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3 Chapter 2
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51 Digital Libraries: Users and
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7 Services
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211 2.1 User Access to Digital Libraries
3
4 In Chapter One we presented a definition of digital libraries that included
5 “. . . a set of electronic resources and associated technical capabilities for creat-
6 ing, searching and using information” and that “. . . are constructed – collected
71 and organized – by [and for] a community of users and their functional
8 capabilities support the information needs and uses of that community.” As
9 in the development and maintenance of traditional collections of materials in
30111 libraries, museums, archives and so on, users are very important when devel-
1 oping and implementing digital libraries. In this chapter we shall concentrate
2 on why people use digital libraries, their use in various types of institution,
3 what services are offered, why some users face particular challenges and how
4 these may be overcome. Questions relating to the What? of digital library
5 sources and the How? they may be implemented are covered in later chapters.
6 The early digital library research projects introduced in Chapter One were
7 based in university environments in the so-called developed world, and
8 primarily in the US. Since the late 1990s, however, there has been a rapid
9 growth in the number of digital libraries around the world. There are various
40111 reasons for this:
1
2 • People are being encouraged to learn throughout their lives and not just
3 while formally studying within traditional educational establishments.
44 This is often referred to as lifelong learning (or learning from the cradle
45 to the grave), and digital libraries may be developed by public libraries,
46 or other institutions, to provide relevant learning resources.
47 • Developments in teaching and learning within education establishments
48111 at all levels are becoming more student-centred, with project-based or
26 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

problem-based teaching methods. In such environments digital libraries

are integral to providing access to appropriate digital information sources.
• Professional users have higher expectations of services provided by
libraries. They have become used to searching the Web for entertainment,
travel and other information, and so are now expecting to be provided
with quality digital information sources also for their professional work.
• Researchers in universities around the world have become used to online
communication and are keen to enable the flow of scholarly thought via
published papers in digital form that might be held in repositories in
digital libraries.
• The need to preserve cultural and historical heritage collections of fragile
and precious artefacts has encouraged many museums, archives and
galleries around the world to develop digitized collections for users from
all over the world to access and study.
• The technology for developing digital libraries is available throughout the
world: organizations in developing countries can use appropriate tech-
nology and provide comparable digital library services for their users as
for those in developed countries. Also users who might have similar inter-
ests but are geographically dispersed can be provided with a collection of
relevant digital information sources via a digital library.
• Governments of many countries aim to provide access to relevant informa-
tion for their citizens and the development of digital libraries is seen as
one way of achieving this. Further developments, such as e-voting and so
on, are a move towards e-government.
• And finally, the fact that digital libraries can assist in the transformation
of data into information and thence to knowledge is seen as being of value
in the knowledge-based economies of many countries.

There is a wide spectrum of users for digital library services in academic,

national and public libraries, and these users are described in subsequent
sections. In other situations the users of a particular digital library are linked
through a shared interest in a subject rather than being ‘members’ of some
organization that offers a more traditional library or information service. The
Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, for instance, is being developed at
the University of Virginia in the US as an international archive of knowledge
(including multimedia learning resources and multilingual studies) about
Tibet and the Himalayas, and brings together scholars, librarians and others
from all over the world (http://www.thdl.org). Figure 2.1 shows the opening
page of the website of this digital library. The site is available in Tibetan,
Nepali, Chinese and Japanese as well as in English (Germano, 2002).
In some cases the users of a digital library are defined by their age. Adkins
(2002) provides an overview of developments with respect to digital libraries
and younger users. Stories from the Web (http://www.storiesfromtheweb.
org) is a Reader Development Programme which has been developed by
Birmingham Libraries with a number of partner public library authorities in
the UK. Figure 2.2 shows the homepage for the collection of digital informa-
tion sources for 8–11 year olds. More information on the development of a
digital library for children is given in a case study in Chapter Nine.
 User Access to Digital Libraries 27

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20111 Figure 2.1 Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library, University of Virginia, US
1 (reproduced courtesy of the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library)
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48111 duced courtesy of Re:Source and contributors)
28 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

There are also many users of digital libraries at the other range of the age
spectrum. For example, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the US,
in conjunction with the US National Library of Medicine, the US Depart-
ment of Health and Human Services and the National Institute on Aging,
has developed NIHSeniorHealth (http://nihseniorhealth.gov), a digital
library of health information sources of relevance to older people (60 plus).
The interface for this digital library has been designed in a senior-friendly
way: with large print, short, easy to read segments of information; with the
ability to enlarge the text and to alter the contrast (from normal (black or
green text on a white background) to high (yellow or white text on a black
background)); and with a spoken word version also available as can be seen
in Figure 2.3.
Some of the general advantages that digital libraries offer as well as the
challenges faced were discussed in Chapter One. For any individual user
the reasons for using a digital library can include:

• the information is available on the desktop or laptop computer. This saves

physically visiting the library or information centre and is particularly
useful for remote or distance-learning students of universities as well as
for users with mobility problems who may be housebound.
• the ‘library’ is open 24/7 (or all day and every day).
• the information retrieved is in digital form and so can be incorpo-
rated into appropriate documents, such as student assignments, research
reports, company information and so on. The issue of intellectual property

Figure 2.3 NIH SeniorHealth – a digital library for older users, US (reproduced
courtesy of the US National Library of Medicine)
 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional Environments 29

1111 rights, however, must be understood and adhered to so that plagiarism

2 and copyright infringement do not happen.
3 • a possible greater awareness, through a well-designed user interface, of
4 the information sources that have been collected and made available in
51 an appropriate manner. Such sources might be text-based (including
6 ebooks and ejournals) and also multimedia as described further in Chapter
7 Three.
8 • much increased chance of being able to access the required information
9 (that is, no problem with another user also using the resource at the same
10 time).
1 • improved facilities for resource discovery and location of information.
2 • specific services of potential relevance may be offered.
3111 • access to up to date information (as long as the collection of digital
4 information sources is managed appropriately and individual sources are
5 kept current).
6 • possibility of gaining access to information sources that are not accessible
7 to an individual over the Web but which are available through a digital
8 library from a specific institution, such as a public or academic library.
9
20111
1 2.2 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional
211 Environments
3
4 The digital libraries that exist around the world are many and varied. In this
5 section we shall concentrate on digital libraries developed for users linked
6 to five types of organizations: museums, national libraries, public libraries,
71 research establishments, and teaching and learning institutions. Details of
8 the information sources which might be used within these digital libraries
9 are provided in Chapter Three.
30111
1
2.2.1 Museums
2
3 Many culture-based organizations, such as museums, are developing digital
4 collections of their holdings which can be accessed freely by individuals (as
5 well as by schools or higher education institutions) around the world. The
6 State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, for instance, since 1997
7 has been involved in a variety of projects with the computer manufacturer
8 IBM to provide access to the huge collections of the museum using a variety
9 of digital technologies (http://www.hermitagemuseum.org). These digital
40111 collections, accessible in both Russian and English, include a gallery of 3D
1 images, virtual excursions, and virtual exhibitions as well as the ability to
2 search using IBM’s Query by Image Content technology.
3 Many museums and galleries have found that visitors to their physical
44 buildings and collections have increased following searching and browsing
45 of their digital collections. The homepage of the Virtual Library museums
46 pages (VLmp), a distributed directory of museums around the world with
47 digital collections and which is supported by the International Council of
48111 Museums, is shown in Figure 2.4 (http://vlmp.museophile.com). Bowen
30 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Figure 2.4 Virtual Library museums pages, UK (reproduced courtesy of Jonathan

Bowen)

(2002), using tracking software, surveyed the use made of VLmp and covered
aspects such as the location of users, software browsers used, times of access
and search keywords. He found, amongst other results, that although by
2002 many users were converging on a small number of platforms and
browsers to access museums’ digital information sources, a significant
minority used non-standard facilities. He suggested this might increase with
the development of devices such as mobile telephones, interactive television
and specialized browsers for disabled people.

2.2.2 National libraries

National libraries often house important collections of archives, printed mate-
rials, and photographs related to a particular country, and also function as
a central point for information about the culture and heritage of that country.
Their users may come from within the country or from elsewhere, and in
the past often had to travel to the physical national library building. With
the development of digital libraries users can now view and study the collec-
tions from all over the world and these collections therefore can be used by
a much wider range of people. Treasures from the World’s Great Libraries,
developed by the National Library of Australia and described in Chapter
One, is an example of a digital library developed within a national library.
The use of digital technologies to provide users with access to the ‘treasures’
of the British Library, has been underway since the Turning the Pages project
of the mid-1990s. This project incorporated a novel interface design for
accessing images from a number of sources including the Lindisfarne Gospels,
the Diamond Sutra, the Sforza Hours, the Leonardo Notebook and the Sultan
Baybars’ Qur’an. Although initially only available through a special viewing
 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional Environments 31

1111 station within the British Library, users around the world may now view
2 these sources on the Web (http://www.bl.uk/collections/treasures/trea-
3 sures.html). The use of digital technology to help in the preservation function
4 of national libraries is also very important – and is discussed further in
51 Chapter Eight. Digital libraries within national libraries provide their users
6 with a wide range of services, and Figure 2.5 shows some of the digital
7 information sources made available from the Det Kongelige Bibliotek – the
8 National Library of Denmark.
9 Library and Archives Canada (formerly the National Library of Canada)
10 in partnership with the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions
1 and the National Archives of Canada, has produced a digital library called
2 Early Canadiana Online/Notre Mémoire En Ligne (http://www.cana-
3111 diana.org). This digital library comprises over 3,000 English-language and
4 French-language books and pamphlets published before 1900, and is partic-
5 ularly strong in literature, women’s history, native studies, travel and
6 exploration, and the history of French Canada. Cherry and Duff (2002),
7 members of the user-based evaluation of digital libraries research group at
8 the University of Toronto, surveyed users of this digital library in 2000. Of
9 the 159 respondents, approximately half were using the resource for personal
20111 interest/genealogy, 21% for scholarly research, 12% for professional purposes
1 and 6% for teaching. The investigators concluded that “digital library
211 research should take into account the types of tasks carried out, as well as
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47 Figure 2.5 Digital information sources from Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Denmark
48111 (reproduced courtesy of Det Kongelige Bibliotek)
32 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

the culture of different user groups”. They believe that digital libraries of
historical materials such as this have the potential to attract new user groups
who may use the collection to support unexpected tasks. Other national
libraries are also finding that digital library developments are broadening
their range of users.

2.2.3 Public libraries and institutions

In many countries the role of public libraries in the new ‘knowledge economy’
or in the globalization of services is being defined. In Singapore, for instance,
staff at the National Library Board (NLB), which covers public libraries as
well as the National Library of Singapore, view a digital library as playing:

a key role in providing a knowledge network that equips individuals

and corporations with the necessary resources to tap into the infor-
mation highway and transform raw information into economic value.
(http://www.elibraryhub.com/libraryServices/libraryServices.asp).

