Digital Libraries Principles and

Practices in a Global Environment by

Lucy A. Tedd and Andrew Large
Chapter 1 & 2
CHAPTER 1: Digital Libraries in Context
 Chapter 1 Overview
• The rise of Digital Libraries
• The Traditional Library
• Libraries and Information Media in Historical
Context
• Digital Libraries as a Global Resource
• Digital Library Definitions
• Why Digital Libraries
 The Rise of Digital Library
• The earliest digital library experiments all
involved the digitization of journal articles.
• 1989-1992
– Establish a campus based digital library of journal
articles on computer science (project by Mercury
Electronic Library @ Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
– Followed by Chemistry Online Retrieval
Experiment (CORE)
– CORE digitized some 400000 pages from
chemistry journals published by American
Chemical Society
• Between 1991 &1995
– The publisher Elsevier Science, through the
University Licensing Projects (TULIP), provided
nine leading universities in the US with digitized
content from 43 of its journals.
• During 1990’s
– Both research and professionals interest in digital
libraries continued to grow rapidly.
• 1991 workshop
– Future Directions in Text Analysis, Retrieval and
Understanding held in US.
– This time the ‘electronic libraries’ employed
• 1994
– More workshops launch.
– Digital Library Initiative (DLI-1) by 3 US federal
agencies (the National Science Foundation , The
National Aeronautical & Space Agency, & the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• DLI-1 mandate was to develop methods to
collect, store and organize information in
digital forms and make it available for
searching, retrieval and processing in user-
friendly ways via communication networks.
 Six research projects were funded
under DLI-1:
• University of California at Berkeley developed a
large digital collection about California’s
environment;
• the University of California at Santa Barbara dealt
with maps and geos-patial information in its
Alexandria project;
• Carnegie Mellon University’s Informedia project
researched digital video retrieval;
• the University of Illinois Interspace project
focused on repositories of scientific and
engineering journals;
 DLI-2

• Was sponsored by several US agencies,

including new partners that had wider
interests than those involved in Phase I such
as the National Library of Medicine (NLM); the
National Endowment for the Humanities; the
Library of Congress (LC); and the NSF’s Division
of Undergraduate Education.
 Its objectives were to:
• selectively build on and extend research and
testbed activities in promising digital library
areas
• accelerate development, management and
accessibility of digital content and collections;
• create new capabilities and opportunities for
digital libraries to serve existing and new user
communities, including all levels of education
• 1999-2004
– 36 projects funded
– University of California Davis projects
• A Multimedia Digital Library of Folk literature”, worked
with an archive of Judeo-Spanish ballads, lyric poetry,
folktales, proverbs and riddles.
• DL were also being established in many widely
other developing as well as developed
countries.
 The African Digital Library

– freely accessible to anyone living in Africa

– providing information on African education and
development in the form
– of electronic books (ebooks), electronic journals
(ejournals) and other materials
 In Brazil, the Biblioteca Virtual em
saude (the Virtual health Library)

