacts and 

their agents. Metadata may be stored in repositories that can be used when searching for information 

present in libraries. The creation of metadata is extremely important for digital objects like datasets, 

music, speeches, video, maps, and pictures (though improving content-based multimedia information 

retrieval may play an important new role). The scholarly community also may exploit metadata 

repositories to mine information, e.g., for discovering trends. Government or commercial (public and 

private) firms may develop and apply different retrieval routines. These may extend search capabilities 

beyond keyword-based models to support retrieval by describing the semantics or context of the 

information. Superior indexing techniques will also play an important role. Research focusing on 

techniques to automatically index multimedia information, plus semantics and context, with minimum 

manual intervention, should be encouraged. 

Document Formats

Changes in information publishing may necessitate interoperable formats and standardization. In the 

new model the author/creator may be responsible for submission of information artifacts in standard 

forms to the digital library. Today there are standards like HTML and PDF. Other formats will evolve 

and prove better. For example the emerging XML standard can be used to represent, interchange, and 

manipulate a wide variety of data and information artifacts. Digital libraries also may use such 

schemes when migrating existing documents, which now exist in a variety of formats. This problem 

primarily exists due to the lack of consensus about document publication formats. 

Apart from the migration and conversion problem, the material produced for government by the 

research community also needs to be distributed effectively so that everyone can easily find desired 

information. Many of the document formats require special readers that people may or may not have 

access to easily. These tools may be available free of cost but the existing infrastructure may not be 

sufficient to grant access to everyone. Users should be able to view the files without any special 

requirements. Therefore the software (like readers) must be made publicly available and steps should 

be taken to ensure that every computer has necessary software installed. This can help eliminate the 

problem of users with disparate backgrounds having different access capabilities. 

INFORMATION SEARCH 

This section discusses the creation of digital libraries on the scale of national libraries. The possibility 

of using services of non-government agencies to build effective retrieval mechanisms and the issues of 

registering information are then explored. 

Digital Libraries

People have traditionally viewed libraries as repositories of information that are easily identifiable and 

accessible. The creation of very large (e.g., coordinated national) digital libraries necessitates the need 

to provide the same or greater volume of information, along with ease of access. To make the digital 

libraries well known or truly identifiable it is necessary first to at least promote them as alternatives to 

and extensions of the various conventional libraries. This may involve physical creation of multiple 

locations of digital libraries that are interconnected. Distributed or federated digital libraries are now 

popular for this and other social/economic/political reasons. Creation of multiple sites with 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-61 

mirroring/replication balances the load and results in better performance. Focused promotion activities 

can help publicize such digital libraries. 

However, digital libraries will attract tremendous use, probably several orders of magnitude more than 

conventional libraries, simply because they can be superior to current systems and services. They can 

seamlessly handle all media types. They should seamlessly handle integration of wide varieties of data 

and information, with powerful and tailorable services. Not only should there be highly effective 

searching, but also browsing, linking, navigation, summarization, visualization, routing, filtering, and 

support for new types of artifact-supported collaboration and communication. They should improve 

with changes in the emerging networked world, yet provide continuity with the past, building on 

traditional values. 

Thinking of a library as institution, there may be value in the concept of a US National Digital Library, 

supporting search and other services. NSF is developing NSDL, the National Science (Mathematics, 

Engineering, and Technology Education) Digital Library,20 to open Fall 2002, and this has caught the 

imagination of educators and will have a profound impact on education in the nation. The California 

Digital Library may have some of the same effect in that state. If the scope of the Library of Congress 

and National Archives will stay roughly the same, it seems that there is incomplete coverage in the US 

in our current situation, though we do have Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, 

National Agricultural Library, NSDL, etc. There is no digital library covering all fields (with respect 

to what is generated by the government, deposited according to its laws, or collected by it), even 

virtually. 

Registration

In the United States, information about various topics is collected by different agencies. Often, the 

agencies that collect these data work independently of each other. This leads to difficulties regarding 

"registration". The registration problem arises when there is no way to align data for proper 

organization and integration. Ideally, different types of information can be aligned to produce multiple 

different views or perspectives that may not be evident from a single document. For example the 

percentages of different illness affecting children who are 5-9 years old may be collected by one 

government agency. Reports about the levels of various metals in the soil may be produced by another 

agency. There may be a possible link between the presence of various metals in the soil and the 

weakened immunity of children of a particular age group in that area. To illustrate further, a 

government agency may supply maps and other cartographic information about a particular locality. 