Further information about the development of digital library services in the

public libraries of Singapore is given in a case study in Chapter Nine. Staff
from the NLB are involved with colleagues from public libraries in Australia,
Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Sweden, the UK and the US in the International Network of Public
Libraries project (http://www.public-libraries.net/en/). The project, which
runs from 1996 to 2004, aims to pool international ‘know-how’ and develop
appropriate solutions for their users. Poustie (1999), who is involved in this
project, notes how public library managers in Australia and the UK are seeing
a new role for public libraries as a “centre for lifelong learning and self-
directed learning, utilizing the new technologies and making them available
to the public”. In the UK this development has been fostered by funds of
240 million euros from the Government to public libraries in an initiative
known as the People’s Network (http://www.peoplesnetwork.gov.uk).
Public libraries in the UK, as elsewhere, have often been considered ‘street
corner universities’ without necessarily having the requisite resources.
However, with funds from the People’s Network, by the end of 2003 all 4,000
or so British public libraries had the necessary equipment (including some
30,000 PCs) to enable free access via the Web, library staff had received appro-
priate training to assist users, and work on developing relevant content for
users was underway. The People’s Network has been judged a great success
and public libraries are receiving further funding to provide new online
services such as access to e-government services, e-learning resources,
community information and virtual reference sources for their users. Through
the People’s Network members of public libraries in the UK can gain access
to various licensed digital information sources; for instance many public
libraries in Wales provide their members with free access to Oxford Reference
Online – a digital collection of over 120 language and subject reference
works. In Canada, members of the Virtual Reference Library at Toronto
Public Library (http://vrl.tpl.toronto.on.ca) can also access free and licensed
 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional Environments 33

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3 Figure 2.6 Virtual Reference Library, Toronto Public Library, Canada (repro-
4 duced courtesy of Toronto Public Library)
5
6 sources – including bilingual (English/French) encyclopaedias, the full texts
71 of magazines and newspapers, The Canadian Theatre Record, The Toronto
8 Official Plan and local history digital collections as well as links to catalogues
9 in the geographic (Toronto, Ontario and Canada) area as described by
30111 Scardellato (2001) and shown in Figure 2.6.
1
2
3 2.2.4 Research establishments
4 In the research sector users require access to research carried out
5 by colleagues worldwide made available in articles published in refereed
6 scholarly journals, in books, or in unpublished sources such as doctoral
7 dissertations or research reports. There has been growing consternation
8 within universities and research establishments in recent years about the
9 increasing costs of scholarly journals and the lack of funds within libraries
40111 to acquire access to the appropriate materials. The solution seen by many is
1 the development of ‘Open Access’ sources, and these are described in Chapter
2 Three. Figure 2.7 shows some of the information sources that are made avail-
3 able to users at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva,
44 Switzerland. The CERN Document Server provides users with access to a
45 large number of bibliographic records, almost half of which provide access
46 to the full text of materials such as preprints, journal articles, reports and
47 theses. In addition there are records for photographs, presentations, videos,
48111 press cuttings and archives.
34 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Figure 2.7 CERN Document Server, Switzerland (reproduced courtesy of CERN)

2.2.5 Teaching and learning establishments

With the teaching of students at all levels becoming more user-centred there
needs to be an appropriate learning environment infrastructure to support
them. In many establishments the concept of user-centred learning is being
achieved with the adoption of various managed learning environments
(MLEs) and virtual learning environments (VLEs). MLEs comprise the
whole range of information systems and processes of the institution
(including a VLE if its exists) that contribute directly, or indirectly, to learning
and learning management including the student record system, learning
resources and so on whilst VLEs encompass the components in which
students and lecturers participate in online interactions of various kinds.
Software, such as WebCT and Blackboard, have been developed to integrate
online methods of delivering course material and links to appropriate digital
information sources that can then be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a
week (24/7) by students, as well as providing computer-based communica-
tion software (chat rooms, e-mail, bulletin boards, and so on). In the UK the
Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is supporting a range of projects
in this area and has prepared an MLE Information Pack (http://www.jisc.ac.
uk/mle). Library and information staff in institutions involved in using
this technology have an important role to play, and the DELIVER (Digital
Electronic Library Integration within Virtual EnviRonments) project, jointly
 Digital Libraries in Various Institutional Environments 35

1111 undertaken by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)
2 and De Montfort University, is one example of a project which has explored
3 this further by linking the VLE with the library management system
4 (http://www.angel.ac.uk/DELIVER/). Within DELIVER, practical software
51 tools have been developed for the creation and integration of course-based
6 reading lists within the WebCT VLE. Many courses at LSE now have e-based
7 course packs containing e-readings which have to be copyright cleared and
8 made available in digital form. DELIVER was just one of 10 projects funded
9 by JISC to investigate linking digital libraries with VLEs. JISC (http://www.
10 jisc.ac.uk) is an independent advisory body supporting further and higher
1 education in the UK. JISC provides strategic guidance, advice and opportu-
2 nities to use ICT in teaching, learning, research and administration and also
3111 funds a number of projects related to digital library developments.
4 User-centred learning has always been a feature of distance education and
5 open learning courses. Institutions such as the Open University (OU) in the
6 UK (http://www.open.ac.uk), Sukhothai Thammitharat Open University in
7 Thailand (http://www.stou.ac.th) and Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra
8 Open University (http://www.ycmou.com) in India have pioneered these
9 approaches in their respective countries for several years. Rowntree (1990)
20111 refers to open learning as an all-embracing philosophy which places control
1 and choice in the hands of learners so that they can learn at the time, pace
211 and place which satisfies their individual circumstances and requirements.
3 For many years the libraries located in open universities were mainly for use
4 by their academic staff in teaching and research rather than for the many
5 thousands of students who were enrolled in the courses. ICT developments
6 are changing this situation, and these libraries are becoming much more
71 designed to meet the needs of all their students as well as researchers and
8 staff and are available on a 24/7 basis. The case study on the OU in the UK
9 in Chapter Nine provides further details of the range of services offered by
30111 its digital library. Figure 2.8 shows the information sources available to
1 students, via the Electronic Library, at the Open University of Hong Kong.
2
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47 Figure 2.8 Electronic Library, Open University of Hong Kong, China (reproduced
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36 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

The English interface is shown in the figure and a Chinese-language

version and a text-only version (for visually impaired users) are also avail-
able by clicking on the appropriate option at the top right hand corner of
the screen.
A three-year study (1999–2002) on the uptake of digital information sources
by users in higher education establishments in the UK is reported by
Urquhart and others (2003). A main trend identified was that academic staff
support for use of digital information sources may increasingly be formal-
ized through the use of VLEs. Staff in library and information centres need
to develop new skills in working with academic staff who themselves may
be unaware how key their role is in encouraging use of digital libraries by
students.
A user survey of 1050 college students in the US found that during their
most recent digital library visit the digital information sources used were:

• full texts of ejournals (67%);

• library catalogue (57%);
• databases and journal indexes (51%);
• ebooks (21%).

In response to a question on what the campus library could do to help with

study assignments users suggested:

• make it easier to use and access library resources;

• have more materials available (both in print and electronic);
• offer interactive maps, study tips and guides;
• provide links to other library and research sites (OCLC, 2002).

2.3 Personalized Digital Libraries

For some users, a major advantage in using a digital library is the ability to
‘personalize’ the information that appears on their desktop or laptop
computer. Personalization (or customization as it is sometimes called) was
a major trend identified in 1999 by ten expert members of the Library and
Information Technology Association (LITA) of the American Library
Association:

library users who are web users, a growing group, expect customiza-
tion, interactivity, and customer support. Approaches that are
library-focused instead of user-focused will be increasingly irrele-
vant. The University of Washington’s MyGateway and North
Carolina State University’s MyLibrary@NCState are examples of
customized portals (http://www.lita.org/committe/toptech/mw99.
htm#customization).

Staff at the University of Washington Library describe why users should use
MyGateway in the following way:
 Digital Reference Services 37

1111 • enables the organization of frequently-used web resources in a way similar

2 to bookmarking but, unlike bookmarks, they are independent of the work-
3 station used;
4 • provides links to new resources of potential interest to a specific user which
51 have been added to the library’s ‘collection’ since the user last logged in;
6 • allows users to add items from the results of a search directly to
7 MyGateway;
8 • avoids the need to add further personal information after logging in
9 to MyGateway. (https://www.lib.washington.edu/resource/help/
10 MyGateway.html)
1
2 MyLibrary@NCState also allows users to create their own personal web
3111 interface. This software has been used by many other institutions both within
4 the US (for instance at Virginia Commonwealth University, Los Alamos
5 National Laboratory, Cornell University Library) and without (for instance
6 at the Central Medical Library of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia,
7 Toronto Public Library in Canada and Lund University in Sweden). In devel-
8 oping the personalized medical library portal at the University of Ljubljana
9 in Slovenia, staff reviewed various software options and chose MyLibrary
20111 @NCState as described by Rozic-Hristovski, Humar and Hristovski (2003).
1 This software was written for English-language speakers, but communicating
211 with the digital library in the user’s native language is an important feature
3 of any personalized system. The Slovenian team therefore decided to develop
4 the functionality of the software so that other languages could be covered
5 along with a facility for multilingual support. Staff at the Università Carlo
6 Cattaneo (LIUC) in Italy (see the case study in Chapter Nine) also felt that
71 users needed to communicate their personal preferences in their native
8 language and so developed an Italian interface for this software as shown
9 in Figure 2.9 (http://mylibrary.liuc.it).
30111
1
2 2.4 Digital Reference Services
3
4 One possible disadvantage of digital libraries is that users need not visit the
5 physical building and so are not able to call upon the staff within the library
6 for face to face help in finding information. In order to overcome this,
7 some institutions provide digital reference services. The two basic models
8 for digital reference are:
9
40111 • Asynchronous. In such services the user will e-mail a request to the library,
1 or fill in a specific web form outlining the specific request and, in due
2 course an answer will be provided by e-mail.
3 • Synchronous (real-time, text-based or chat). In these services there is a
44 two-way communication between user and librarian using ‘chat’ software
45 or video technology.
46
47 Sometimes libraries collaborate with others, either in the same country, or
48111 perhaps in different parts of the world, to assist in the 24/7 approach to
38 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Figure 2.9 MyLibrary, Biblioteca Mario Rostoni, LIUC, Italy (reproduced cour-
tesy of Biblioteca Mario Rostoni)

offering digital reference services for their users. Examples of collaborative

digital reference services include:

• VRC – Virtual Reference Canada/ Référence Virtuelle Canada (Gaudet

and Savard, 2002). This service involves a large number of libraries,
archives, museums and research institutions across Canada providing a
free and bilingual collaborative digital reference service (http://www.
nlc-bnc.ca/vrc-rvc). Ask A Librarian in the UK involves about 70 public
libraries (http://www.ask-a-librarian.org.uk). It developed from early
work (in the mid-1990s) in public library collaboration relating to digital
library services (Berube, 2004).
• QuestionPoint- Cooperative Virtual Reference, being developed by the
Library of Congress and OCLC in the US with input from participating
members of the Global Reference Network – a group of libraries and insti-
tutions worldwide that are committed to digital reference (http://www.
questionpoint.org). In the Netherlands a Dutch version of QuestionPoint
– known as Al@din (Algemeen Landelijk Dekkend Digitaal Informatie
Netwerk) – is being developed and made accessible via the Dutch Public
Libraries website (http://www.bibliotheek.nl).
 Information Literacy 39

