• DLs are the digital face of traditional libraries that include both digital collections and traditional, fixed media collections. So they encompass both electronic and paper materials.
• DLs will also include digital materials that exist outside the physical and administrative bounds of any one digital library
• DLs will include all the processes and services that are the backbone and nervous system of libraries. However, such traditional processes, though forming the basis digital library work, will have to be revised and enhanced to accommodate the differences between new digital media and traditional fixed media.
• DLs ideally provide a coherent view of all of the information contained within a library, no matter its form or format
• DLs will serve particular communities or constituencies, as traditional libraries do now, though those communities may be widely dispersed throughout the network.
• DLs will require both the skills of librarians and well as those of computer scientists to be viable.

Cleveland (1998) believes that this definition of a digital library, and these characteristics, are the most logical because it expands and extends the traditional library, preserves the valuable work that they do, while integrating new technologies, new processes, and new media.