There might be another agency that produces information about the layout of utility lines, water pipes, 

drainage system, and the like for a given area. Before undertaking some repair work for the drainage 

system there may be information that could be derived from aerial photographs of the locality. This 

might lead to shorter decision times for servicing and repairing drainage systems. The absence of any 

form of registration makes the extraction of these types of conclusions almost impossible. Digital 

libraries may benefit from frameworks, using metadata, standards, and conventions, which allow 

registration of information artifacts. 

Retrieval Mechanisms

Once the information is stored in a distributed manner across the country and once registration issues 

are resolved, the next step would be to create mechanisms that retrieve relevant information for users. 

These mechanisms require the creation of suitable user interfaces for all segments of the population. 

For example a scientist searching for recent speeches by Nobel Prize winners in physics might also 

 

20 The NSDL site is http://www.smete.org/.
U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science 

3-62 

wish to look at related publications. In other scenarios users may try to find information on topics for 

which they have little background. Further, interfaces should not only try to present the information 

retrieved but also provide mechanisms that allow users to restrict the context of the information 

artifact. Otherwise, if a person searches for stars, the digital library might retrieve documents related to 

entertainment stars, astronomy, songs that contains stars in their lyrics (like the Star Spangled 

Banner)—all very different contexts. 

Retrieval mechanisms also need to be supported for the next generation of mobile computing devices 

since they increase the accessibility of information relative to the various facets of daily life. Such 

approaches, along with improved kiosks and programs to improve access in schools and public 

libraries, may complement ongoing efforts to eliminate the digital divide. 

INFORMATION UTILIZATION 

This section looks at the issues related to preservation of information artifacts. This is extremely 

important in the information lifecycle because information artifacts generated in the future need to 

refer to information produced in the past. 

Preservation

Documents need to be preserved such that the context and the history behind the creation of the 

document are stored in ways that make it easy to retrieve and comprehend. This would allow people in 

the future to effectively evaluate reports that were produced in the past, with the correct perspective. 

Also, digital libraries have to cope with the migration of the documents stored in older formats to 

newer formats. 

There continues to be a rapid change in technology that makes digital media obsolete very quickly. 

For example, as new storage formats evolve, storage capacity increases but at the same time the 

playback devices for older media become obsolete. 

Digital storage media are usually fragile compared to paper. Therefore to maintain a collection in 

digital media regular checks of the information artifacts become necessary. Also it becomes important 

that the data is mirrored at certain remote locations. This gives rise to legal and copyright issues, as the 

information artifacts need to be periodically copied. For example, the Internet Archive 

(www.internetarchive.org) today plays a valuable role in archiving the Internet. But it may not actually 

follow the letter of the law since it is a business drawing upon copyright materials, without 

authorization from copyright holders. 

Some extremely pertinent points are raised by the report on Digital Strategy for the Library of 

Congress21 in this regard. The preservation responsibilities can be classified into loosely defined 

categories like: 

1. a creator, active collector, and primary custodian for digital information artifacts; 

2. a partner in preserving distributed digital collections. 

 

21 National Research Council, Computer Science and Telecommunications Board. LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of 

Congress. Washington, DC: National Academy Press (2001). This reference is to a prepublication copy, dated July 26, 2000. 

http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/0a254cd9b53e0bc585256777004e74d3/bd6c8fce95b00a6d852569280047753a?

OpenDocument. 
A Comprehensive Assessment of Public Information Dissemination 

3-63 

Initiatives in the direction of assigning stable, long-term responsibilities to organizations like the 

Library of Congress would help in preservation activities for digital libraries. 

CONCLUSION 

This paper looks at the information lifecycle in the context of modern technology. It discusses aspects 

of Internet enabled publishing and other changes facilitated by digital libraries. It recommends further 

support of research to improve retrieval, as well as of mechanisms to reduce the digital divide. Further, 

it highlights key requirements, e.g., that government information artifacts must have their content and 

context preserved.