1111 It is often important for users in bilingual or multilingual communities to be

2 able to ask questions of digital reference services in their ‘mother’ tongue
3 and receive responses in that language and Al@din hopes to achieve this for
4 Dutch users (Visser, 2003). Staff at the University of Illinois at Urbana are
51 compiling a worldwide list of such collaborative digital reference services
6 (http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~b-sloan/collab.htm).
7
8
9 2.5 Information Literacy
10
1 It is necessary for users to have the requisite skills to obtain relevant informa-
2 tion quickly and effectively from digital library sources and become what
3111 is often referred to as ‘information literate’. What exactly are these skills?
4 A number of definitions have been formulated; for example, in the UK a
5 working group of SCONUL – the Society of College, National and University
6 Libraries – developed what have become known as the Seven Pillars of
7 information literacy:
8
9 • The ability to recognize a need for information.
20111 • The ability to distinguish ways in which the information ‘gap’ may be
1 addressed, that is, knowledge of appropriate kinds of resources; selection
211 of resources with ‘best fit’ for the task at hand; and the ability to under-
3 stand the issues affecting accessibility of sources.
4 • The ability to construct strategies for locating information (for instance, to
5 articulate the information need to match against resources; to develop
6 a systematic method appropriate for the need; and to understand the
71 principles of construction and generation of databases).
8 • The ability to locate and access information (that is to develop appropriate
9 searching techniques (such as the use of Boolean operators); to use appro-
30111 priate ICTs; to use appropriate indexing and abstracting services, citation
1 indexes and databases; and to use current awareness methods to keep
2 up-to-date).
3 • The ability to compare and evaluate information obtained from different
4 sources and to have an awareness of bias and authority issues as well as
5 an awareness of the peer review process of scholarly publishing, and to
6 be able to extract information matching the particular need.
7 • The ability to organize, apply and communicate information to others in
8 ways appropriate to the situation, and to cite bibliographic references
9 in project reports and theses; to construct a personal bibliographic system;
40111 to apply information to the problem at hand; to communicate effectively
1 using an appropriate medium, and to understand issues of copyright and
2 plagiarism.
3 • The ability to synthesize and build upon existing information, contributing
44 to the creation of new knowledge (SCONUL, 1999).
45
46 The above definition is just one of many, and numerous organizations (such
47 as the Australian and New Zealand Institute for Information Literacy, and
48111 the Association of College and Research Libraries Institute for Information
40 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Literacy in the US) as well as individual libraries in many countries are

working to make their users information literate. Research in information
literacy at Sheffield University in the UK has resulted in a website with links
to many information literacy developments around the world (http://dis.
shef.ac.uk/literacy/). In addition an international conference on eliteracy,
which covers both information literacy and IT literacy, is held annually
(http://www.elit-conf.org).
In an academic environment (school, college or university) information
literacy training for students might be provided through a compulsory
component, or module, which, ideally, should be closely related to the
subject content of their studies. For instance, the OU in the UK has a distance
learning, credit-bearing module on information literacy called MOSAIC
(Making Sense of Information in the Connected Age) which covers key
aspects of information literacy (recognition of information need, searching,
evaluating, using information, and so on) and is assessed by a portfolio
which documents a search process (http://www.open.ac.uk/mosaic/). This
module takes about 12 weeks to complete and is open to non-professional
library staff as well as students. Students completing the course satisfac-
torily can gain credits that can be used towards their degree. Voluntary
training classes can also be provided, though attendance tends to be lower
(and frequently those most in need of training are least likely to volunteer!).
It is often only by making courses compulsory that students will actually
pay any attention to them. Another approach is to provide self-help guides
or tutorials. In addition to MOSAIC, the OU has also developed a tutorial
SAFARI – Skills in Accessing, Finding and Reviewing Information
(http://sorbus.open.ac.uk/safari/signpostframe.htm) that is freely available
for anyone to use. Via SAFARI, users can work their way through the stages
of understanding information sources, planning a search, carrying out a
search and evaluating a search. The whole tutorial takes about 14 hours to
complete.

2.6 Barriers to User Access

2.6.1 Visual or other physical impairment affecting access

Users with a range of disabilities are provided, through legislation in force
in many countries around the world, with rights to ensure access to digital
information services on the Web. The policies in a number of countries
(including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland,
Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Portugal, the UK and the US) with respect to such
web accessibility are maintained by the WAI – Web Accessibility Initiative
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy). For instance, in Australia the Disability
Discrimination Act of 1992 has a section (No. 24) that makes it unlawful for
websites to be inaccessible to the disabled, and so the State Library of New
South Wales provides a variety of adaptive (or assistive) technology to assist
users in accessing electronic information resources. Examples include:
 Barriers to User Access 41

1111 • Screen reading software so that a ‘voice’ speaks the content on the screen
2 – needed for blind people.
3 • Image magnification software – needed for those with low vision so as to
4 enable them to read information on the screen.
51 • An alternative mouse – needed for those who have problems with hand
6 control (http://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/access/technology.cfm).
7
8 Users can have a range of visual impairments which affect their use of
9 digital libraries. An annual conference is held on Technology and Persons
10 with Disabilities at California State University, and a paper from the 2003
1 conference briefly describes a management system for a digital library
2 being developed at the Silesian University of Technology (Bzorza, 2003).
3111 Figure 2.10 shows a record for a digitized version of a Polish translation of
4 a book by the English author Alastair McLean held in the digital library,
5 developed using the Silesian software, for the Laski School for the Blind.
6 Apart from those registered as blind or partially sighted, some users may
7 be colour blind. Colour blindness affects one in 20 people and the Vischeck
8 website (http://www.vischeck.com) provides good examples of what it is
9 like to be colour blind with an inability to differentiate between red and
20111 green, although there may also be other troublesome combinations. More
1 generally, anyone with less than perfect vision, and older users especially
211 are likely to fall into this category, may encounter problems with small font
3 sizes, or poor colour combination.
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46 Figure 2.10 Catalogue record, Biblioteka publikacji multimedialnych, Laski
47 School for the Blind, Poland (reproduced courtesy of the Polish Blind Union,
48111 Polski Zwia̧zek Niewidomych)
42 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Information staff need to ensure that their digital libraries are as accessible
to the visually impaired users as to other users. A wide variety of assistive
technology exists, such as text enlargers, synthetic voice output and so on,
that can help those with visual impairments. Two examples of relevant
centres for information are:

• BIKA Competence Centre (Barrier-free ICT for all) in Germany (http://

access.fit.fraunhofer.de/bika/home.xhtml?lang=en) which is part of the
Fraunhofer Institute of Applied Information Technology, and amongst
other activities is involved in European Union –funded projects as part of
the Information Society Technologies programme.
• TechDIS (www.techdis.ac.uk) in the UK, a service funded by JISC.

Practical guidance on providing accessible library websites for visually

impaired people is provided, and updated, by a number of web sources
such as the WAI and the Royal National Institute for the Blind in the UK
(http://www.rnib.org.uk) as well as by printed sources such as Mates (2000).
Interface design issues for users with visual problems are discussed further
in Chapter Six. Some institutions have implemented their own guidelines on
accessibility issues. For instance, at MIT developers of websites or web-based
software are expected to follow specific guidelines to ensure that the prod-
ucts meet the minimum level of accessibility to persons with disabilities (see
http://web.mit.edu/atic/www/sw/developweb.html).
As noted earlier, the majority of digital libraries are accessed via the Web
and the following quote by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, is as
applicable to digital libraries as it is to the Web: “The power of the Web is
in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential
aspect”. This quote appears on the home page of the WAI based at MIT
(http://www.w3.org/WAI/). The WAI is an International Program Office
within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that works, in coordination
with organizations around the world, to pursue accessibility through five
primary areas:

• technology;
• guidelines;
• tools;
• education and outreach;
• research and development.

2.6.2 No appropriate technology

The concept of the digital divide and the unequal pace of developments in
societies with respect to accessing digital libraries between the developed
and developing world as well as within individual countries was introduced
in Chapter One. Annual reports, such as those published by the Global Digital
Divide Initiative, provide information about the digital divide among and
between nations. The Global Digital Divide Initiative was set up in 2000 by
 Barriers to User Access 43

1111 the World Economic Forum to build partnerships between public and private
2 sector communities to bridge the divide between those who can make effec-
3 tive use of ICT to improve their lives and those who cannot. Here are some
4 details from the 2001–2002 report:
51
6 • industrialized countries with some 15% of the world’s population are
7 home to 88% of all Internet users;
8 • by 2003 Asia will have over 200 million Internet users, surpassing the US
9 and Europe;
10 • Norway has Western Europe’s highest penetration rate at 49%, with Italy
1 at the other end of the spectrum at 15%. (http://www.weforum.org/pdf/
2 Initiatives/Digital_Divide_Report_2001_2002.pdf)
3111
4 Overcoming the digital divide is a challenge that is being faced in many
5 countries, and further insights into such issues were discussed (between
6 participants from China, Malaysia, New Zealand and the University of the
7 South Pacific and Sri Lanka) at a conference organized by the Sri Lankan
8 Library Association in early 2003 (http://www.nsf.ac.lk/slla/papers.htm). It
9 was felt that library staff in many countries had a role to play in bridging
20111 the digital divide by creating appropriate digital libraries and by ensuring
1 that their users were information literate.
211 To address the problem of users without easy access to the Internet a
3 café called Cyberia was set up in London in 1994 where users, for a fee,
4 could sip a cup of coffee and access the Internet. This was the world’s
5 first cybercafe, and there are now thousands of such establishments in over
6 140 countries (http://www.cybercafes.com). The People’s Network in the
71 UK, described earlier, is another attempt to provide access to the Internet
8 for all within a community. Appropriate computing equipment and access
9 to the Internet through a reliable service provider are prerequisites for using
30111 digital libraries. In some countries, for instance Malaysia, ‘smart’ homes
1 are being designed with wireless broadband telecommunications links
2 which offer very high speed access to the Internet (http://www.cyberjaya-
3 msc.com).
4
5
2.6.3 ICT illiteracy
6
7 If users are unable to read, or to type, or to use a mouse then they will face
8 a major challenge in using a digital library. Many organizations, especially
9 public libraries, involved in developing digital libraries are also involved
40111 in running training courses on basic IT or ICT literacy for their users. IT or
1 ICT literacy is different from the Information Literacy described earlier.
2 In Singapore there has been a major National IT Literacy programme
3 (http://www.nitlp.com.sg) where the government aim is to reskill and
44 retrain Singaporeans for a knowledge-based economy. The training pro-
45 gramme is available in the four national languages of Singapore: English,
46 Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. Public libraries are just one of a number of
47 venues where participants can access the e-learning courses for this IT literacy
48111 programme. In many countries the European Computer Driving Licence
44 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

(ECDL), and the linked International Computer Driving Licence (http://

www.ecdl.com), are recognized as a qualification for those who wish to
become IT or ICT literate. The ECDL comprises a number of modules
covering functions including word processing, use of spreadsheets, and
accessing the Internet. Providing school children with the opportunity to gain
appropriate ICT skills is common in many countries. In Thailand, for instance,
the human resource development programme of 2000 provided all teachers,
college lecturers and professors, and school and college students with the
opportunity to gain familiarity with ICT as an enabling tool for accessing
information, and knowledge acquisition through self-paced learning.

