Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives

Citation

du Preez, M. (2013), "Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives", Online Information Review, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 342-343. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-04-2013-0073

Digital libraries have been created and developed to provide access to digital information by a wide range of user communities. In this volume Gladney et al., define a digital library as:

[…] an assemblage of digital computing, storage, and communications machinery together with the content and software needed to reproduce, emulate, and extent the services provided by conventional libraries based on paper and other material means of collecting, cataloguing, finding, and disseminating information.

Also, different types of content has been created and are stored in digital libraries’ repositories – for example, scientific research reports, scholarly work, digitised books, music, photographic images and films. A digital library's user community therefore determines the content type stored in the library's repository.

Research in digital libraries originally focused on the building technologies for the management of large volumes of digital information for remote access. The focus has since shifted to users, usability and impact studies and open access. The aim of this book is to cover research and development in different areas related to information access in digital libraries. Since research focusing on digital libraries is rather diverse, this book aims at addressing the key areas of research in information access and interactions within digital libraries. To achieve this, the editors drew upon a list of renowned experts in the field from across the world to produce an up‐to‐date and authoritative resource on digital libraries.

The book is divided into 15 chapters. Most of these are devoted to aspects such as the technology involved in the creation of digital libraries and the usability thereof. These include discussions on the architecture of a digital library, the role metadata has in organising information and the impact new web developments and social media technologies have on the use that can be made of digital libraries. Since users have an impact on the use that is made of a digital library, an overview of current research trends on users and their interaction with digital libraries is presented in Chapter 8. This is followed by a discussion of new players in the digital information field such as Google Books, Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic Search. These discussions not only highlight the impact users have on the creation and development of digital libraries, but they also address the impact social issues such as the digital divide, social inclusion, information literacy and web accessibility have on digital library use and access.

The editors have avoided including information that could be out‐dated soon. At the same time they have introduced current concerns such as crowd‐sourced data analytics, open access, intellectual property and scientific data policy.

Digital Libraries and Information Access is intended for the scholarly reader and persons involved in the development and management of digital libraries – a welcome addition to the literature on this topic. It is well written. Apart from the international body of authors who contributed to the book, it also includes extensive bibliographies on digital library research.