Creating the Digital Library. A Special Report from the Primary Research Group

Citation

Barker, P. (2001), "Creating the Digital Library. A Special Report from the Primary Research Group", The Electronic Library, Vol. 19 No. 3, pp. 184-188. https://doi.org/10.1108/el.2001.19.3.184.4

A digital library is essentially a framework for providing access to a stored collection of electronic information. Such systems are growing in number, popularity and availability (especially via the Internet). For many people, libraries of this sort offer a powerful research tool. In principle, using an appropriate network connection, a researcher can use his/her desktop computer to search the contents of a digital library – no matter where that library is physically located. Many organisations now have a digital library facility. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), for example, has been involved in digital library work for some considerable time. Indeed, the ACM’s site, which can be found at http://www.acm.org/dl is a good example of what can now be achieved using currently available computer and communications technologies. Of course, many other organisations and institutions have also been involved in creating libraries of this sort. Collectively, there is therefore now quite a lot of experience at building these systems and/or providing access to them. This report by Malone et al. profiles some of the ways in which selected US/Canadian organisations are addressing the challenges of digital access. It contains outline descriptions of some 14 digital library facilities. The organisations covered in the report are drawn from both the public and private sectors – universities, medical libraries and organisations such as the Library of Congress, the National Science Foundation (that funded the USA’s Digital Libraries Initiative) and the Microsoft Corporation.

The report starts off with a short introduction that outlines the “evolution of electronic information” and its growing impact on conventional libraries. Some mention is made of “hybrid libraries” that cater for both paper‐based materials and electronic resources. The types of electronic information that are normally handled in a digital library are then briefly discussed – periodical indexes, full‐text databases, aggregations of electronic journals, collections of e‐books, and locally digitised groupings of unique original texts and photographs.

Following the introduction, there are 14 short chapters. Each one of these deals with a specific case study arising from the organisations that were studied. For example, the first chapter deals with the Columbia University Digital Library while chapter 2 is devoted to the University of California’s digital library system. Subsequent chapters in the report describe the work going on in the following organisations: Cornell University, Yale University, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Agency, Houston Academy of Medicine/Texas Medical Centre Library, the Microsoft Corporation, the National Science Foundation, the Library of Congress, Crozer‐Chester Medical Centre Library, the Carle Foundation Medical Library, Botsford General Library, the University Health Network (in Toronto) and the Boulder Public Library System. Within the 14 organisation‐specific chapters, a variety of different issues are discussed. Some of the more important of these include: budget structures, operating structures, copyright issues, staffing patterns, access control, licensing, human factors, the Z39.50 protocol, metadata, digitisation and multimedia collections.

The final chapter in the book, which is by far the longest, discusses some of the interesting relationships that exist between publishers and digital libraries. Various factors that influence the “print versus digital” dilemma are discussed and predictions are made about future developments with respect to these two modes of publishing. Some of the other interesting topics covered in this chapter include developments in the marketplace for electronic books and the “Digital Object Identifier” standard. Finally, there is a useful appendix that provides some valuable contact information for many of the organisations that were involved in the study.