2.6.4 Language barrier

Users may feel that a particular digital library is a challenge to use because
it does not contain appropriate information sources in a language that can
be easily read and understood. To overcome this many institutions involved
in developing digital libraries are also very active in creating appropriate
content for their users in relevant languages. However, this may not always
be easy. In Vietnam, for instance, Hung (2001) describes how there is no stan-
dard Vietnamese character font, there is a lack of software for digitizing
materials in Vietnamese using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scan-
ners, and a lack of digital content in the languages of the 54 ethnic groups.
Nevertheless, Hung describes the work of the National Center for Scientific
and Technological Information Documentation (NACESTID), an important
digital content creator and digital information source provider in Vietnam.
The home page of NACESTID is in Vietnamese but with English and French
language options, as illustrated in Figure 2.11 (http://www.vista.gov.vn/
main.htm). Even from the Vietnamese version of the website there are some
links to English-language sources (such as the ACM Digital Library and data-
bases from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts), as shown in the menu on the
right-hand side of the screen.
NACESTID is just one of seven libraries involved in the InterCity Digital
Library project in the Asia Pacific region. Others include: Shanghai Library,
the National Library of Singapore, the National Library of Malaysia, the
National Library of Vietnam, the General Sciences Library of Ho Chi Minh
City, and the Biblioteca Central de Macau.
There are many instances of groups of people within a country or com-
munity for whom the main language of the country is not their language.
In many parts of the UK the public library may be serving a community
of people who are not able to communicate in English and so appropriate
digital as well as print information services need to be made available. For
instance, in the London Borough of Westminster there is a large Chinese
community, and Figure 2.12 shows part of the website where links to rele-
vant Chinese digital information sources are provided. As will be described
further in Chapter Four the display of characters in different fonts is not
always possible and in this case the correct font to display the Chinese char-
acters is not available. It is however, available on the PCs within the
Westminster Libraries.
 Barriers to User Access 45

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Figure 2.11 National Center for Scientific and Technological Information
3
Documentation,Vietnam
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47 Figure 2.12 Chinese Library, Westminster City Council, UK (reproduced cour-
48111 tesy of Westminster City Council)
46 Digital Libraries: Users and Services

Digital libraries, then, are being developed in a variety of institutions,

in many countries and for a range of users. When implementing digital
library systems it is important to think of the needs of the users and to
provide appropriate features and facilities for those who may face particular
barriers. Increasingly users are expecting to be able to access information in
digital form. A major survey was carried out for the Digital Library
Foundation and the Council on Library and Information Resources in 2001/2
which involved 3,234 faculty members, graduate students and undergrad-
uate students in 392 doctoral research universities in the US. The general
conclusion was that:

Responses to the survey confirm, in the aggregate, that electronic

information use is substantial and growing in the nation’s major
universities and liberal arts colleges, without much of the “drag” that
some might have expected from methodologically entrenched profes-
sors and book-loving humanists. Respondents to the survey are
highly comfortable with digital resources, are making use of them
for research, teaching, and coursework, and have equipped them-
selves well to do so (Marcum and George, 2003).

References
Adkins, D. (2002) The digital library and younger users. In G.E. Gorman(ed.) The
Digital Factor in Library and Information Services. International Yearbook of Library and
Information Management 2002/2003. London: Facet Publishing, 133–155
Berube, L (2004) Collaborative digital reference: an Ask A Librarian (UK) overview.
Program, 38 (1), 29–41
Bowen, J. P. (2002) Weaving the museum web: the Virtual Library museums pages.
Program, 36 (4), 236–252
Bzorza, P. (2003) Virtual multimedia library accessible to blind people. Centre on
Disabilities Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference 2003. Northridge:
California State University. Available at: http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/2003/
proceedings/75.htm
Cherry, J. M. and Duff W.M. (2002) Studying digital library users over time: a follow-
up survey of Early Canadiana online. Information Research, 7 (2). Available at:
http://informationr.net/ir/7-2/paper123.html
Gaudet, F. and Savard, N. (2002) Virtual Reference Canada: a Canadian service in a
multicultural environment. Paper presented at 68th IFLA Council and General
Conference, August 18–24. Available at: http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla68/papers/
004-128e.pdf
Germano, D. (2002) The Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library. D-Lib Magazine, 8
(5). Available at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may02/05inbrief.html#GERMANO
Hung, T. B. (2001) Bridging the digital divide in Vietnam. Astinfo Newsletter, 16 (3),
10–13
Marcum, D.B. and George, G. (2003) Who uses what? D-Lib Magazine, 9 (10). Available
at: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october03/george/10george.html
Mates, B. T. (2000) Adaptive Technology for the Internet: Making Electronic Resources
Available to All. Chicago and London: American Library Association
OCLC (2002) How Academic Librarians can Influence Students’ Web-based Information
Choices. OCLC White paper on the Information habits of college students. Available
at: http://www5.org.oclc/downloads/community/informationhabits.pdf
 References 47

1111 Poustie, K. (1999) A Knowledge Centre for the Community: a New Role for the Public
2 Library. Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Foundation Publishers. Available at: http://www.
3 public-libraries.net/en/x_media/pdf/poustie_engl.pdf
4 Rozic-Hristovski, A., Humar, I. and Hristovski, D. (2003) Developing a multilingual,
personalized medical library portal: use of MyLibrary in Slovenia. Program, 37 (3),
51
146–157
6 Rowntree, D. (1990) Exploring Open and Distance Learning London: Kogan Page
7 Scardellato, K. (2001) Experiences in developing and maintaining the Virtual
8 Reference Library at Toronto Public Library. Program, 35 (2), 67–180
9 SCONUL (1999) Information Skills in Higher Education. London: SCONUL. Available
10 at: http://www.sconul.ac.uk/pubs_stats/pubs/99104Rev1.doc
1 Urquhart, C., Thomas, R., Armstrong, C., Fenton, R., Lonsdale, R., Spink, S. and
2 Yeoman, A. (2003) Trends in the uptake and use of electronic information services
3111 in higher education: results from JUSTEIS 1999–2002. Program, 37 (3), 168–180
4 Visser, F. (2003) Bringing the Dutch public online: the story of al@din, the public
5 libraries’ online reference desk. In Lewis J. (ed.) Online Information 2003: Proceedings.
Oxford: Learned Information Europe, 187–191
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Chapter 3
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51 Digital Information Sources
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3.1 Introduction
3 In this Chapter we shall describe some of the information sources that might
4 be made available as part of a digital library and answer questions such as
5 What are the types of sources? and Where do they come from?
6 The digital information sources in libraries, museums or archives are
71 various and depend on factors such as the needs of the users and the aims
8 of the institution. Some sources involve the acquisition, or licensing of already
9 digitized content whereas other sources involve digital content being devel-
30111 oped locally – perhaps covering local materials or material in local languages.
1 Some digital information sources will be freely accessible for anyone to use
2 whereas others, perhaps because of cost issues or licensing implications, will
3 only be available to authorized specific users. Some sources will contain the
4 ‘full’ information (such as the full text of a book, report, journal, or an archive)
5 whereas others will contain metadata or information about material in a
6 collection (such as a library catalogue or an archive index). Some sources
7 will be digital versions of material already existing in printed form whereas
8 other sources will have first appeared in digital form, often referred to as
9 being ‘born’ digital (such as a website or a word-processed document). Issues
40111 of intellectual property rights affect the use of all digital information sources
1 and these will be covered in Chapter Eight.
2 Figure 2.8 showed the opening page from the digital library of the Open
3 University of Hong Kong which has links to a number of digital information
44 resources including:
45
46 • Electronic resources (including electronic journals, electronic dictionaries
47 and encyclopaedias, electronic directories and handbooks, indexes and
48111 abstracts).
50 Digital Information Sources

• Electronic texts (including electronic books in English and Chinese).

• Reserve collection (including electronic versions of past examination
papers, dissertations and other reference materials).
• Library catalogues.

Such a range of types of material is typical in the digital libraries of acad-

emic institutions throughout the world. There is a mixture of ‘public’
materials such as ejournals and ebooks as well as materials emanating from
within the institution such as past examination papers, course packs,
students’ theses and dissertations. Many digital libraries within academic
institutions also provide a subject approach to their digital information
sources. Figure 3.1, for instance, shows the digital information sources for
architecture (with an appropriate ‘house design’ border) available via LEARN
(Library Electronic Academic Resources Network) at the University of
Auckland in New Zealand (http://www2.auckland.ac.nz/lbr/).
In public libraries the range of digital information sources made available
is usually very broad to cater for the possible needs of users. For instance,
newspapers and magazines form part of the Virtual Reference Library at
Toronto Public Library, as described in Chapter Two. Some public libraries
bring together relevant sources in a particular language. For instance, at the
public library of the Pompidou Centre in Paris (Bibliothèque Publique
d’Information) links are provided within its digital library to selected current
news articles in French from a variety of digital sources around the world
(http://www.bpi.fr).

Figure 3.1 Menu of architectural digital sources, Library Electronic Academic

Resources Network, University of Auckland, New Zealand (reproduced courtesy
of the University of Auckland)
 Full-text Materials 51

1111 In this Chapter we shall describe some of the types of digital information
2 sources that might be selected for inclusion in a digital library and then
3 consider ways in which such sources might be made available for the digital
4 library. There are, of course, very many more types of sources found within
51 digital libraries such as patents, international standards, statistics and geo-
6 graphic information systems that we have not discussed here. We have
7 concentrated on the major kinds of sources that are found in digital libraries
8 around the world.
9 These sources could be classified in a variety of ways and we have chosen
10 the following:
1
2 • ‘Full-text’ material to cover ejournals, open access and open archive collec-
3111 tions, ebooks and e-newspapers.
4 • Metadata sources to cover catalogues, indexes and abstracts, or sources
5 that provide ‘information about information’.
6 • Multimedia material.
7 • Websites.
8
9 Some of the sources described are freely available on the Web and so access
20111 via a digital library is not absolutely necessary. However, for other sources
1 access may only be possible for an individual user through a specific digital
211 library. Not all digital libraries will include access to all these types of
3 information sources but many, as evidenced in the various screenshots
4 of digital libraries included in this book, provide access at least to several of
5 them.
6
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8 3.2 Full-text Materials
9
30111
3.2.1 Scholarly ejournals
1
2 Scholarly journals first appeared in the mid-seventeenth century and quickly
3 became a basic tool for the communication of scientific information. Until
4 the mid-twentieth century these were mainly produced by not-for-profit
5 learned societies and copies were made available to members as part of their
6 annual subscription. Now, however, many scientific, technical and medical
7 (STM) journals in particular are published by commercial organizations.
8 Details of the average costs of printed journal subscriptions are monitored
9 each year by Swets Blackwell based on journals published in a number of
40111 countries or regions (http://www.swetsblackwell.com/custsn-about.htm).
1 For many years there has been an annual increase in subscription costs, some-
2 times quite substantial. Libraries, as major buyers of scholarly journals, have
3 been greatly affected by the continuous cost increases, especially when library
44 budgets in many cases have decreased in real terms, and so many have had
45 to cancel subscriptions.
46 A number of publishers (for example, the American Chemical Society,
47 Elsevier Science and the Institute of Physics) started to experiment with
48111 the production of digital versions of their printed scholarly journals during
52 Digital Information Sources

the early 1990s. As well as the advantages (including 24/7 availability) linked
to being delivered via digital libraries identified in Chapter Two, ejournals
can add value to printed scholarly journals in a number of ways, for instance,
by:

• adding colour;
• being available rather than lost or at the bindery;
• including high-quality graphics;
• incorporating sophisticated searching facilities;
• presenting information using multimedia technologies (such as sound or
video);
• directly linking to other related material (such as relevant websites or other
published materials);
• enabling ‘feedback’ between authors of articles and their readers.

The majority of ejournals, still have linked printed counterparts although the
content may vary between the printed and the digital version. For instance,
the digital version of the international weekly journal of science, Nature,
contains more material than its printed counterpart (http://www.nature.
com/nature/free-issue.html). One major challenge facing library and
information professionals in making ejournals available is that an individual
library often does not own the ejournal but has a licence for its use. If that
library decides to stop subscribing to the journal then access to the back
issues may be denied. This obviously is different from the situation with
printed journals where the library would have the printed copies of back
issues on its shelves in perpetuity. Nevertheless, very many libraries are
moving, or have moved, to providing access to ejournals and, in some cases,
are only providing e-access even if a printed version also exists.
The majority of scholarly ejournals cover material written in English.
However, there are instances of ejournals appearing in other languages and,
of course, these would be of most interest to native speakers of those
languages. Figure 3.2 shows part of a journal article in Bahasa Indonesia that
is available from the Ganesha Digital Library from the Institut Teknologi
Bandung in Indonesia (http://digilib.itb.ac.id/index.php).

