The human and organizational aspects of the integration of digital libraries and VLEs may appear as a secondary issue compared to the reported technical challenges. However, some authors believe believe that the main barriers are within individual institutions and their approaches and attitudes to integration.

Five general barriers were identified by project INSPIRAL and other related projects (Ekmekçioglu and Brown, 2001):
• issues of institutional infrastructure and politics (which include competition and territoriality, resistance to change, resistance to new technologies, reluctance of staff to engage in online learning, fear of change and evolving new roles);
• inter-professional communication and collaboration (cultural barriers, mutual misperceptions, differences in priorities and visions);
• resources and funding;
• teaching and learning (like different learning styles or information overload);
• staff development;
• access and content (Virkus et al, 2009).

Three of them are human and institutional related, and refer to the lack of 'liaison' between the stakeholders, and to the institutional structure and change management in the educational sector (Virkus et al, 2009).