Different approaches to digital libraries
A factor adding to the confusion is that digital libraries are at the focal point of many different areas of research, and what constitutes a digital library differs depending upon the research community that is describing it (Nurnberg, et al, 1995). For example:
- from an information retrieval point of view, it is a large database
- for people who work on hypertext technology, it is one particular application of hypertext methods
- for those working in wide-area information delivery, it is an application of the Web
- and for library science, it is another step in the continuing automation of libraries that began over 25 years ago (Cleveland, 1998).
Confusion arises also from the fact that there are many things on the Internet that people are calling "digital libraries," which from a librarian's point of view are not. For example:
- for computer scientists and software developers, collections of computer algorithms or software programs are digital libraries.
- for database vendors or commercial document suppliers, their databases and electronic document delivery services and digital libraries.
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for large corporations, a digital library is the document management systems that control their business documents in electronic form.
for a publisher, it may be an online version of a catalogue. - for at least one very large software company, a digital library is the collection of whatever it can buy the rights to, and then charge people for using (Cleveland, 1998).
An example of what many people consider to be a digital library today is the World Wide Web - many would call this huge collection a digital library because they can find information, just as they can do banking in a "digital bank" or buy compact discs in a "digital record store." However, according to Clifford Lynch, once of the leading scholars in the area of digital library research, it is not (Cleveland, 1998).
| Lynch (1997:52 as cited in Cleveland, 1998) states:
One sometimes hears the Internet characterized as the world's library for the digital age. This description does not stand up under even casual examination. The Internet--and particularly its collection of multimedia resources known as the World Wide Web--was not designed to support the organized publication and retrieval of information as libraries are. It has evolved into what might be thought of as a chaotic repository for the collective output of the world's digital "printing presses.".... ...In short, the Net is not a digital library. |
Thus, in examining the various examples of what are called digital libraries, it appears that librarians have been confused about what a digital library is, that the word "library" has been appropriated by many different groups to describe either their areas of research or signify a simple collection of digital objects (Cleveland, 1998).
Reflection
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License
Sirje Virkus, Tallinn University, 2010