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5 - Resource discovery, description and use
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 10 September 2022
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- 31 December 2013, pp 106-135
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Summary
At some point the Internet has to stop looking like the world's largest rummage sale. For taming this particular frontier the right people are librarians, not cowboys. The Internet is made of information and nobody knows more about how to order information than librarians.
(Rennie, 1997, 6)Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by packrats and vandalized nightly.
(Ebert, 1998, 66)Introduction
In Chapters 2 and 3 ‘Why digitize?’ and ‘Developing collections in the digital world’ we looked at how decisions might be made in libraries about digitizing local holdings, and how libraries are dealing with the plethora of digital information that they are buying or licensing from major information providers. There are new formats, new resources and new players in the traditional venues of information supply, and the changes are rapid and bewildering. In this chapter, we consider the complexity of the new information spaces within which libraries are operating. We show how the limitations of search engines create confusion and effort for users, and discuss alternative models of resource construction and description, and of metadata creation. We examine the crucial roles played by the library and librarians in bringing some order into the chaos.
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• the world wide web: structure
• the world wide web: content
• libraries and the web
• search engines and their limitations
• resource description
• metadata
• types of metadata
• metadata schemas
• other metadata systems
• collection-level description
• metadata creation
• collaborative projects in resource description and discovery
The world wide web: structure
In Chapter 1 ‘Digital futures in current contexts’, we describe briefly the origins and structure of the internet and the world wide web, which are interdependent concepts, given that the structure grew out of the origins. The web is now the largest information space that the world has ever known, and it continues to grow exponentially. Any estimate of how large and complex the web is will always be inaccurate and out of date the instant it is computed. Nevertheless, the scale is frightening: recent analyses report that there are currently around 100 billion hypertext links on the web, and projects which are attempting to map these links suggest that the complexity is on a level with that of the human genome (Denison, 2001; Jackson, 2001; Nuttall, 2001).
7 - Portals and personalization: mechanisms for end-user access
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 10 September 2022
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- 31 December 2013, pp 158-177
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Summary
The digital library provides convenience, customization, community, accessibility, and quality.
(Guenther, 2000, 39)The user, having entered the portal, never leaves – the portal goes out into the information universe on his or her behalf.
(Brophy, 2001)Introduction
The focus of this chapter is on the portal as a means of disseminating and providing information in the digital world. Portals are points of focus where people plan and begin voyages on the internet. Portal content and design is often about developing a desire in the user for information of a type that will ensure they will return, and frequently, to the portal. Thus, concepts of marketing and brand loyalty will be discussed here, along with the synergy of the information resources accessible, the various products offered, the delivery of what the user wants, and the price they are prepared to pay. Many service providers will need to consider their ability to personalize and customize access to portal and digital library resources. The portal and personalized information environment (PIE) may be the answer to satisfying the core objective of easing the information glut that prevents users finding the most appropriate and relevant information. Will the portal be an answer to information overload, or is the portal maybe a Trojan horse of e-commerce companies aiming to reduce our individual choices and decrease the role of the library?
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• defining the users’ digital content dilemma
• delivering content with portals
• the portal as a community tool
• the importance of content
• branding and marketing in the portal arena
• delivering information and delighting the user
• personalization.
Defining the users’ digital content dilemma
The delivery of well-designed and developed digital library resources is only one aspect of the solution needed from the user's perspective. The other aspects revolve around finding and using information as quickly as possible in this digital era. As described in Chapter 1 ‘Digital futures in current contexts’, information growth is exponential, and selecting the most relevent materials has become a distinct challenge. The Search Rage study (Sullivan, 2001) suggests that almost one-third of Americans do more than one internet search every day and 80% at least once a week, with 60% accruing more than one hour of searching per week.
4 - The economic factors
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 10 September 2022
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- 31 December 2013, pp 84-105
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Summary
Information is more useful than money.
(Dyson, 1997)Introduction
The effective utilization of resources is one of the most important management activities in developing digital content and establishing digital libraries. The history of library development has many examples of great libraries being created through the largess of benefactors or the tax-paying public without necessarily having much consideration to the costeffectiveness of the development: between 1881 and 1917 Andrew Carnegie contributed $56 million to build 2509 libraries (www.carnegie.org/). The new market economies faced by today's manager mean that, even in those few scenarios of generous funding, every last drop of value must be squeezed from the available resources to maintain that funding now and in the future. Senior managers are confronting ever more difficult decisions on resource allocation, with the significant issue of opportunity costs to contend with, as described in this chapter. There are several aspects to the effective utilization of resources in relation to digital information. There are the immediate start-up costs of either creating or purchasing digital content; the further implementation costs for establishing a digital library or even just basic access to bought resources; which are followed by the costs implicit in managing and maintaining a digital resource in the longer term. Hand in hand with resource expenditure go the value and benefit derived from the resource itself, how these are measured and offset against costs – cangoing digital ever become cost-effective? Whether there are intentions to recover costs in their use or to seek profit in the future is a key strategic question that every library manager will have to address in developing digital information resources or digital libraries.