• includes a network of health information

resources from the region
 The Canadian Initiative on Digital
Libraries
• is an alliance of Canadian libraries and other
organizations that are collaborating to ensure
better use of digital information and better
services to users
• collection of archival documents –
photographs, letters, and so on, with
commentaries
 In Ireland the Corpus of Electronic
Texts (CELT)
• comprises an online resource for the academic
study of Irish history, literature and politics
(http://www.ucc.ie/celt).
The New Zealand Digital Library (NZDL)
• project at the University of Waikato
(http://www.nzdl.org)
• was conceived to develop technology,
• examine novel interfaces, enhance
information presentation and assess potential
subject areas for public-domain collections, as
well as to survey and critique other digital
library projects.
 UK the Electronic Libraries
• (eLib) Programme, initiated in 1994, fostered
digital library development in areas such as
digitization, digital preservation, and
electronic document delivery
• A list of the more than 70 projects funded
until 2000 can be found on the Web
(http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/project
s) and the ejournal
 The Traditional Library
• More physical buildings
• Store printed documents
• Also store non-print documents
• Organized Collection
• Interlibrary Loans
• Libraries are not only institution involved
in safeguarding our cultural heritage.
• Archives, museums and art galleries
collect and preserve documents and
other artifacts for current and future use.
• Our Future, Past
– The Alberta Heritage Digitization Project
• Provides access to digitized versions of
historical documents – photographs, maps,
newspapers, government documents and local
histories-relevant to the history of this
Canadian province.
 Libraries and Information Media in
Historical Context
• Sumerians were using soft clay (then hardened
into tablets or walls)
• Egyptian invention of papyrus around 2500 BC
• Printing with moveable type in fact had been
practiced in China from the 11th century
• 1827 the first photograph was developed after an
exposure of eight hours!
• 19th century
– Newspapers
• 1920s onwards microfilm and microfiche
• late 1950s – photocopying
• 1940’s & 1950’s
– Digital Computers appeared
• 1960’s 70’s
– Online search services emerged (Lockheed Dialog &
Medline)
– Databases(abstracts and later full text of journal)

• Late 1960s
– The new networks depended upon a technology called
packet switching
• 1972
– Higher bandwidths that enable more data, including
moving objects and sound as well as text to be
transmitted high enough speeds for real-time use.
• The emergence from ARPANET of the Internet
– a vast collection of inter-connected
networks that all use a shared protocol to
communicate between themselves called
TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol) – provided an opportunity for
information transfer on a scale hitherto
unimagined.
• 1990’s
 1990’s
• the pioneering work of Bush, Engelbart, Nelson
and Berners-Lee had led by the 1990s to
hypertext systems, windows-based operating
systems, improved interface design and the Web.
• Three new developments were incorporated into
the Web: HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
used to write the web documents, HTTP
(HyperText Transfer Protocol) to transmit the
pages, and a web browser program
• With the appearance of the Web, the
technological stage was now set for the rapid
diffusion of digital libraries
 Digital Libraries as a Global Resource
• First, digital libraries in an institutional sense
are being established in developed and
developing countries, big and small countries,
and countries in the north, south, east and
west.
• Second, many digital libraries, regardless of
content location, can be entered virtually,
searched or browsed, and information
retrieved by users from all over the world
• Third, the content itself that has been selected
and assembled as a unified digital collection may
physically be stored on computers in different
parts of the world.
• And fourth, cheap and effective digitization
processes are offering diverse cultures the
opportunity to organize, preserve and make
available to users their own local text, image and
sound artefacts in ways that were previously
unthinkable
 Digital Library Definitions
• Schwartz (2000) reports that students in a
digital library course found 64 different
definitions
 Characteristics of Digital Libraries
• Digital libraries are a set of electronic
resources and associated technical capabilities
for creating, searching, and using information.
• In this sense they are an extension and
enhancement of information storage and
retrieval systems that manipulate digital data
in any medium (text, images, sounds . . .) and
exist in distributed networks.
• The content of digital libraries includes data,
metadata that describe various aspects of
data … and metadata that consist of links or
relationships to other data or metadata,
whether internal or external to the digital
library.
• For Bawden and Rowlands
– Significant proportion of the resources available to
users must exist in digital form.
• In contrast Chowdhurry and Chowdhurry
– Remind us that a characteristics of many digital
libraries is that a large percentage of materials still are
to be found in non-digital form.
• Marchionini
– To be modified by the term digital, a library must have
some electronic content and services.
– The phase ‘hybrid library’ rather than digital library
has been used by some authors.
– A digital library makes its digital content and services
accessible remotely through wide area or local area
networks.
• A very important characteristic of a digital
library is that its collection has been selected
and organized for an identifiable user
community.
• Deegan and Tanner (2002) emphasize that a
digital library must treat its contents “as long-
term stable resources” and “ensure their
quality and survivability.”
 Why Digital Libraries?
• What do digital libraries offer users that
cannot be found in a traditional bricks and
mortar library?
– Provide access through distributed networks to a
range of information.
– provide enhanced search and browse features,
and enable documents to be downloaded, or cut
and pasted directly into other documents
– provide services to support activities such as
distance education (e-learning) and e-commerce,
and facilitate collaborative work among people
who are geographically scattered
• Digital libraries, or at least their digital
collections, unfortunately also have brought
their own problems in areas such as:

– Interoperability between systems and software

– User authentication for access to collections
– Interface design
– Preservation of digital data over time
– Staff re-skilling and training
CHAPTER 2: DIGITAL LIBRARIES:
USERS AND SERVICES
 Chapter 2: Overview
• User Access to Digital Libraries
• Digital Libraries in Various Institutional
Environments
• Personalized Digital Libraries
• Digital Reference Services
• Information Literacy
• Barriers to User Access
 User Access to Digital Libraries
• Why people use digital libraries?
• What services are offered, why some users
face particular challenges and how these may
be overcome?
 Users in DL
• Professionals
– expecting to be provided with quality digital
information sources also for their professional
work
• Researchers
– used to online communication and are keen to
enable the flow of scholarly thought via published
papers in digital form that might be held in
repositories in digital libraries.
 Services in DL
• The need to preserve of cultural and historical
heritage collections of fragile and precious
artefacts has encouraged many museums,
archives and galleries around the world to
develop digitized collections for users from all
over the world to access and study.
• Governments
–aim to provide access to relevant
information or their citizens and the
development of digital libraries is seen
as one way of achieving this.
–as e-voting and so on, are a move
towards e-government.
 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional
Environments
• Museums
– Many culture-based organizations, such as
museums, are developing digital collections
of their holdings which can be accessed
freely by individuals.
– Digital collections
• a gallery of 3D images
• virtual exhibitions
• Virtual Library Museums
 National Libraries
• National libraries often house important
collections of archives, printed materials, and
photographs related to a particular country,
and also function as a central point for
information about the culture and heritage of
that country.
 Public Libraries and Institution
• In many countries the role of public libraries in
the new ‘knowledge economy’ or in the
globalization of services is being defined.
 Research Establishments
• In the research sector users require access to
research carried out by colleagues worldwide
made available in articles published in
refereed scholarly journals, in books, or in
unpublished sources such as doctoral
dissertations or research reports.
 Teaching & Learning Establishments
• User-centred learning is being achieved with
the adoption of various managed learning
environments (MLEs) and virtual learning
environments (VLEs).
• WebCT and Blackboard
 Personalized Digital Libraries
• For some users, a major advantage in using a
digital library is the ability to ‘personalize’ the
information that appears on their desktop or
laptop computer.
– Bookmarking
– Provide links
– Allow users to add items from the results of a
search directly to MyGateway;
 Digital Reference Services
• One possible disadvantage of digital
libraries is that users need not visit the
physical building and so are not able to
call upon the staff within the library for
face to face help in finding information.
• The two basic models for digital
reference are:
– Asynchronous
– Synchronous
 Asynchronous
• In such services the user will e-mail a request
to the library, or fill in a specific web form
outlining the specific request and, in due
course an answer will be provided by e-mail.
 Synchronous
• (real-time, text-based or chat). In these
services there is a two-way communication
between user and librarian using ‘chat’
software or video technology.
 Information Literacy
• The ability to recognize a need for
information.
• The ability to locate and access information
(that is to develop appropriate searching
techniques.
• The ability to cite a bibliographic reference
• Able to understand issues of copyright and
plagiarism.
• The ability to compare and evaluate
information
 Barriers to User Access
• Visual or other physical impairment affecting
access
• No appropriate technology
• ICT illiteracy
• Language barrier