The
term "library" conjures a variety
of different images. For some, a library is
a dim and dusty place filled with out-of-date
texts of limited historical interest. For others,
it is a rich collection of archival quality
information which may include video and audio
tapes, disks, printed books, magazines, periodicals,
reports and newspapers. As used in this report,
a library is intended to be an extension of
this latter concept to include material of current
and possibly only transient interest. Seen from
this new perspective, the digital library is
a seamless blend of the conventional archive
of current or historically important information
and knowledge, along with ephemeral material
such as drafts, notes, memoranda and files of
ongoing activity. In its broadest sense, a DLP
is made up of many Digital Libraries sharing
common standards & methodologies.
Libraries have always been
a community’s ‘portal’ to
information, knowledge and leisure. Beyond their
shelves, libraries are a community’s gateway
to information from many sources nationally
and internationally. Libraries provide professionals
trained to distinguish and verify content, build
collections and provide a reference and information
service. Today more libraries rely on electronic
sources for collecting, organizing and distributing
information. The information age has created
unprecedented opportunities to acquire electronic
content from many sources including existing
digital content in many different types of libraries.
It involves many geographically
distributed users and organizations, each of
which has a digital library which contains information
of both local and/or widespread interest. The
Digital Library Project design allows individual
organizations to include their own material
in the Digital Library System or to take advantage
of network based information and services offered
by others. It includes data that may be internal
to a given organization and that which crosses
organizational boundaries. This document presents
a plan to develop such a system on an experimental
basis with the cooperation of the research community.
Finally, it addresses the application of a Digital
Library System to meet a wide variety of user
needs.
Background
In the past fifteen years, libraries and other
cultural institutions have launched a large
number of projects aimed at providing online
access to digital collections. In addition,
a number of major regional initiatives are underway
or under discussion. While much has been achieved
at the national level and many of the regional
projects promise substantial benefits to their
users, two challenges are likely to persist
for the foreseeable future.
First, not enough digital content
is being created. This is true for developed
and developing Asia. It may even become more
of a problem in the future, as resources shift,
in relative terms, from digital conversion to
the preservation of born digital content and
from the digital conversion of cultural artifacts
to the mass scanning of books. The situation
in the developing world is of course far more
problematic. In many countries, relatively little
is being done to digitize collections and to
make them available on the Internet. The result
is that the distribution of digital content
on the Internet is uneven with regard to geographic
regions, cultures, language, and types of institution.
Second, content is often hard
to find, difficult to search, and presented
in a multiplicity of ways that confuse and frustrate
users. Multilingual search and display are not
well developed, and many features that young
people are used to finding on commercial sites
are not available on the cultural and educational
sites maintained by libraries, archives, and
other cultural institutions.
We at Open Forum believe, technological
progress has changed how libraries do their
work, not why. But the most profound technological
development¾a connections of computer
to computer in an unbroken chain around the
world may alter the fundamental concept of the
library in the twenty-first century. But we
would suggest that technology will not substantially
alter the business of librarians connecting
people with information. If librarians and information
professionals are going to progress into the
21st century then a clear and effective "digital
library" model for library services and
development will be increasingly important.
An increasingly complex technological, social,
legal, and economic environment defines many
boundaries within which "digital library"
services will evolve. Librarians may discover
that "libraries-without-walls" are
actually only libraries with new walls technologically
bounded, legally restricted, and administratively
hamstrung. The "digital library" may
be equally impenetrable and as profoundly limiting
to their patrons as the physical library which
techno-pundits would suggest digital collections
are intended to replace. Exposing some myths
that permeate the popular press reporting about
digital libraries sets the stage for a closer
examination of the significant challenges to
"digital library" development.
