The Evolving Virtual Library II: Practical and Philosophical Perspectives

Citation

Cope, R.L. (2000), "The Evolving Virtual Library II: Practical and Philosophical Perspectives", Online Information Review, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 401-411. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2000.24.5.401.3

The concept of the virtual library and some of the ways it is being realised today in the USA are covered in nine contributions by authors from a variety of library and IT backgrounds. One other contribution comes from a Norwegian academic librarian who deals with library‐generated databases at Tromsø University. This compilation gives excellent detail of the experience gained in various projects to create digital library environments. School librarians and public librarians would find much helpful material here, indicating how ventures can be started with relatively few staff, but with the requisite information technology knowledge and enthusiasm. A wealth of Web site and e‐mail addresses is given.

The St Joseph County Public Library in Indiana, the first public library in the USA to run its own Web server, is said to be “one of the most bookmarked public libraries in the world”. The account by Don Napoli of how this came about covers difficulties encountered with technology, staff training needs and the question of finance, and how they were mastered. He ends with “lessons learned”. The result is a range of electronic services with wide public access. In addition links with other public libraries on the Web have been established. The importance of networking, an inevitable outcome of the “virtual library concept”, is emphasised throughout this book.

Educational uses of the virtual library are discussed in the school, university and distance education contexts. The aim of the distance education project of the Western Governors’ University (commenced in 1995 between Utah and Colorado, but now with 17 states as participants) is that “the quality of library service available to distant students must be essentially the same as that provided to on‐campus students”. The contribution, “Building a digital library: the stories of the making of America” recounts the initiative of Cornell and Michigan universities to create a digital library of primary sources in American social history in the nineteenth century. The original intention of establishing a fully integrated system was abandoned. Is Australian academia not ripe for similar schemes of co‐operative digital projects?

The contribution by George Machovec (“Understanding networks and telecommunications infrastructure”) gathers a wide range of technological information and describes it lucidly and concisely. It is useful to have all these facts conveniently assembled in one place. The contribution by Marshall Keys (“The evolving virtual library: a vision, through a glass, darkly”) covers metadata, copyright, information aggregators, consortia and networking, and publishing. He states that the great difference between traditional and virtual libraries will be “that the locus of control over the library’s collection will begin to move outside the library itself ....”

This book is printed in a generous typeface and could have been more economically formatted and hence lower in price. It is recommended for academic and larger public libraries.