3.2.2 Open access, eprint collections and open archives

In recent years many librarians and academic authors have become concerned
at what is seen as the ‘commercialization’ of scholarly journal publishing
and the requirement for authors to sign over the copyright of a paper
to the publishers prior to publication. Libraries need to pay increasingly
large sums (as indicated in the previous section) to subscribe to the printed
copies of the journals or to acquire licences for access to electronic versions
of them or else cancel subscriptions which results in researchers failing
to have access to necessary source materials. The result has been a growth
of the ‘open access’ movement. Open Access is a system of providing users
access to the full text of quality, peer reviewed research articles which
uses a funding model that does not charge users or their institutions for
 Full-text Materials 53

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9 access. In some instances authors may be charged a ‘processing cost’ for their
30111 article to be published. In general this open access can be achieved in one
1 of two ways:
2
3 • Open Access Publishing. Scholarly journals such as those covering the digital
4 library area (Ariadne, D-Lib Magazine and First Monday) would be included
5 in this category.
6 • Open Access Self-archiving. In this situation authors, or the institutions
7 within which they work, create an archive, or repository, of published
8 materials in addition to such materials being published in the existing
9 journals. Some, but not all, journal publishers accept this activity.
40111
1 A major development in the open access movement was the setting up, in
2 2002, of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) by the Open Society
3 Institute (OSI). Since 1993 the OSI in Budapest has developed and imple-
44 mented a number of programmes in the areas of educational, legal and social
45 reform in former Soviet republics and countries of central and eastern Europe.
46 OSI’s Information Programme has committed one million US dollars (about
47 800,000 euros) per year for three years to support a number of projects
48111 relating to open access including:
54 Digital Information Sources

• the development of business models and plans for self-archiving and open
access publishing;
• the use of library networks to mobilize support for open access;
• support for authors in low and middle income countries to publish in
open access journals;
• the development of software tools and templates for open access
publishing, self-archiving, indexing and navigation;
• the promotion of the open access philosophy.

A further impetus came in late 2003 when a group of European researchers

were signatories to the Berlin Declaration (http://www.zim.mpg.de/
openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html) which noted that “the Internet
offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of
human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of world-
wide access” and that this challenge needs to be addressed through content
and software tools “that must be openly accessible and compatible”.
So what does all this mean for information sources in digital libraries? In
research and higher academic environments many institutions are beginning
to make the published output of their researchers available as part of their
digital library and are creating links to other such collections. For instance,
Figure 3.3 shows a gateway to eprint collections available worldwide via

Figure 3.3 Gateway to ePrint repositories, Cybrary, University of Queensland,

Australia (reproduced courtesy of the University of Queensland Library)
 Full-text Materials 55

1111 the Cybrary at the University of Queensland in Australia (http://www.

2 library.uq.edu.au). As stated in the screenshot, the term eprint is used to
3 cover the electronic version of the preprint of articles as well as the elec-
4 tronic postprints or versions that have been published in peer-reviewed
51 scholarly journals.
6 The first major collection of eprints, known as arXiv (and included in
7 Figure 3.3), was set up at the Los Alamos National Research Laboratory
8 in New Mexico, US in 1991 and comprised preprints of articles published in
9 the area of high-energy physics. The phrase ‘open archive’ was used to
10 describe this collection. In order for users to be aware of, and access, eprints
1 residing in similar distributed collections in various digital libraries, the Open
2 Archives Initiative (OAI) was formed in 1999 to develop various standards
3111 for interoperability and to promote the use of these types of collections world-
4 wide (http://www.openarchives.org). As well as an OAI standard for
5 describing the eprint (the metadata), there is the Open Archives Initiative
6 Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI- PMH) which collects the metadata
7 and enables it to be searched. OAIster (http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/
8 oaister/), one of the cross-archive search tools included in Figure 3.3, is a
9 project of the University of Michigan Digital Library production services.
20111 OAIster provides facilities, using OAI-PMH, to search eprint collections in
1 almost 250 institutions worldwide. Harnad (2003) has been an active propo-
211 nent of open access and the setting up of institutional archives, and all his
3 papers on this topic, not surprisingly, are available on his website (http://
4 www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/intpub.html).
5 Open access solutions, as identified in this section, need to be sustainable
6 but they do present an attractive information source for those implementing
71 digital libraries in developing countries as well as in developed countries
8 (Chan and Kirsop, 2002). Also, open access publishing in developing coun-
9 tries will help to make research carried out in those countries become
30111 accessible to those in developed countries. For instance, Marcondes and
1 Sayão (2003) describe the work of the SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library
2 Online) a digital library comprising the full text of selected scientific jour-
3 nals from Brazil, Latin America and the Caribbean that are published in
4 Portuguese, Spanish and English and with metadata that is compliant with
5 OAI. In the Netherlands a project (funded with a grant of two million
6 euros) is being undertaken to make the published output from Dutch univer-
7 sities digitally accessible. The project is known as DARE (Digital Academic
8 Repositories) and involves Dutch national organizations such as the Royal
9 Library, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, and the
40111 Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research as well as Dutch universities
1 (http://www.surf.nl/en/home/index.php).
2
3
3.2.3 Ebooks
44
45 The development of electronic versions of printed books (or ebooks) can be
46 seen as part of the whole e-publishing phenomenon that began in the 1970s.
47 The main challenge has been the delivery mechanism as few users wish to
48111 ‘read’ books via a screen. Another challenge relates to copyright issues.
56 Digital Information Sources

Nevertheless ebooks are considered important information sources in

many digital libraries. Some ebooks are freely available. For instance, Project
Gutenberg in the US (http://gutenberg.net) provides access to digitized
versions of over 6,000 books which are categorized as being light litera-
ture (such as Peter Pan or Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), heavy literature
(religious texts or the works of Shakespeare) or reference sources
(almanacs,encyclopaedias and dictionaries). There are mirror sites of Project
Gutenberg in a number of countries including Denmark, Germany, Mexico
and South Africa. The works covered by Project Gutenberg all lie outside
US copyright and are thus freely available. An Australian version of
Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg of Australia (http://gutenberg.net.au)
provides access to about 10,000 books which are in the public domain in
Australia or are of specific Australian interest.
Ebooks are now predominantly available from companies which license
their use via the Web, and further details of these are given later in this
Chapter. At the turn of the millennium there was a lot of optimistic ‘hype’
concerning ebooks, with various companies producing special hardware or
‘readers’ to allow users to view them on these handheld devices. However,
many of these companies have ceased to exist as users were unhappy with
the reading technology. More standard ways of reading ebooks, either
on Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) or on PC screens, have become the
norm and are being accepted by users. A further alternative is to print the
ebook on request – a facility referred to as Print on Demand. Many public
libraries have investigated making ebooks available as part of a digital
library. Saunders (2002) describes the experiences at Yarra Plenty Regional
Library in Melbourne, Australia and notes that “ ebooks enable libraries to
provide 24/7 access to information with enhanced content features”. After
experiencing hand-held reading devices for ebooks she now advocates only
using ebooks that are downloadable for use on PCs and states that ebooks
are “best suited to reference and non-fiction titles, such as study guides to
literature, titles which are not read from cover to cover”. Public libraries in
the UK are also adding ebooks to their collections of digital information
resources. Figure 3.4 shows information about ebooks that are available at
the London Borough of Richmond-upon-Thames (http://www.richmond.
gov.uk/libraries).
Many academic libraries also provide their users with access to ebooks via
their digital library. These may be basic textbooks that have been published
in ebook format as well as in ‘normal’ format or they might be specially
developed reference works such as encyclopaedias, dictionaries, almanacs
and so on. Although many ebooks were originally published in English,
ebooks in other languages are now appearing. The National Library Board
in Singapore, for instance, provides access for its users to some 200,000 ebooks
in Chinese.
The advantages of using ebooks are similar to those outlined earlier for
ejournals, and they have a place in the provision of digital information
sources in many types of digital library. Some of the specific advantages of
ebooks are:
 Full-text Materials 57

1111
2
3
4
51
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
211
3
4 Figure 3.4 Ebook services, Richmond Libraries, UK (reproduced courtesy of the
5 London Borough of Richmond upon Thames)
6
71
8
9 • They can include animation, images, sound and graphics and this can be
30111 very useful, say, in medical texts to explain the workings of various organs,
1 or in technical manuals to explain the functioning of a specific part of a
2 machine.
3 • For the visually impaired user the ‘audio’ features can provide access
4 to the book’s content so that it might be ‘read’ by special text-audio
5 equipment.
6 • They may be cheaper than their printed equivalents.
7 • They can be delivered instantly.
8 • They are searchable.
9 • They do not deteriorate over time.
40111
1 However, ebooks are not necessarily appropriate for all reading material and
2 not all users like the thought of ebooks. The world ‘appetite’ for reading
3 printed books is not diminished by the availability of ebooks, indeed in many
44 countries the number of published printed books continues to rise annually.
45 Nevertheless, within a digital library ebooks can be a relevant information
46 source for some users.
47 The Open eBook Forum is an international trade and standards organiza-
48111 tion for the ebook industry (http://www.openebook.org). The Forum fosters
58 Digital Information Sources

the development of applications and products that will benefit creators of

content, makers of reading systems, as well as consumers.

3.2.4 Electronic newspapers

Local, national and international newspapers are important information
sources for current affairs and some newspapers have existed since the
eighteenth century. Providing access to back copies of newspapers is some-
times achieved through microfilm versions. Some newspapers began to
appear digitally on CD-ROM in the late 1980s and were early examples of
full-text digital information sources. With the advent of the Web it was
natural for newspaper publishers to make their products also available on
it. After the major political changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
republics of the early 1990s, web-based versions of many newspapers in the
newly independent countries became a key source for keeping the respec-
tive diaspora aware of developments. As with ebooks, e-newspapers are not
necessarily liked by all and there appears to be no diminution in the sales
of printed newspapers because of the existence of digitized versions which
are now available from countries all around the world. An indication of
this is provided in the Yahoo directory (http://dir.yahoo.com) that provides
links to newspapers in over 120 countries ranging alphabetically from
Andorra to Zimbabwe. As with ejournals, web editions of newspapers do
not always contain the same information as their printed counterparts and
often provide more features such as links to related news items and so on.
Some digital libraries include news clippings services for users to be kept
up-to-date with current affairs. Such services may be found in special
libraries, and the development of such a service for staff in the National
Informatics Centres in India is described by Matoria et al. (2003) who outline
the advantages of such a system as:

• instant access to news clippings over the Web through a common user
interface;
• global access to news clippings in real time by remote users;
• access to full-text news supplemented with graphics, charts, tables, and
so on;
• up-to-the-minute updated access to news;
• dynamic updating of the back-end database from many locations;
• provision of a high level of search options for news archive retrieval;
• instant feedback from users;
• unlimited downloading and printing;
• environmentally friendly.