Markets are based upon perceived value and this also has a distinct effect upon digital library development: we cannot afford that which we do not value. Value is a concept based upon individual perceptions, sometimes directed by marketing and other promotional activities, but in actuality it has always had an element of personal choice. The majority of markets are based around the differentials in perceived value rather than actual assets, and these market forces can be seen to be at play in digital library development.
Digital futures
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 10 September 2022
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- 31 December 2013, pp 232-242
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Summary
I could foretell the future with some accuracy, a thing quite possible, after all, when one is informed on a fair number of the elements which make up the present.
(Yourcenar, 1986, 76)Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But increasingly it's a game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and we need to have some sort of idea of what the future's actually going to be like because we are going to live there, probably next week.
(Adams, 1999)Introduction
Throughout this book we have examined the strategic issues in realizing a digital future for libraries and librarians, and in order to do so have so far taken a logical path from the creation and collection of digital content through to its delivery and management for the long term. We now look at what is on the near horizon for libraries and librarians.
As we suggested in Chapter 1 ‘Digital futures in current contexts’, trying to see the future in the realm of technology is likely to lead to some risibly erroneous predictions, but unless the future can be imagined, it cannot be brought about. As Einstein famously said ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world’. All inventions and developments begin with the question ‘What if the world were different?’ and from answering that question comes the march of human progress. The examples we cite at the beginning of Chapter 1 were famously proved to be wrong, though at the time they probably seemed to be reasonable statements. Predicting the future is a hit-and-miss affair: who could have conceived how very accurate Vannevar Bush and his contemporaries would be in describing that which we now know as the world wide web? Ted Nelson's description of his Xanadu project (also referred to in Chapter 1), linking all the books in all the world, seemed incredible in the 1970s, but those of us in the digital library field are now working hard to make it a reality. Writing a conventional book on digital technologies has made us realize just how fast the future is racing towards us: over the time we have been writing, many revisions and updates have been necessary to statements made just weeks before.
8 - Preservation
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 10 September 2022
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- 31 December 2013, pp 178-208
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Summary
The term ‘preservation’ is an umbrella under which most librarians and archivists cluster all of the policies and options for action, including conservation treatments. It has long been the responsibility of librarians and archivists – and the clerks and scribes who went before them – to assemble and organize documentation of human activity in places where it can be protected and used.
(Conway, 1999)Introduction
The digitization of valued original materials is often undertaken with the dual goals of both improved access and enhanced preservation (Kenney, 1996, 3). However, the preservation is often secondary, preserving only by reducing the physical access to the original. The digital version is generally not considered to be a primary preservation resource. Important as the preservation of originals through digitization is, these originals are unlikely to be at such immediate risk as the data and digital resources themselves, with ‘born-digital’ data being in the highest risk category. This chapter will cover all these topics, starting with a discussion of the scale of the digital preservation problem, then examining some key issues in preservation in the analogue world for libraries and archives, which offer concepts and models that need to be considered and adopted in the digital world. We then address the numerous issues attendant upon digital data preservation, and evaluate some international, national and institutional initiatives for the preservation of digital data.
Throughout this chapter, we differentiate between data preservation (which is about ensuring full access and continued usability of data and digital information), and preservation through digitization (which allows for greater physical security of physical analogue originals). Strategically it becomes self-evident that to reduce the stress upon the valued original, the data created must last as long as possible. Thus processes and intentions for preservation must be decided early in the digital lifecycle (see Chapter 2 ‘Why digitize?’) to ensure that repeating the digitization directly from the original is reduced or hopefully eradicated – though we will show below that costs of digital data storage can mean that it may sometimes be cheaper to return to the originals.
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• the scale of the digital preservation problem
• preserving the written heritage
• preservation through surrogacy
• authenticity of digital data
• surrogate versus original
• digital surrogacy: is it a preservation alternative?
• why data needs preservation
• how digital data is to be preserved
• methods of preservation of digital materials
Index
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 31 December 2013, pp 267-276
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1 - Digital futures in current contexts
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 31 December 2013, pp 1-29
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Summary
In the paper-based environment, libraries and information centres have been the central links in the information chain. We are, however, in the midst of a profound transition resulting from the digitization of information, and all components of the information chain are in a state of flux. The parts played by authors, publishers, libraries and other information service providers are changing, and in many instances the boundaries which have demarcated the roles of these players have become blurred.
