Digital Libraries

1. Digital Libraries Hong (Iris) Xie

2. Different perspectives • Carrying out of the functions of libraries in a new way (library science) • Simply a distributed text-based information system, a collection of distributed information services, a distributed space of interlinked information or a networked multimedia information system (computer science) • Support for learning (education) • More of the same as WWW with improvements in performance, organization, functionality and usability (modern user)

3. What is a digital library? • It is concerned with that body of knowledge relating to the collection, organization, storage, distribution, retrieval, and utilization of digital information. Digital libraries basically store materials in electronic format and manipulate large collections of those materials effectively • Bibliography on Digital Libraries http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/CurrentCites/bibondemand.cgi?query=digital+library

4. Advantages of Digital Libraries • dramatically advance the means to collect, store, organize and use • widely distribute knowledge resources containing diverse types of information and content stored in a variety of electronic forms • strengthen communication and collaboration between and among the research, business, government, and educational communities • encourage considerable investment in research resources, computing and communications network • take an international leadership role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge • contribute to the lifelong learning opportunities

5. Examples of Digital Libraries • American Memory from the Library of Congress http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html • University of California at Berkeley http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/ • Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org • New York Public Library http://digital.nypl.org/

6. Major Components • Content • Services • Technology • Socio-political culture

7. Major process • Collection • Storage • Organization • Distribution

8. Content/Collection • Quality • Cost of acquisition/licensing • Costs of digitization and maintenance • File transfer • Speed • Mass storage • Digitalization • output • resolution • value and condition of the physical objects (e.g., brittle, rare manuscripts must be handled differently than technical reports) • speed (digitizing 100 images is quite a different task than digitizing a million images)

9. Storage • file conversion • Compression • Lossy compression • Lossless compression • streaming technology versus discrete files

10. Organization • Indexing • Text indexing • Image indexing • Multimedia indexing • Multiple language documents indexing • Metadata • refers to any data used to aid the identification, description and location of networked electronic resources http://dublincore.org/documents/2003/02/04/dces/

11. Distribution • Media • Internet • Intranet • Organizational level • International • National • State • Individual organization

12. Access • Interface design • Human-computer interaction • usability • Information retrieval • Interactive information retrieval • Natural language retrieval • Non text retrieval • Reference service

13. Services • Types of patrons • Types of services • Search services • Reference services • Routing services • Instruction

14. Technology Requisites • Computer hardware • High-speed networking • Security • Interoperability

15. Culture & Economic Challenges • cultural standardization versus empowering individual expression • intellectual property rights • information security and authority • Costs

16. The role of information professionals • Service provider • System interface designer • Gatekeeper of the electronic age • Mediator between users and system designers