Introduction to Digital libraries: History, Definitions, and Types

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Introduction to Digital libraries History,
Definitions, and Types
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open archives
interoperability
user interfaces
metadata
federated searching
digitization
digital projects
Digital Libraries
preservation
users
technology architecture
information organization
search behaviour
digital content
information retrieval
evaluation
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Outline

• Some basic questions
• Early visions
• Goals for digital libraries
• Various perspectives of DLs
• Definitions
• Early projects
• Document types in DLs

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Some basic questions

• What are digital libraries?
• What are the goals of digital libraries?
• Do terms like electronic library, virtual
  library, digital library, or cybrary
  represent the same entity?
• What communities are involved in digital library
  research and practice?

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History Early visions

• H. G. Wells (1938) the notion of a World
  Encyclopedia
• Vannevar Bush (1945) Memex
• Douglas Engelbart (1963) electronic technology,
  the first mouse and hypertext technology
• Lickliders (1965) vision "Library of the
  Future"
• Tim Berners-Lee (1989) hypertext

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Goals for digital libraries

• The broad goal for digital libraries is to
  dramatically advance the means to select, store,
  organize, and use widely distributed knowledge
  resources containing diverse types of information
  and content stored in a variety of electronic
  forms.

Digital library Initiative Interagency
Coordinating committee (1996)
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Why digital libraries?

• DL brings library to the user
• Ubiquitous anytime, anywhere access to
  information
• Open access paradigm (democracy, education etc.)
• Increasing cost of buildings and storage
  (preservation issues)
• Variety of materials
• Budget pressures

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Various DL perspectives

• Library and information science community
• Computer science community
• Politicians and Governments
• Publishers
• Teachers
• Archivists
• Commercial enterprises

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LIS community

• Views a DL as an institution rather than a
  machine
• DLs are
• libraries without walls
• a logical extension of what libraries have been
  doing- acquiring, organizing, and disseminating
  information
• enhancing resources, services and audiences of
  libraries

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Computer science community

• Views DLs as an extension of networking
  technologies
• DLs are an extension of databases and information
  retrieval systems
• For the database community DLs are large
  databases

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Politicians and governments

• Can DLs bridge the digital divide between
  information rich and information poor?
• Many believe that DLs can bring equity of access
• Governments try to develop DLs to provide access
  to information for all citizens

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Publishers

• DLs as new opportunities
• Production and distribution of information
• Licensing issues
• Competitiveness
• Paradigm shift

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Teachers and educators

• New learning resources
• Variety of educational materials
• Virtual learning and e-learning environments
• Teachers/educators/students as content producers

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Archivists

• View DLs as a means of preserving national and
  cultural heritage
• DLs can be used to enhance access to fragile
  materials

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Commercial enterprises

• View DLs as a new market
• Database vendors and brokers
• Pricing and economic models

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Digital library definitions
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Definitions

• The first research-oriented definition belongs to
  Christine Borgman (1993)
• A National Electronic Library is
• (1) a service
• (2) an architecture
• (3) a set of information resources,
  databases of text, numbers, graphics, sound,
  video, etc. and
• (4) a set of tools and capabilities to
  locate, retrieve and utilize the information
  resources available.

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Definitions (cont.)

• Summarizing a broad array of DL definitions
  Bishop and Star (1996) determined that three
  elements are necessary
• (1) some sense of a collection, with some
  kind of organization
• (2) a collection that is not entirely
  bibliographic or exclusively a set of pointers to
  other material, it must contain some full-form
  online material' and may be in a variety of
  formats and
• (3) a goal exists to link audience, group,
  patron, or community with attributes of the
  collection''

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Definitions (cont.)

• Lesk (1997), in a book on practical digital
  libraries', defines a digital library simply as
  a collection of information which is both
  digitized and organized''.

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Digital Library Federation definition (1998)

• Digital Libraries are organizations that provide
  the resources, including the specialized staff to
  select, structure, offer intellectual access to,
  interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of
  and ensure the persistence over time of
  collections of digital works so that they are
  readily and economically available for use by a
  defined community or set of communities.

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Definitions (cont.)

• Marchionini and Fox (1999) state that Digital
  libraries have four dimensions
• The community dimension
• Technology as the engine moving the DL
• Services constitute the central focus of DLs,
  digital reference services, real time question
  answering, information literacy
• Content

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Definitions (cont.)

• Arms (2000) defines DL as a managed collection
  of information, with associated services, where
  the information is stored in digital formats and
  accessible over a network.

Arms (2000) Digital libraries.
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Digital
Libraries
Computing
Content
Community
Collections
Services
Networking
Building blocks of digital libraries
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Content Types
Software
Data set
Audio
Video
Images
Graphic
Text
Articles Reports Books
2-D 3-D Virtual Reality
Photos Scans
Movie
Speech Music
Genome Geographic information
Simulation
Digital content types and examples (Fox 2003)
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Early projects

• Mercury Electronic Library Project at Carnegie
  Mellon University (1989-1992)
• Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment (CORE)
• Elsevier Science digitization project(1991-1995)
• Digital Library Initiative I (1994-1998)
• UK Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme(1994)
• Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries (1997)

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Types of DLs

• Museums
• National libraries
• Public libraries and institutions
• Research organizations and institutes
• Teaching and learning institutions
• World digital library

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Lois Hole Campus Alberta Digital Library

• Funded by the Government of Alberta (30 million)
  over a period of 5 years
• The LHCADL acquires digital resources for the
  benefit of learners, faculty and researchers at
  the 35 secondary education institutions in
  Alberta
• The LHCADL is governed and administered by The
  Alberta Library (TAL).

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Discussion

• Do you think the World Wide Web is a digital
  library? Support your argument with reasons from
  our discussion so far?

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The first computer mouse held by Engelbart
showing the wheels which directly contact the
working surface.
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Drawing of Bush's theoretical Memex machine (Life
Magazine)