(Dorner, 2000, 15)Just as the method of recording human progress shifted from the quill to the printing press 500 years ago, so is it now shifting from print to digital form. The library will continue to provide books and the printed record, but must now also deliver texts, images, and sounds to the personal computers of students, faculty and the public.
(Karin Wittenborg, www.lib.virginia.edu/dlbackstage/services.html)Introduction
The worlds of both communication and the production of information are changing rapidly, and it is the convergence of these, and the consequent huge impact on libraries and library practice, that this book aims to address. In this introductory section, we examine the background changes in communication and information over the last 50 years, and the concomitant changes in libraries, as well as the changes in the publishing industry. We give some basic technical definitions in order to elucidate some of the terms used elsewhere in the book.
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• the information revolution in a wired world
• information explosion
• the nature of digital data
• storage and transmission of digital data
• developments in digital data creation
• printing and publishing
• changes in libraries
• digital libraries
• automating information retrieval
• the world wide web
• why the world wide web is not a digital library
• changing names for managing content
• unresolved issues.
Information revolution in a wired world
Over the last 50 years, the computer and communications revolution has changed radically the way many organizations do their business. According to Charles Jonscher (2000), we are now living in a wired world. With old-style twisted pair telephone wiring, co-axial cable, and optical fibre there are physical communication networks almost everywhere on the globe, and the places these do not reach can be covered by satellite. Business and military communication needs have promoted most of the telecommunications developments, and the rapid growth in mobile telephony, fax and e-mail have transformed business and financial transactions.
Bibliography
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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6 - Developing and designing systems for sharing digital resources
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- 31 December 2013, pp 136-157
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Summary
The purpose of the information architecture is to represent the riches and variety of library information, using the building blocks of the digital library system. From a computing view, the digital library is built up from simple components.
(Arms, 1997)To build a successful digital library, there have to be standard methods to interact with archives and digital objects.
(Maly, Nelson and Zubair, 1999)Introduction
This chapter will describe the essential underlying components in digital library systems. Building upon the previous chapters’ descriptions of the information elements and intellectual foundations, we suggest approaches to the development of interoperability of systems and resources, infrastructures and a model for sustainable design. Digital library development is a complex process, involving many different components, technical, informational and human. We do not propose to examine technical architectures and infrastructures in any depth, although we do discuss some high-level heuristic models of digital library design and implementation for the sake of completeness. We focus this chapter more on the fundamental principles upon which these infrastructures should be built, and offer some pointers to more detailed treatments of these issues elsewhere. In this chapter we will discuss the following issues:
• digital libraries and communication
• functionality overlap in digital library environments
• interoperability
• crosswalks
• digital library structures
• the Open Archival Information System model
• digital library architectures in overview
• protocols and standards, including unique information identifiers
• designing digital library systems for sustainable technical development.
Digital libraries and communication
As described in Chapter 1 ‘Digital futures in current contexts’, once computers were able to exchange information with each other, the idea of the digital library could become a realistic concept. The ability to communicate from computer to computer across networks and from one database table to another, both within a computer system and across systems, allowed for sophisticated integration of functions and sharing of data. It is this sharing and integration that enables the library catalogue and circulation systems to work together to deliver book reservations, overdue notices, quick check-in and check-out of materials, plus further integration with other elements of a library automation system. This sort of integration enables EDI to speed acquisitions and simplify budget control, while detailed management reports can be created to measure and assess the performance of many aspects of the library.
Contents
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 31 December 2013, pp v-viii
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Frontmatter
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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2 - Why digitize?
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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Summary
Cultural institutions are investing in digitization for two reasons. First, they remain convinced of the continuing value of such resources for learning, teaching, research, scholarship, documentation, and public accountability. Second, they recognize that changing user behavior may jeopardize these resources and their stewardship.
(Kenney and Rieger, 2000, 1)Introduction
Most libraries today are re-evaluating their information delivery services in this new world of digital information, and some are contemplating the digitization of collections within their own holdings for a wide variety of reasons and purposes. Embarking on digitization projects can be onerous and costly, and libraries need to be certain of all the implications of such an endeavour before they begin. While it is relatively easy to obtain funding for discrete projects, recurrent funds for ongoing activities are harder to come by, and the commitment to maintain digital content for the long term needs to be planned and costed alongside the initial costs of conversion. However, libraries can greatly enhance their services, skills and prestige through good digitization projects. In this chapter we examine the benefits of the digitization of collections, outline many of the practical, strategic and institutional issues to be considered, and describe a number of different projects and programmes to illuminate the points made.