Although creating such a news clipping service requires a fair amount of

human resources, the authors note that this is much reduced from the amount
of resources needed to provide the previous print-based news clipping
service. The University of Moratuwa Library in Sri Lanka, as described in
the case study in Chapter Nine, includes the output from a commercial news
clipping service in its digital information sources.
 Full-text Materials 59

1111 3.2.5 Theses and dissertations

2
3 Within any university the results of research undertaken by doctoral and
4 masters students and presented in theses and dissertations are important
51 information sources not only for other researchers within the university but
6 also elsewhere. As with ejournals, eprints, ebooks and e-newspapers there
7 has been a move towards the development of electronic versions of theses
8 and dissertations (ETD). This concept was first aired at a meeting in 1987
9 run by UMI (formerly known as University Microfilms) an organization with
10 a long history of involvement (since the 1920s) in making the full text
1 of university dissertations available on microfilm (http://www.umi.com). In
2 order to support the development of ETD, a Networked Digital Library of
3111 Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) is being developed at Virginia Tech in
4 the US (http://www.ndltd.org). Its objectives are to:
5
• improve graduate education by allowing students to produce electronic
6
documents, use digital libraries, and understand issues in publishing;
7
• increase the availability of student research for scholars and preserve it
8
electronically;
9
• lower the cost of submitting and handling theses and dissertations;
20111
• empower students to convey a richer message through the use of multi-
1
media and hypermedia technologies;
211
• empower universities to unlock their information resources;
3
• advance digital library technology.
4
5 NDLTD has spearheaded the development of ETD in many countries, orga-
6 nized annual international conferences, and maintains a searchable union
71 catalogue of the dissertations held by its 190 or so member institutions.
8 Examples of other organizations which are involved with ETDs include:
9
30111 • Australia Digital Theses Project (http://adt.caul.edu.au);
1 • Digitale Dissertationen at Humboldt University of Berlin (http://dochost.
2 rz.hu-berlin.de/epdiss/index_en.html);
3 • Helsinki University of Technology Electronic Academic Dissertations
4 (http://lib.hut.fi/Diss/);
5 • McGill University, Montreal Electronic Thesis Initiative (http://digital.
6 library.mcgill.ca/ethesis/);
7 • Uppsala University, Sweden (http://publications.uu.se/theses/).
8
9 Providing access to the full text of theses and dissertations presents chal-
40111 lenges of copyright, and many academic institutions are only beginning to
1 address such issues and incorporate ETD into their digital libraries. More
2 information on some of these issues is provided in the case study on
3 Vidyanidhi in Chapter Nine.
44
45
3.2.6 Archives
46
47 In the archives area many local and national archives are beginning to
48111 move from providing computer-based catalogues and finding aids to their
60 Digital Information Sources

collections, to linking to digitized versions of the archives. In the UK, the

National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/) brings together
the collections of the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts
Commission to form one of the largest archival collections in the world, span-
ning 1000 years of British history, from the Domesday Book to contemporary
government papers released each year to the public. The National Archives
has plans to provide access to digital copies of the documents in a number
of areas including:

• the 1901 census of England and Wales which can be used for genealogical
research;
• 800,000 probate wills from 1650 to 1858;
• the Cabinet papers from Harold Macmillan’s Government (1957–1963);
• medieval seals and how they were used;
• immigration experiences from the 1940s to the present day.

At an international level Unesco launched its Memory of the World

programme in 1992 to encourage the preservation and dissemination of
heritage and archive holdings reflecting the diversity of languages, peoples
and cultures around the world (http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/
en/index_mdm.html). Figure 3.5 shows some of these including:

Figure 3.5 Thumbnail images, Unesco’s Memory of the World programme

(reproduced courtesy of Unesco)
 Metadata Sources 61

1111 • Manuscripts at Vilnius University demonstrating European contributions

2 to scientific advancement between the 15th and 18th centuries.
3 • 3,000 old postcards from the 16 countries of the Economic Community of
4 West African States.
51 • 1300 Kandilli manuscripts on astronomy in three languages (Turkish,
6 Persian and Arabic) held in the library of the Kandilli Observatory and
7 Earthquake Research Institute of Bogaziçi University in Istanbul.
8
9 By 2003 some 68 projects from 40 countries were included in the Memory of
10 the World Register. Within the framework of this programme Unesco (along
1 with IFLA – the International Federation of Library Associations and Insti-
2 tutions) is also involved in compiling DigiCol – a database of documentary
3111 heritage collections digitized throughout the world (http://www.unesco.
4 org/webworld/digicol). Examples include:
5
6 • Archives Aequatoria (historical documents in French and Dutch relating
7 to the equatorial region of the Congo).
8 • Napoleonica (working papers, in French, of the French Council of State
9 1800–1815).
20111 • Memoriae Mundi Series Bohemica (Jesuit manuscripts in Czech and
1 English relevant to the history of Central Europe).
211 • Early Kazak newspapers (1913–1918) in the Arabic alphabet.
3 • Brazilian Government Documents issued (in Portuguese) primarily in the
nineteenth century.
4
5 An overview of guides and directories to national and international projects
6 related to archives is provided by Mattison (2002). He notes that many such
71 projects which cover original material in languages other than English are a
8 reaction to the dominance of US culture and information on the Web.
9
30111
1 3.3 Metadata Sources
2
3 The availability of full-text digital information sources is comparatively
4 recent with sources appearing on CD-ROM in the mid-late 1980s and the
5 Web during the 1990s. Before then searching for information about material
6 collected by libraries, museums or archives was normally done by searching
7 metadata sources, that is information about the information contained in
8 the physical collections. Such information sources are still useful in digital
9 libraries as, in many cases, the ‘whole’ collection is not available in a digitized
40111 format.
1
2
3 3.3.1 The catalogue
44 Writing in 1876 Charles Ammi Cutter defined a library’s catalogue as an effi-
45 cient instrument intended to achieve the following objectives:
46
47 • to enable a person to find a book of which either the author, the title or
48111 the subject is known;
62 Digital Information Sources

• to show what the library has by a given author, or on a given subject or

in a given kind of literature;
• to assist in the choice of a book as to its edition or as to its character.

These objectives were incorporated into a set of cataloguing principles agreed

by an international conference of cataloguers in Paris in 1961. At that time
the physical format of the catalogue was a set of catalogue cards. However
catalogues became a popular application for computers in libraries during
the 1960s and 1970s and by the late 1970s the OPAC – or Online Public Access
Catalogue – appeared. The OPAC to any collection, be it of books and jour-
nals in a library, artefacts in a museum, or pictures in a gallery, comprises
a database of descriptions of the items held in the collection. OPACs have
developed over the years to form a key module in the web-based library
management systems used by many libraries or in similar collection
management systems in museums or galleries. A common standard for
the description of a book in an OPAC is the MARC (Machine-Readable
Catalogue) format which is described in more depth in Chapter Four.
However, in some instances fuller information is provided to improve subject
searching of an OPAC by including extra information such as the Table of
Contents. The functionality of OPACs around the world is similar, and even
if the language of the interface is not known it is often possible to carry out
a search. Figure 3.6 shows the result of searching the OPAC at the University

Figure 3.6 OPAC record, Sistema de Bibliotecas y de Información de la

Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina
 Metadata Sources 63

1111 of Buenos Aires in Argentina, and accessible through its digital library
2 (http://www.sisbi.uba.ar/) for items about Patagonia.
3 Catalogues are important digital information sources and are often
4 included in the collection of sources made available through digital libraries.
51 As well as incorporating links to local catalogues, digital libraries might
6 include links to other catalogues in the geographic or subject area or to
7 collections of catalogues such as:
8
9 • Gabriel (Gateway and Bridge to Europe’s National Libraries) – provides
10 links to the websites and catalogues of the 41 national libraries which
1 are represented at the Conference of European National Libraries
2 (http://portico.bl.uk/gabriel/index.html).
3111 • LIBDEX the online index – provides links to the web addresses of 18,000
4 OPACs in many countries of the world (http://www.libdex.com).
5 • COPAC, the OPAC of CURL (Consortium of University Research
6 Libraries) in Britain – provides access to the physically merged union cata-
7 logues of the libraries of 24 CURL members including the Universities
8 of Birmingham, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Oxford as
9 well as the catalogues of the British Library and the National Library of
20111
Scotland (http://copac.ac.uk).
1
• Virtual union catalogues, sometimes called clumps – may be developed
211
for libraries in a particular region or covering a particular subject area.
3
In this case no actual physical merging of catalogue records has taken
4
place and the catalogues of each library are searched separately using
5
appropriate software making use of the Z39.50 protocol (as described in
6
71 Chapter Four).
8
9 3.3.2 Abstracting and indexing databases
30111
1 In the late nineteenth century, in an attempt to overcome the perceived
2 information overload of the day, abstracting and indexing (A&I) publications
3 (such as Index Medicus from NLM) started to appear. These printed publi-
4 cations provided shortened forms, or abstracts, of articles published in
5 scholarly journals as well as author and subject indexes to the articles.
6 Computers began to be used for typesetting these A&I publications in the
7 mid-1960s. It quickly became apparent that having digitized the abstracts
8 and indexes, computers could then search this digitized information. Many
9 such publications (for example Art Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Engineering
40111 Index, and Psychological Abstracts) became available as computer databases
1 during the 1970s and 1980s. Figure 3.7 shows an example of a record from
2 the Medline (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online) data-
3 base which is an online A&I database developed at the NLM in the US.
44 The records are structured into fields (such as title, author, journal name,
45 language of publication, abstract, and descriptors (taken from a special list
46 of Medical Subject Headings)). Medline contains over 12 million records
47 covering journal articles published, since 1966, in the life sciences in 4,600
48111 journals covering 30 languages.
64 Digital Information Sources

Figure 3.7 Extract of a record from the abstracting and indexing database Medline
(reproduced courtesy of the National Library of Medicine)

Abstracting and indexing databases can be very useful in making users

aware of what has been published. However, if access to the full text of
potentially relevant material is not easy then users may become frustrated.

3.3.3 Indexes to archives

Metadata in the form of indexes are frequently used to search archive collec-
tions either individually or in a given region. Access to Archives (or A2A),
for instance, enables users to search and browse information about archives,
dating from the 900s to the present day, in collections housed in about 330
repositories including local record offices, libraries, universities, museums
and national and specialist institutions across England (http://www.a2a.
org.uk/). Figure 3.8 shows the result of a search of A2A using the phrase
football club.
The phrase football club appeared in 344 different indexes and an example
of an archive record from one of these, the Elizabeth Munns collection of
photograph albums within Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record
Office, is shown in Figure 3.9.
 Multimedia Material 65

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Figure 3.8 Search results, A2A (Access to Archives), The National Archives, UK
5 (reproduced courtesy of The National Archives, UK)
6
71
8
9 3.4 Multimedia Material
30111
1 Multimedia materials covering stand-alone still images (such as photographs,
2 prints and paintings), moving images (such as films and videos), sound
3 recordings, and animation are important sources of information in many
4 subject areas and so are included in digital library collections. Many
5 museums, art galleries and libraries are digitizing their collections of images,
6 or creating digital images of their cultural heritage collections, so as to make
7 them available for a wide audience. Digitized moving images, as well as still
8 images, may be incorporated into the VLEs that are appearing within educa-
9 tional institutions. An overview of some of the projects in British higher
40111 education involving the networking of moving images is provided by
1 Atkinson (2001). The techniques for storing and retrieving visual images are
2 very different from those for text-based information sources and more on
3 this will be found in Chapter Seven.
44 Digital information sources covering speech and music are of great
45 interest in a variety of educational and academic situations as well as public
46 libraries. Figure 3.4 shows that Richmond Public Library in the UK provides
47 access to e-audio materials as well as to ebooks. The e-audio books are seen
48111 as equivalent to the talking books service which is of great importance to
66 Digital Information Sources

Figure 3.9 Archival record, Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record Service,
UK (reproduced courtesy of Bedfordshire and Luton Archives and Record
Service)

visually impaired users. In implementing digital libraries, information profes-

sionals may well need to provide access to appropriate databases of sound
recordings. There are many examples of national organizations, such as
museums, libraries and archives which have, for many years, been collecting
their nations’ sound ‘output’ – such as that broadcast on national radio or
television. The British Library Sound Archive comprises a million discs,
185,000 tapes, and many other sound recordings from all over the world
including music, oral history and wildlife sounds. The recording technolo-
gies range from cylinders made in the late 19th century to the latest digital
techniques. However, the amount of audio information that is accessible
via digital libraries is still comparatively limited. Figure 3.10 shows some
of the digital audio recordings that can be heard from the digital library of
ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive (http://
www.screensound.gov.au).
In some academic institutions digital recordings are made of lectures which
may then be linked to other course materials within the digital library. As
with text collections, developing appropriate metadata to describe the content
of multimedia materials collections is an important aspect of providing these
information sources in digital libraries.
 Websites and Quality Issues 67

