Transcript Digital Libraries - Community informatics

Digital Libraries
An Overview
What is a digital library?
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— "…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." (Digital Library Federation
www.diglib.org/about/strategic.htm#aims)
What is a digital library?
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— “the collection of services and the
collection of information objects that
support users in dealing with information
objects and the organization and
presentation of those objects available
directly or indirectly via electronic/digital
means.” (D-Lib Magazine
http://www.dlib.org/metrics/public/papers/d
ig-lib-scope.html)
What is a digital library?

— “is not a single entity; requires technology
to link the resources of many; the linkages
between the many digital libraries and
information services are transparent to the end
users; universal access to digital libraries and
information services is a goal; and digital library
collections are not limited to document
surrogates: they extend to digital artifacts that
cannot be represented or distributed in printed
formats.” (Association of Research Libraries
[ARL]: http://www.arl.org/arl/proceedings/126/2defn.html)
So, a digital library can be…
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an organization
a collection
a combination that
includes—but is not
limited to—the above
CONFUSED YET?
Our working definition:
1.
2.
Consider both the mode of delivery and
then the item and its format
“A digital library is a searchable
collection of electronic materials/items
made available via a central point of
access (or ‘portal’).” (Sharon and Christie)
And a “portal” would be…?
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“Search engine tools that offer the user the
capability to search across multiple sources and
integrate the results of those searches”
“At least one kind of supporting service for the
user (such as requesting retrieval or delivery of
non-digital material, online reference help, etc.).”
“…the definition of the word ‘portal,’ as well as
the functionality included in a research library
portal, is still in flux. … The hard question…is to
determine the point at which a Web site evolves
into a portal.”
(http://www.arl.org/newsltr/222/portalsurvey.html).
Types of digital libraries:
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University of Michigan. Internet Public Library.
http://www.ipl.org/
University of California, Berkeley, Digital Library
Project: http://elib.cs.berkeley.edu/matrix.html
Duke University, Scriptorium
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/#collections
Chicago Historical Society, Online Project:
http://www.chicagohs.org/projects.html
Library of Congress American Memory Project:
http://memory.loc.gov
Questions? Thoughts?
Now presenting:
eCUIP
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/ecuip//