The participants [at digital library conferences in the United Statcs
reflecting DLI] aimed (properly) to be innovative and freethinking,
leaving aside the constraints of existing practice. The results are exciting and extraordinarily interesting, but it is very hard to determine how many of these ideas might be effectively deployed in real
life situations. It is notoriously difficult to transfer new technology
from experiment to practice, but this is clearly harder the more distant the experimental context from real life.
By contrast, the eLib program characterised itself right from the
start as “development” rather than research. . . . [The mission of
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funding the eLib
projects] is to stimulate and enable the cost effective exploitation of information systems and to provide a high quality national network infrastructure
for the UK higher education and research . . . communities; in this context,