What are digital libraries?

What are digital libraries?

The meaning of the term “digital library” is less transparent than one might expect. The words conjure up images of cutting-edge computer and information science research. They are invoked to describe what some assert to be radically new kinds of practices for the management and use of information. And they are used to replace earlier references to “electronic” and “virtual” libraries.

The partner institutions in the Digital Library Federation (DLF) realized in the course of developing their program that they needed a common understanding of what digital libraries are if they were to achieve the goal of effectively federating them. So they crafted the following definition, with the understanding that it might well undergo revision as they worked together:

Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities.

This is a full definition by any measure and a good working definition because it is broad enough to comprehend other uses of the term. Other definitions focus on one or more of the features included in the DLF definition, while ignoring or de-emphasizing the rest. For example, the term “digital library” may refer simply to the notion of collection, without reference to its organization, intellectual accessibility, or service attributes. This is the particular sense that seems to be in play when we hear the World Wide Web described as a digital library. But the words might refer as well to the organization underlying the collection, or, even more specifically, to the computerbased system in which the collection resides. The latter sense is most clearly in use in the National Science Foundation’s Digital Libraries Initiative. Yet again, institutions may be characterized as digital libraries to distinguish them from digital archives when the intent is to call attention to the differences in the nature of their collections.

The DLF’s definition of “digital library” does more than simply enumerate features. It serves in addition as the basis for the DLF’s perspective on the scope of digital libraries and on the functional requirements for their development. Brief consideration of certain features of the definition will help to explain its significance to the DLF.

Organizations that provide the resources

Digital libraries are organizations that employ and display a variety of resources, especially the intellectual resources embodied in specialized staff, but they need not be organized on the model of conventional libraries (or even within the context of conventional libraries). Though the resources that digital libraries require serve functions similar to those within conventional libraries, they are, in many ways, different in kind. For example, for storage and retrieval, digital libraries are dependent almost exclusively on computer and electronic network systems and systems-engineering skills rather than on the skills of traditional catalogers and reference librarians.

Far from emulating the organization of conventional libraries, the organization and structure of digital libraries, and the division of labor within them, are open to considerable experimentation. For example, as publishers and professional societies disseminate works electronically, they are testing how far their investments should incorporate the full range of library functions. When digital libraries license content from publishers and professional societies that manage their own repositories, they are, in effect, outsourcing the library storage function and experimenting with distributed repositories. Further, new organizations appear regularly in the form of small, entrepreneurial, cottage-like industries that scholars, laboratories, and others have developed to create, manage, and disseminate bodies of digital information critical to a discipline or set of disciplines. The physics preprint archive at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is one such development that compels reflection on how digital libraries might best be organized.

Preserve the integrity of and ensure the persistence

Each of the functions enumerated in the working definition of “digital library”—select, structure, offer intellectual access, interpret, distribute, preserve integrity, and ensure persistence—is subject to the special constraints and requirements of operating in a rapidly evolving electronic and network environment. The continual change in the environment means that the latter two functions, preserve integrity and ensure persistence, are especially difficult to achieve. But the DLF regards these functions as central to the concept of digital library and follows the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information in identifying them as linked but distinct. The task force argued that the integrity of digital objects is measured in terms of content, fixity, reference, provenance, and context. But it argued as well that the preservation of object integrity, though necessary, is not a sufficient condition of persistence. Persistence depends on other factors as well: organizational will, financial means, and the negotiation of legal rights.

Collections of digital works

Distinctions among libraries commonly focus on the subject matter that defines the collections (e.g., medical, art, science, music, and such) or on the communities interested in the collected materials (e.g., research, college, public). The DLF is convinced that, as digital libraries mature, the principle defining their collection policies will not be the “digital-ness” of the material. Rather, the defining principles will be, as in other libraries, the subject matter of the materials and the patron community interested in them. The key strategic question for digital libraries anticipating such a development will be how to integrate collections of materials in digital form with materials in other forms. Much of the DLF program seeks to address this critical question.

Readily and economically available

Like other organizations, digital libraries need to develop criteria for measuring their performance in an evolving and highly competitive environment. At a minimum, they must reflect the functional attributes of a digital library as described above. One essential measure of the quality of service evaluates performance in terms of cost. Although the costs of digital library service are not yet well understood, the DLF appreciates that successful digital libraries have a sure grasp of critical cost factors and work quickly to economize the influence of those factors. A second essential measure of service quality takes account of how willingly and how responsively a digital library makes information available to its patron communities.

Use by a defined community or set of communities

Libraries in general, and digital libraries in particular, are service organizations. The needs and interests of the communities they serve will ultimately determine the trajectory of development for digital libraries, including the investment they make in content and technology. Most of the libraries in the DLF are dedicated to supporting higher education and research, and they justify their investment in digital developments (and in the collaborative work of the DLF) as a powerful means of realizing the larger institutional goals of the academic communities they serve.

Source: Donald J. Waters