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 .
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,” which from a librarian’s point of view 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 Digital Libraries: Definitions, Issues and Challenges 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 rights to, and then charge people for using.