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• practical and strategic issues in the digitization of library collections
• the benefits of digitization
• formats of materials for digitization
• what a digitization project involves
• the digital lifecycle approach
• running a digitization project
• digitization projects and the management of risk
• some example projects, including newspaper, periodical and grey literature examples, plus the Gutenberg Bible, photographic collections and digitization for the print disabled
• digital library programmes.
Practical and strategic issues in the digitization of library collections
Digital collection development is part of a broader perspective on collection development, and generally needs to be assessed using the same criteria. However, there is a difference between reviewing collections already held by the institution with digitization in mind, and choosing to acquire digital materials from elsewhere. We deal with building digital collections in more detail in Chapter 3 ‘Developing collections in the digital world’. In-house holdings have been initially acquired or retained because they are perceived to have some value to the community served by the library, and thus theoretically they might all be candidates for digitization.
9 - Digital librarians: new roles for the Information Age
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 31 December 2013, pp 209-231
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The ends of information, after all, are human ends. The logic of information must ultimately be the logic of humanity … it is people, in their communities, organizations, and institutions, who ultimately decide what it means and why it matters.
(Brown and Duguid, 2000, 18)Digital libraries require digital librarians. Computers are certainly essential … but people are required to put it all together and make it work.
(Hastings and Tennant, 1996)Introduction
Throughout this book the most important element in developing the digital library has been implicit: the librarian. This chapter brings librarians to the forefront and discusses the various new roles and skills now required of them and the new challenges they face. Acceleration of technological change is accompanied by reductions in funding and in the numbers of professional staff employed. Lack of recognition of the unique skills of librarians is also a crucial issue as there is an underlying assumption that librarians are no longer needed and libraries are dull and replaceable. As Brophy (2001, xv) suggests:
The public image of librarians remains poor and distinctly old-fashioned, while technologists lay claim to so-called digital libraries that will apparently replace place-based libraries with a few simple key-strokes.
There are some who view the future of libraries, and consequently of librarians, as determined by technology, and who therefore predict a diminished role for both in the digital future. This is likely to be as true as the predictions of the ‘paper-less office’ in the 1980s or ‘home working’ of the 1990s were:
But ‘all-digital, all the time’ is an article of faith. It may ultimately come to pass, but like the various apocalyptic prophesies which run wild at a time like ours, it simply isn't supported by the current facts. Ethnographic studies of actual workplaces reveal the diverse mix of materials, digital and otherwise, commonly in use and offer no suggestion that this diversity is diminishing.
(Levy, 2000)Technological determinism has been discredited recently, as writers and thinkers acknowledge the significance of the cultural, social, political, philosophical and natural forces that will certainly shape the future. So while this chapter will discuss the technological impacts upon libraries, the authors are well aware that this is but a small part of the complete picture and all solutions offered will be partial.
Glossary
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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Acknowledgements
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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Digital Futures
- Strategies for the Information Age
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- 31 December 2013
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Digital futures: strategies for the information age looks at how librarians and other information workers can develop the means to locate the electronic resources most relevant to the needs of their users, integrate these resources into the infrastructure of their institutions, manage the necessary technology, and anticipate future trends in the digital age. The text is relevant to the needs of libraries and information organizations of all types - educational, public, and corporate. A full bibliography is provided, together with a helpful glossary. This is an indispensable guide for all information managers and archivists needing to keep abreast of developments in communications technologies, manage change in the library environment, and implement new modes and methods of resource management. Others in the information and culture world, such as museum curators, media professionals and web content providers will also find it essential reading, as will students of digital culture on library and information studies and other courses.
3 - Developing collections in the digital world
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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- Digital Futures
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- 31 December 2013, pp 58-83
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Summary
Any library that is actually installed in a specific place and that is made up of real works available for consultation and reading, no matter how rich it might be, gives only a truncated image of all accumulable knowledge.
(Chartier, 1992, 88)The library of the future seems indeed to be in a sense a library without walls … the library of the future is inscribed where all texts can be summoned, assembled, and read – on a screen.
