Digital Library Development: The View from Kanazawa

Citation

James, S. (2006), "Digital Library Development: The View from Kanazawa", Library Review, Vol. 55 No. 6, pp. 377-378. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530610674802

We think that we know what the issues are (although I sometimes doubt) and have some notions of what the possible solutions might be, but the digital age has taken and is still taking all the players in the library world into new areas: new corporate or service relationships, new legal issues, new administrative and financial issues, and so many more. And as those areas are all themselves evolving as rapidly as our own, the situation is ever more fluid and complex. Are we leading or just trying to keep up with other players – commercial suppliers or our users? The questions have to be asked and addressed if we are to make sense of what we are trying to provide or even simply justify our continued existence.

There have been and must continue to be innumerable publications treating these issues. This set of papers will hold a valuable place in that crowded market. The Kanazawa Institute of Technology is the largest higher education institution specialising in engineering and technology in Japan. For more than a decade it has organised annual roundtable events on the development of digital libraries. In the 5‐year period covered by these papers, experts from the US have moved away from technical issues into the role of digital libraries in education: we know how to do it, but what is it we are trying to do and why?

The result here is a measured overview by a range of US experts, within four main themes, each containing four papers. Both breadth and depth are impressive. “Envisioning the future” looks at the role of digital libraries in emerging scholarship and education patterns, but starts with a brief history of libraries and their role to put us into the ever‐invaluable context of the past. The four papers under “Facing major challenges' do just what the section says, including a review of copyright and the research library as publisher. “Creating projects and programs” looks at four specific areas, including Journal Storage (JSTOR) and the role of digitisation in mathematics scholarship. Finally, “Developing digital libraries” reviews the place (organizational, intellectual and physical) of the library in the digital age.

Inevitably, some papers stand out more than others to individual readers and my choice is governed by personal interest. Stanley Chodorow's opening contribution “The future according to the past” inevitably gallops through library history, but succeeds in offering an historical perspective to all that follows. Catherine C. Marshall's “Reading and interactivity in the digital library” examines evidence for reading habits in the digital age with a view to “creating an experience that transcends paper”. Beyond all the commercial hype we still await an electronic device that offers a reading experience comparable with a printed page, but even as one who would reckon to counter the argument that “it is becoming less common to reflexively print electronic documents just to read them”, I have to admit that my own practices are changing and the new printer for my intensively‐used home PC spends most of its time switched off. Two papers in the final section I found are of particular interest: Abby Smith's review of “Collections in the digital library” looks at the whole question of what is a collection and how it is created, managed and presented; while Nicholas C. Burckel in “Library space in the digital age” looks not just at the effects of digital libraries on library architecture, but how they fit into wider users and educational space patterns.

This a rather expensive paperback book, but there are plenty of interests and values here for anyone concerned with the changing role of digital libraries. These are, of course, issues we must all be concerned with. Questions are raised and contexts are set: it is for each of us to derive and apply the solutions that fit our own circumstances best.