Desktop library

Citation

Maxymuk, J. (2002), "Desktop library", The Bottom Line, Vol. 15 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2002.17015cag.001

Desktop library

Desktop library

Keywords: Internet, Collection management, Information technology

In graduate school I can remember going to the computer keypunch station and slowly punching in commands for a computer program, a card at a time. Hit a wrong key and that card was ruined and it was time to start again. This was a laborious unforgiving process for the inexact typist. Once you had your stack of cards, you took them over to the computer center, put them in the bin and waited for the program to be run on the mainframe. At times, the wait for computer time could be extensive. Finally, a printout would be placed in your bin and you hurriedly would flip through it to see whether it ran, or, more likely, failed and had to be debugged. Then, it was back to the keypunch machine to revise the commands.

Today programs are interactive and access is immediate. We are fully embroiled in the digital age, the second or third generation of the computer age. For libraries, that means much more information being available faster than ever before, and the digital library has emerged to meet the expectations of our clientele.

There is not necessarily any direct economic benefit to it for libraries, because the hardware and software infrastructure start-up costs are enormous, and the continual need for maintenance and upgrades of both make those costs perpetual. In some lucky cases, economies of scale may be brought to bear: a smaller branch campus may find direct access to a host of materials it could never afford on its own or a full-text electronic index may permit cancellation of some print subscriptions and access to new titles all for one combined lower price. However these instances are rare and often offset by other necessary costs of operating. No, the economic reasons may not be crystal clear, but the expectations of patrons are.

PrinciplesIn 1995, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) set down the definitions and purposes of the digital library (http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/ARL/definition.html). The common elements they found to be present in how the digital library was variously defined were:

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  the digital library is not a single entity;

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  the digital library requires technology to link the resources of many;

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  the linkages between the many digital libraries and information services are transparent to the end users;

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  universal access to digital libraries and information services is a goal;

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  digital library collections are not limited to document surrogates: they extend to digital artifacts that cannot be represented or distributed in printed formats.

To these I would add that the digital library is open 24/7 to global users, library content can be retrieved easily, and there is unceasing, persistent availability of that content.

Among the reasons that ARL found for establishing in cyberspace a network of digital libraries across North America were:

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  to promote the economical and efficient delivery of information to all sectors of North American society;

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  to strengthen communication and collaboration between and among the research, business, government, and educational communities; and

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  to contribute to the lifelong learning opportunities of all North Americans.

We can excise the references to North America because these principles can be generalized worldwide. The confluence of digital libraries will greatly contribute to the sharing of intellectual content in a variety of multimedia formats for the greater good of the audience served by libraries everywhere. It will not make people better able to live together in peace and harmony, but it will enrich our pursuit of knowledge and can facilitate discoveries for the benefit of all. Of course, opportunities for mischief abound as well.

OrganizationsA number of organizations have been prominent in promulgating the work of digitizing the library world. The aforementioned ARL (http://arl.cni.org/) is working on many fronts with the leading research libraries in North America. Its mission is to shape and influence forces affecting the future of research libraries in the process of scholarly communication. Among their projects are the scholars' portal to serve as a general entry point for the larger world of Web-accessible resources, the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH) (http://www-ninch.cni.org/), a series of digital preservation initiatives, and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) (http://www.cni.org/) that supports the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity by focusing on the networked intellectual content, the development of the profession, and evolving technology and standards. ARL also devotes considerable resources to the study of copyright in a digital environment in particular with the Digital Futures Coalition (http://www.dfc.org/). In addition, ARL maintains, in collaboration with the University of Illinois, the ARL Digital Initiatives Database (http://www.arl.org/did) that serves as a "Web-based registry for descriptions of digital initiatives in or involving libraries. The goal of the effort is to capture basic information for a wide range of digital initiatives."

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) (http://www.diglib.org/dlfhomepage.htm) is made up a of a consortium of libraries using networked information technologies. It is an offshoot of the Council of Library and Information Resources (CLIR) (http://www.clir.org/). DLF operates three useful databases. Documenting the Digital Library contains policies, strategies, working papers, standards and other application guidelines, and technical documentation developed by DLF members to inform or reflect upon their digital library development activities. Digital Collections contains members' public domain, online digital collections. Digital Library Events contains recent and forthcoming digital library events organized by the DLF or its members. The projects they have sponsored have focused on digital library structures, standards, preservation, and use, Internet services for scholars, and the assessments of the future roles of libraries.

The National Science Foundation sponsored the Digital Libraries Initiative from 1994-1998, a multi-agency research program to create large knowledge bases, the technology needed to access them, and the means for improving their usability in a wide range of contexts. The Initiative's focus was to dramatically advance the means to collect, store, and organize information in digital forms, and make it available for searching, retrieval, and processing via communication networks – all in user-friendly ways. DLI was superceded by DLI2 (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/) which has funded such projects as a digital library of vertebrate morphology at the University of Texas (http://digimorph.org/), a multimedia patient care digital library at Columbia (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/diglib/PERSIVAL/), a national gallery of the spoken word at Michigan State University (http://www.ngsw.org/) and many more (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/projects.html).

The National Library of Canada (http://www.nlc.bnc.ca/) operates the Inventory of Canadian Digital Initiatives (http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/initiatives/erella.htm) that provides descriptions of Canadian information resources created for the Web, including general digital collections. The National Library site also links to the Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries (http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cidl/aboute.htm) that is made up of a consortium of Canadian libraries and "promotes, coordinates and facilitates the development of Canadian digital collections and services to optimize national interoperability and long-term access to Canadian digital library resources".

Tools

Some sites are useful for resolving technical issues that arise in the development of digital library projects. Sun Systems' Digital Library Tool Kit (http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/libraries/digitaltoolkit.html) serves as an introduction to the whole process of planning and implementing digital libraries.

The Library of Congress has produced a page on Building Digital Collections (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ftpfiles.html) that links to documents on the technical activities related to digital libraries: technical practices, workflow and production, rights and restrictions statements and background papers.

IEEE's Digital Library Technical Committee (http://cimic.rutgers.edu/ieee_dltf.html) discusses such technical challenges as storage, the user interface, classification and indexing, information retrieval, content delivery, an inviting presentation and administrative concerns.

Communication

There are a group of online serials that can help keep you current on the state of the art. D-Lib Magazine (http://www.dlib.org/) is a monthly online magazine about "innovation and research in digital libraries". The University of Michigan Press publishes the Journal of Electronic Publishing (http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/) that details such challenges in the electronic publishing environment as Web design, server management, pricing, as well as overriding policy questions. The Library of Congress reports on the National Digital Library 12 times a year with its Periodic Report (http://lcweb.loc.gov/ndl/per.html). In times of rapid change, these are good sites to monitor.

Comments on this column are welcome and can be sent to maxymuk@crab.rutgers.edu Or visit my Web page (http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~maxymuk/home/home.html).

John MaxymukReference Librarian at the Paul Robeson Library, Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, USA