(Chartier, 1992, 89)Introduction
The universal library, holding all the world's printed artefacts, has been a utopian vision for several centuries, according to Chartier (1992, 62). This vision underpins the amassing of great collections in research and public libraries – the goal being to have all of human knowledge under one roof. When these collections were being put together, long gone were the days when any one individual could have read all of the writings of the world, if indeed they ever existed, but the dream of one space where the reader could wander around and interact with all of human ideas, history and memory was a seductive but elusive one. Now there are new utopian visions of the universal virtual library, where the user can surf through cyberspace and find all of human knowledge waiting to be accessed. Most modern libraries have more pragmatic goals: to build collections which satisfy most of the information needs for most of their users. In the digital world, the means of achieving these goals are changing, the costs of doing so are problematic, and the communities of users are fluid. As McPherson suggests, ‘A library today has to be part of a global or national network if it is to meet all its users’ needs’ (McPherson, 1997, 1). In this chapter, we examine the increasing use of digital resources that are obtained from outside the library, and how these relate to the analogue collections that are the traditional province of libraries. Is digital collection development different from collection development of non-digital resources? What are the strategic issues facing library and information professionals charged with the delivery of hybrid information, much of which they may not have direct control of?
This chapter will discuss the following issues:
• why digital?
• advantages of digital data
• the new universal library: the distributed hybrid library
Introduction
- Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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Summary
This book seeks to examine the strategic issues in realizing a digital future for libraries and librarians. The rapid expansion of the internet and of electronic communications means that the gathering, storage and transmission of information present fresh challenges to those responsible for preserving the cultural memory of society. Given the magnitude of the information explosion, it would be all too easy to view the future of libraries, and of librarians, as purely determined by technology. We prefer to take a holistic view of the digital domain, and try to situate new developments in their social, cultural and historic contexts. We do not advocate technology for its own sake, and we hope this book maps the transition of libraries into the wired world as evolution not revolution.
The authors are conscious that a single work cannot cover in any great depth all the issues facing librarians and other information workers as they engage in digital activities. This book is therefore planned as the first in a series of Digital Futures volumes, each of which will deal in more detail with a major topic in digital library research and development. Anyone interested in contributing to such a series is invited to contact the authors at marilyn.deegan@qeh.ox.ac.uk and s.g.tanner@herts.ac.uk.
We have assumed little prior knowledge in our audience, rather an interest and concern about where cultural institutions are headed in the changing world of information and communication. However, we have included some technical explanation to aid a basic understanding of the fundamental issues. Because this field gives rise to a great deal of new specialist terminology, we have provided a glossary of key terms, acronyms and abbreviations.
The chapters follow a logical progression from creating and collecting digital content through to its delivery and management for the long term. They can, however, be read and understood individually. We look at how librarians and information workers can locate the electronic resources most relevant to the needs of their users, integrate these resources into the infrastructure of their institutions, manage the necessary technology, and anticipate future trends in the digital age. This book is intended to be most useful to librarians, archivists and information managers in libraries and information organizations of all types: educational, public and corporate.
Index
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- Digital Preservation
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- 08 June 2018
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- 30 September 2006, pp 245-260
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1 - Key issues in digital preservation
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- By Marilyn Deegan, Director of Research Development in the Centre for Computing in the Humanities at King's College London, Simon Tanner, Director of King's Digital Consultancy Services (KDCS) at King's College London
- Edited by Marilyn Deegan, Simon Tanner
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Summary
Introducing the digital domain
The digital birth of cultural content and conversion of analogue originals into bits and bytes has opened new vistas and extended horizons in every direction, providing access and opportunities for new audiences, enlightenment, entertainment and education in ways unimaginable a mere 15 years ago. Digital libraries have a major function to enhance our appreciation of or engagement with culture and often lead the way in this new digital domain we find ourselves immersed within. The underlying information and communication technologies are still generally referred to as ‘new’ or ‘high’ technologies – they remain highly visible, and have not yet, despite their pervasiveness, become part of the natural infrastructure of society. ‘Technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn't work yet’ (Adams, 1999).
The need to deliver cultural resources, especially from major cultural organizations such as museums or national libraries, has become an imperative closely associated with the core mission of these organizations to educate and elucidate, to promote and disseminate and to preserve culture. These attempts to reach out to new audiences and to refresh current audiences are major driving factors behind many digitization programmes and the shift towards digital repositories. The justifications for delivering cultural resources digitally can rarely be made on purely financial grounds as the fiscal returns on investment are relatively small, but the returns for culture, education and prestige are high (Tanner, 2004).
With the digital revolution, data and information can now be transmitted to all corners of the world. Some predict that we are reaching a period of cheap access for all, but the reality is that there are still political, cultural and financial issues which prevent low-cost access in certain strata of society and many parts of the world. The digital divide exists and could further disadvantage the poor, the undereducated and those in developing countries as the better-off, the better-educated and the economically developed forge ahead into the digital domain.