1. WHAT IS A DIGITAL LIBRARY?
What is a digital library? There is much confusion
surrounding this phrase, stemming from three
factors. First, the library community has used
several different phrases over the years to denote this
concept— electronic library, virtual library, library
without walls— and it never was quite clear what
each of these different phrases meant. “Digital
library” is simply the most current and most widely
accepted term and is now used almost exclusively at
conferences, online, and in the literature.
Another factor adding to the confusion is that digital
libraries are at the focal point of many different areas
of research, and what constitutes a digital library
differs depending upon the research community that
is describing it (Nurnberg, et al, 1995). For
example:
· from an information retrieval point of view, it is
a large database
· for people who work on hypertext technology, it
is one particular application of hypertext
methods
· for those working in wide-area information
delivery, it is an application of the Web
· and for library science, it is another step in the
continuing automation of libraries that began
over 25 years ago
In fact, a digital library is all of these things. These
different research approaches will all add to the
development of digital libraries.
Third, confusion arises from the fact that there are
many things on the Internet that people are calling
“digital libraries,” which¾ from a librarian’s point
of view¾ are not. For example:
· for computer scientists and software developers,
collections of computer algorithms or software
programs are digital libraries.
· for database vendors or commercial document
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suppliers, their databases and electronic
document delivery services and digital libraries.
· for large corporations, a digital library is the
document management systems that control
their business documents in electronic form.
· for a publisher, it may be an online version of a
catalogue.
· and for at least one very large software
company, a digital library is the collection of
whatever it can buy the