Week 11: Digital libraries

Challenges and Influential Work - D-Lib

• Currently, there are just too many ways to find information digitally.
• To effectively search and find relevant articles is made difficult by the shear number of different places to look.
• Information is digitally published in too many places for it to be efficiently found.
• Digital libraries goal is to bring together these sources and make it easier to find and navigate.
• Federal projects have been important to achieving these goals.
• DLI-1 - six federally funded projects in 1994.  Consisted of NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency.  Looked toward the future at technologies that could bring together information as well as be relevant in the long term.
• DLI-2 - began after DLI-1 ended. The group grew to include National Library of Medicine, Library of Congress, the FBI, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Funding was also made available to pursue some of the DLI-1 planned programs.
• DLI-1 funded 6 academic programs to explore technologies that would bring together information collections and have them work together as a system.  The academic programs consisted of  multidisciplinary departments and software companies.
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne made a significant contribution through this testing program by allowing publishers access to technology that would permit them to publish full-texts online.
• As technology as advanced so has digital library systems.  Standards, access, and programs have all evolved through the years to be greatly advantageous to the main goal set forth in 1994.

Dewey Meets Turing - D-Lib

• Most influential aspect of DLI was the merging of librarians and computer scientists.  This pairing has contributed greatly to the dissemination of information.
• For computer scientists the partnership allowed them to apply what they knew about technology to the familiar field of library/information.  They could make a wider more intellectually deeper impact on society.
• For librarians the partnership allowed them to gain funding to further advance what they deemed important, their impact on the advancement of research and learning.
• The rise of the internet changed the face of the technological world.  The partnership between computer scientists and librarians were now faced with a challenging rapidly evolving resource.
• The web let the computer scientists explore areas restricted in earlier parts of the project.  They were interested in sharing information beyond outlets dictated by publishers.
• Before the web this information was held tightly by publishers and copywriters in separate collections held by libraries. Libraries were concerned about the integrity of their collections.
• Conflict came about because for computer scientists the free flow of information is common and encouraged however with libraries information is kept guard and access is only allowed with permission.  The web magnified this difference of procedure.
• It was easy to see how computer science, the web, and information could all come together for the benefit of search and retrieval.
• Libraries on the other hand couldn't see how the web could help them.  They felt that losing their tight hold on their collections would lead to their diminished relevance.
• Discourse was evident between the computer scientists and librarians.  The librarians feared the unknown technologies of computer science and how it could change their collections.  Computer scientists were unsure why librarians did not see matters like they did.
• Librarians now see that they have not lost relevance with the dawn of these new technologies.  They are still need to organize, collect and distribute information held within their repositories.

Institutional Repositories:

Having trouble accessing.  Will try again before class.