1111
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20111
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4 Figure 3.10 Digital audio recordings, ScreenSound Australia (reproduced cour-
5 tesy of ScreenSound Australia, the National Screen and Sound Archive (Canberra,
6 Australia))
71
8
9
30111 3.5 Websites and Quality Issues
1
2 For many people the only digital information sources they think about using
3 are websites and they do not use digital libraries even though relevant
4 information sources may be available. The Pew Research Center regularly
5 surveys Internet use in the US and found that:
6
7 With over 60% of Americans now having Internet access and 40% of
8 Americans having been online for more than three years, the Internet
9 has become a mainstream information tool. Its popularity and
40111 dependability have raised all Americans’ expectations about the
1 information and services available online. When they are thinking
2 about health care information, services from government agencies,
3 news, and commerce, about two-thirds of all Americans say that they
44 expect to be able to find such information on the Web. Internet users
45 are more likely than non-users to have high expectations of what
46 will be available online, and yet even 40% of people who are not
47 Internet users say they expect the Web to have information and
48111 services in these essential online arenas (Pew Research Center, 2002).
68 Digital Information Sources

Although web search engines index a very large number of pages (by its
fifth birthday in 2003 Google indexed 3,300 million web pages) nevertheless,
this is only part of the Web – that which is freely accessible. A whole ‘other’
area, sometimes referred to as the deep web, the hidden web or the invisible
web, for various reasons (including subscription charges, format of source,
dynamic web pages) is often not indexed. Some of the digital information
sources already described in this Chapter (such as catalogues, and abstracting
and indexing databases) may not be indexed by the search engines.
The Web traditionally, has been dominated by information in English and
from the US. So, it is important that digital information sources of relevance
to other communities served by libraries, and in languages that can be easily
understood by people in those communities, are developed. Mutula (2002)
notes that, in 2000, less than 0.05% of the Web’s content was produced by
the 54 African countries, although all have some form of Internet connec-
tivity. In many countries government information is being made available
online as part of e-Government initiatives, and Muir and Oppenheim (2002)
provide a review of initiatives in a number of countries including Australia,
Canada, members of the European Union, Hong Kong, New Zealand, South
Africa, and the US.
Since anyone can publish anything on the Web the quality of information
available varies greatly. A clearly written guide to finding quality informa-
tion on the Internet is provided by Cooke (2001). Aspects to consider include:

• authority and reputation of the author(s);

• is there an obvious bias? (say to a particular political point of view);
• currency of the information (if no details are provided as to when the site
was last updated, chances are that it might not be very recent);
• accuracy of the information (if this can be judged);
• presentation and arrangement of the information.

Many digital libraries include links to relevant websites that have been
selected by those implementing the digital library. These websites may have
been ‘hand-picked’ by library and information professionals as sources of
recognized quality information. Funding for the development of various gate-
ways in specific subjects (including biomedicine, engineering and social
sciences) formed part of the eLib Programme in the UK in the 1990s. These
gateways have now evolved into the Resource Discovery Network (RDN), a
collaboration of over 70 educational and research organizations, including
the Natural History Museum and the British Library. RDN gathers together
websites that have been carefully selected, indexed and described by special-
ists in the partner institutions (http://www.rdn.ac.uk). The RDN is one of
the national organizations participating in Renardus (http://www.renardus.
org) which aims to provide a trusted source of selected, high quality Internet
resources for those teaching, learning and researching in higher education
in Europe. Other participating organizations include:

• DAInet – the German agricultural information network (http://www.

dainet.de);
 Suppliers of Some Digital Information Sources 69

1111 • DutchESS – the Dutch Electronic Subject Service (http://www.kb.nl/

2 dutchess);
3 • Finnish Virtual Library – the Finnish Internet gateway to selected Internet
4 sources (http://www.jyu.fi/library/virtuaalikirjasto/engvirli.htm);
51 • NOVAGATE – the Nordic gateway to information in forestry, veterinary
6 and agricultural sciences (http://novagate.nova-university.org/).
7
8 Renardus was initially developed as part of a European Union-funded project
9 during 2000–2002 and is now hosted at Niedersächsische Staats – und
10 Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, Germany. It can be searched in Dutch,
1 English, Finnish, French and German.
2 The Virtual Library or VL (http://www.vlib.org) is the oldest gateway of
3111 selected quality websites in specific subjects, having been started by Tim
4 Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web. It is run by a loose confederation of
5 volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they
6 are expert. Mirror websites of the VL are based in Argentina, Switzerland
7 and the UK.
8
9
20111 3.6 Suppliers of Some Digital Information Sources
1
211 Anyone involved in the collection management of digital information sources
3 needs to be aware of the range of organizations that provide such sources
4 or access to such sources. In this section an introduction to some of these is
5 given.
6
71
3.6.1 Scholarly ejournals
8
9 Subscription agencies (such as Blackwells, Ebsco and Swets) developed
30111 services, during the twentieth century, to assist libraries in the ‘management’
1 of subscriptions (in a variety of currencies) to print-based journals from a
2 range of different publishers in various parts of the world. In more recent
3 years, there has been a growth of organizations providing ‘aggregated’ access
4 to the full text of a range of electronic scholarly journals. The term aggre-
5 gator was used originally during the 1980s and referred to organizations
6 (such as Ebsco Publishing, Gale and ProQuest) that used the increased storage
7 capabilities of CD-ROM to deliver full-text information (licensed from the
8 original publishers) as well as abstracting and indexing databases. With
9 the arrival of the Web in the 1990s many journals are now available from
40111 the original publishers as well as from one, or often more, aggregators which
1 provide a common interface for searching and retrieving the articles as well
2 as a number of other ‘value-added’ services. Brief descriptions of some of
3 these services are given here to provide a ‘feel’ for this fast-developing area.
44
45 a) ACM Digital Library (http://www.acm.org/dl)
46 The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) was formed in 1947
47 and is the world’s oldest and largest educational and scientific computing
48111 society with members in over 100 countries. Its Digital Library provides a
70 Digital Information Sources

full-text collection of every article ever published in the various ACM jour-
nals, newsletters and conference proceedings – some 103,000 items by late
2003.

b) Ebsco (http://www.ebsco.com)
This Alabama-based organization provides a range of ‘packages’ of digital
information sources for different types of libraries in specific countries– full-
text scholarly journals for academic libraries, reference and literacy digital
information resources for school libraries, and so on. Ebsco is used in many
countries and its interface is available in French, Spanish and German. In
addition Ebsco uses special translation software, Transparent Language’s
Transcend, to translate, on request, articles originally written in English into
these languages. In the late 1990s the OSI negotiated a 39-country contract
with Ebsco to provide databases to countries in central and eastern Europe,
former Soviet republics and in Africa.

c) Emerald (http://www.emeraldinsight.com)
This British company publishes some 150 or so English-language journals,
mainly covering management and library and information science. Its full-
text database, Electronic Management Research Library Database (hence the
name Emerald), comprising some 40,000 articles, was set up in 1996 and its
contents are also available via a number of other electronic delivery services
such as Ebsco, ingenta and Swets Blackwell.

d) ingenta (http://www.ingenta.com)
This British company was launched in 1998 and now provides full-text access
to some 5,500 publications and table of contents services to a further 20,000
publications from over 230 academic and professional publishers. It is used
widely throughout the world, providing access to users in more than 10,000
academic, research and corporate libraries.

e) JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org)
Many of the electronic versions of scholarly journals are only available for
material published since the 1990s. JSTOR (Journal Storage) emerged from a
project to provide access to older materials, thereby easing the increasing
problems faced by libraries seeking to maintain stack space for their long
backfiles of printed scholarly journals. JSTOR was established as a not-for-
profit organization in the US in 1995 and digitizes the content of journals
while simultaneously improving access to the journal content. It was also
hoped that the project might offer a solution to preservation problems asso-
ciated with storing paper volumes. The JSTOR database is unique as the
complete archives of a number of core scholarly journals in arts, humanities
and social sciences, as well as in STM, have been digitized, starting with the
very first issue, some of which date from the 1800s. By 2003 JSTOR was being
used by 1,500 institutions in 71 countries to provide access to two million
articles from 322 journals. General information handouts describing JSTOR
are available in a range of languages including Chinese, French, German,
Japanese and Russian.
 Suppliers of Some Digital Information Sources 71

1111 f) ScienceDirect from Elsevier (http://www.sciencedirect.com)

2 This Dutch company, with a long history of STM publishing, launched its
3 ScienceDirect service in 1999. ScienceDirect provides access to articles in some
4 1,800 STM journals published by Elsevier as well as to journals from 120
51 other publishers. ScienceDirect is used by many organizations throughout
6 the world, including countries in Asia such as China, India, and South Korea.
7
8 g) Swets Blackwell (http://www.swetsblackwell.com)
9 Swets Blackwell was formed in the 1990s as a merger between the Swets
10 Subscription Service (a division of the Dutch firm, Royal Swets and
1 Zeitlinger) and Blackwells Information Services (a division of Blackwell Ltd
2 of Oxford, UK) with both organizations having long histories and strong
3111 track records in providing services to libraries and information centres world-
4 wide. Swets Blackwell now provides a range of serials-based services,
5 including the SwetsWise subscription service, to 60,000 academic, medical,
6 corporate and government libraries worldwide based on the products from
7 65,000 publishers and covering 250,000 journal titles.
8
9 Any one institution might use more than one of these suppliers to provide
20111 access to ejournals. Oxford University Libraries in the UK (http://www.lib.
1 ox.ac.uk/) uses the TDNET software from Teldan (http://www.teldan.com)
211 to manage access to its ejournal collection. Figure 3.11 shows part of the
3 alphabetic display of the ejournal holdings, coverage and so on, and although
4 access to specific journal titles might be via separate organizations such as
5 Ebsco, ingenta, JSTOR or SwetsWise, the titles are all presented in a unified
6 format so as to make searching the collection easier.
71 In Germany, the University of Regensburg was one of the first libraries in
8 the country to face the challenges, and opportunities, of providing its users
9 with access to ejournals in 1996. Staff developed a database-driven service,
30111 Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek (EZB), which is now a cooperative
1 system used in 238 German libraries as well as in seven other countries
2 (http://www.bibliothek.uni-regensburg.de/digibib/ebib.htm). EZB uses an
3 innovative metaphor of traffic lights (red, amber, green) to indicate the
4 accessibility to the user of the full text of a particular journal’s articles.
5
6
3.6.2 Open access, eprint collections and open archives
7
8 The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) provides a good source of
9 information on quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals that are
40111 published in open access mode in a range of subjects and languages. By
1 late 2003 it included records for about 700 journals (http://www.doaj.org).
2 DOAJ was set up in 2002, is funded by OSI in Budapest and is also supported
3 by SPARC – the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.
44 SPARC was set up by the US-based Association of Research Libraries (ARL)
45 and has members and supporters from many countries in Asia, and Europe
46 as well as in Australia and New Zealand. Its objective is to introduce new
47 solutions to scientific scholarly publishing through ICT (http://www.arl.
48111 org/sparc).
72 Digital Information Sources

Figure 3.11 Extract of the alphabetic list of electronic journals, Oxford University,
UK (reproduced courtesy of the University of Oxford Libraries)

A number of organizations provide free (or very reasonably priced) digital

collections of scholarly publications in specific subject areas and such sources
are often included in digital libraries. Lambert (2003) reports on develop-
ments within the biomedical community and provides brief descriptions of
the following services:

• BioMed Central (http://www.biomedcentral.com) is an open access

publisher which charges authors an ‘article-processing’ fee. BioMed
Central provides free access to peer-reviewed articles covering biomed-
ical research.
• Highwire Press (http://www.highwire.org) from Stanford University
provides access to over 330 journals, mostly biomedical, on behalf of more
than 60 learned societies. Some are accessed by subscription, some as pay-
per-view, some are free to institutions in developing economies and some,
such as the British Medical Journal, are just free.
• PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.org) is the NLM’s digital
archive of free life sciences journal literature.
• SPARC and BioOne (www.bioone.org). BioOne comprises a database of
full-text peer reviewed bioscience journals from small scientific societies.
 Suppliers of Some Digital Information Sources 73

1111 Prosser(2003) provides an overview of various open access initiatives and

2 developments in eprint collections.
3 Another example of a freely accessible collection of more popular journal
4 articles is FindArticles (http://www.findarticles.com). This collection is
51 provided by a commercial publisher, the Gale Group (part of the Thomson
6 Corporation) and LookSmart, which provides the search infrastructure.
7 FindArticles comprises 3.5 million articles from 700 publications on a range
8 of topics, including business, health, society, entertainment and sports.
9
10
3.6.3 Ebooks
1
2 The sources used for ebooks in Richmond Libraries as shown in Figure 3.4
3111 are netlibrary and Safari. NetLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com) was set
4 up in Boulder, Colorado in 1998 and aimed to be the world’s premier
5 provider of ebooks to academic, public, corporate and special libraries. Since
6 2001 netLibrary has been part of OCLC, the worldwide library cooperative
7 based in Dublin, Ohio. NetLibrary offers a free collection of over 3,000 out-
8 of-copyright titles, and Richmond also subscribes to about 300 non-fiction
9 titles covering economics, ICT, management and psychology. Safari Technical
20111 Books Online (http://safari.oreilly.com/) provides access to ebooks on ICT
1 and management published by O’ Reilly & Associates and which are partic-
211 ularly suitable for home PC users. Netlibrary and Safari are used as suppliers
3 of ebooks by very many libraries around the world. As with ejournals, some
4 institutions have come together to form consortia for sharing access to ebooks.
5 For instance, the Korean Education and Research Information Service (KERIS)
6 has formed a consortium of over 70 universities to share access to more than
71 8,000 ebook titles from netLibrary.
8 Many other publishers are entering the ebook field and providing a range
9 of digital information sources to libraries. Examples include:
30111
1 • Macmillan (http://www.macmillan.com) which provides dictionaries and
2 encyclopaedias as well as general science journals such as Nature and
3 Scientific American.
4 • Oxford Reference Online (http://www.oxfordreference.com) which has a
5 core collection of 120 of its dictionaries and reference books that are avail-
6 able in a single cross-searchable database.
7 • Xrefer (http://www.xrefer.com) which was set up in the UK in 1999 with
8 the aim of building a unique aggregated and integrated reference resource
9 and which uses a unique proprietary technology to generate cross-refer-
40111 ences across titles.
1
2 Many international organizations are also making the full texts of their
3 reports and books available online, sometimes on a subscription basis. For
44 instance, the World Bank, one of the world’s largest sources of development
45 assistance with its primary focus on helping the poorest people and the
46 poorest countries, launched its e-Library service in 2003 and provides a cross-
47 searchable collection of over 1,200 World Bank books, reports and other
48111 documents (http://www.worldbank.org/elibrary).
74 Digital Information Sources

3.6.4 Abstracting and indexing databases

The choice of which abstracting and indexing databases any particular organ-
ization will make available to its users will depend on the needs of those
users. There are many to choose from and examples include:

• ABI/Inform – business (http://www.proquest.com/products/pt-product-

ABI.shtml)
• BIOSIS – biosciences (http://www.biosis.org)
• Chemical Abstracts – chemistry (http://www.cas.org)
• COMPENDEX – engineering (http://www.ei.org)
• EMBASE – biomedicine and pharmacy (http://www.embase.com)
• ERIC – education (http://www.eric.ed.gov)
• INSPEC – physics, electrical engineering, ICT (http://www.iee.org/
Publish/INSPEC/)
• Medline – medicine (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/)
• PsycInfo – psychology (http://www.apa.org/psycinfo/)
• Science Citation Index – science (http://www.isinet.com/isi/products/
citation/sci/)

Just as there are many databases to choose from, so too are there many ways
of making them available . . . and options change as technologies develop
and companies come and go. In the 1970s companies such as Lockheed Dialog
offered online access to a large number of abstracting and indexing data-
bases. Dialog (now part of the Thompson Corporation) has evolved over the
years and now offers access to 1.4 billion records covering full-text sources,
business data, and images as well as abstracting and indexing databases
searched by users in over 100 countries (http://www.dialog.com). Other
examples of search services include:

• CSA – Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (http://www.csa.com) has been

publishing abstracts and indexes to the scientific and technical research
literature since the 1970s and offers an Internet database service to search
70 databases.
• OCLC FirstSearch (http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/) provides access to
72 databases, including OCLC’s WORLDCAT database of some 52 million
records of books held by member libraries in 68 countries and territories.
OCLC is a nonprofit membership organization which has been providing
a variety of services to libraries throughout the world since the 1970s.
• Ovid (http://www.ovid.org) provides a range of digital information
sources covering medical information. It is owned by Wolters Kluwer and
in 2001 merged with SilverPlatter, an early supplier of bibliographic data-
bases on CD-ROM and then its Electronic Reference Library (ERL) service
linking to about 30 databases.

Figure 3.12 shows some of the Chinese abstracting, indexing and full-text
databases that are available on CD-ROM, or a local area network, at Shanghai
Library. Shanghai Library is the largest public library in China and, as noted
 Creating Digitized Sources 75

1111
2
3
4
51
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3111
4
5
6
7
8
9
20111
1
211
3
4 Figure 3.12 Extract of alphabetic listing of abstracting and indexing sources,
5 Shanghai Library, China (reproduced courtesy of Shanghai Library)
6
71
8
9 in Chapter Two, is an active member of the InterCity Digital Library project
30111 in the Asia Pacific region (Miao, 2002). The Library also provides access to
1 a range of digital information sources including ebooks (from netLibrary),
2 English-language databases from sources such as CSA and Emerald, and
3 Chinese-language databases, as well as providing a virtual reference desk
4 (http://eservice.digilib.sh.cn/resource/index.asp).
5
6
7 3.7 Creating Digitized Sources
8
9 The digitization of local information sources (be they rare manuscripts,
40111 archives, student texts, examination papers, minutes of previous committee
1 meetings, photographs, museum artefacts, or works of art) is an activity
2 undertaken by many developers of digital libraries.
3 In the Chapter on creating content in the International Yearbook of Library
44 and Information Management 2002–2003, Dawson (2003) draws on his work at
45 Re:Source: the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries in London, and
46 the so-called ‘nof-digitise’ projects of The People’s Network. The People’s
47 Network provided £50 million (about 73 million euros) through the New
48111 Opportunities Fund (hence the acronym nof) to fund a number of projects
76 Digital Information Sources

related to the digitization of information resources in British public libraries

according to three main themes:

• cultural enrichment;
• re-skilling the nation;
• active citizenship.

The resultant EnrichUK website (http://www.enrichuk.net) provides links

to these digitization projects; Figure 3.13 shows an example of some digitized
material from Gwynedd Archive Service in North Wales in a bilingual
(English/Welsh) website covering image and text material on the slate
industry.
The importance of adherence to technical standards (as described further
in Chapter Four) is emphasized in the ‘nof-digitise’ projects. These are seen
as being linked to the lifecycle model of a digital information source as devel-
oped by the UK’s Office for Library and information Networking (UKOLN)
which, by 2003, was in its fifth revision (http://www.peoplesnetwork.
gov.uk/content/ts_index.asp). The stages of this lifecycle comprise:

• Creation of the digital information source – including guidance on the

standards for the file formats, methods of data capture, metadata and
preservation.

Figure 3.13 Digitized material, Gwynedd Archives, UK (reproduced courtesy of

Gwynedd Archive Service)
 Creating Digitized Sources 77

1111 • Management – preservation of the data, copyright issues, security, intel-

2 lectual property rights and relevant metadata.
3 • Collection development – linking the digital information source with
4 others to create a critical mass of digital information sources.
51 • Access – making information sources available in accessible, usable, secure
6 and responsible ways such as taking into account needs of visually
7 impaired users and adopting appropriate metadata for resource discovery.
8 • Re-use – digital information sources should be usable in more than one
9 way. For instance, a digitized local history photograph generated for a
10 special online exhibition should be capable of being ‘repackaged’ into
1 a learning resource for primary school children.
2
3111 These guidelines have been followed in other countries. In Canada, for
4 instance, the Canadian Culture Online/Culture Canadienne En Ligne project
5 is part of the Department of Canadian Heritage’s strategy to encourage a
6 uniquely Canadian presence on the Internet through funding appropriate
7 projects (http://www.pch.gc.ca/progs/pcce-ccop/index_e.cfm). Being a
8 bilingual country, half the funds are ear-marked for the creation of French-
9 language material. The editors of the guidelines for digitization projects
20111 acknowledge the work of UKOLN and nof-digitise in compiling their recom-
1 mendations (Alexander and Kuny, 2002).
211 A technical advisory service for those in UK public libraries involved in
3 applying this model is offered by UKOLN (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
4 nof/support). This service provides information on latest standards, relevant
5 workshops and courses as well as information papers covering key areas.
6 One information paper, produced in conjunction with the UK’s Higher
71 Education Digitization Service (HEDS), describes the essential issues a digital
8 project should address during the project planning stage and includes:
9
30111 • Know your originals. The physical processes required to create a digitized
1 version of an original item depend on various factors (type of item (text,
2 audio, video, image), size, condition, colour (and how important is this?))
3 • Know, or have a good estimate of, the costs involved. HEDS has produced
4 a matrix of cost factors (http://heds.herts.ac.uk/resources/matrix.html)
5 that takes into account issues such as type of material (printed text, bound
6 text, microfilm, slides, photographs, glass plates etc.) and resolution (no.
7 of dots per inch), preparation time, handling time, skills/experience of
8 staff; this is reproduced in Table 3.1.
9
40111 In addition a brief technical overview of creating a digital master is included
1 and key management guidelines/decision points include:
2
3 • Scan once for all purposes so as to ensure that the complex and expen-
44 sive preparation work will only need to be done once. The digital master
45 should form the ‘archival’ copy and surrogates can be generated for easier
46 access over the Web.
47 • Determine appropriate resolution requirement (dependent on type of
48111 original, its size, likely use and so on). For example, digitizing a 35mm.
78 Digital Information Sources

Table 3.1 HEDS matrix of costs for digitizing materials (reproduced courtesy of
the University of Hertfordshire)

transparency will require more dots per inch (dpi) than a 5x4 print because
it is smaller and more detailed.
• Decide whether to do the scanning inhouse or use a bureau. If it is decided
to do the scanning inhouse then appropriate equipment needs to be
acquired and staff trained. Contact or flatbed scanners are required for
photographs and some text materials, whereas non-contact or digital
cameras are needed for bound copies and oversize flat materials such
as maps, plans, and 3D objects (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/nof/support/
help/papers/digitization_process/).

Increasingly reports appear in print and on the Web of experiences with

projects to create local digital information sources. For instance, a 23-step
report by staff at the University of Cape Town Libraries on the digitization
of a collection of early twentieth- century black and white photographs taken
by Dorothea Bleek during her many expeditions to identify and record the
San (Bushman) languages of Southern Africa won the Best Poster award at
the 2002 IFLA conference. The final piece of advice given in the report was
to “teach the process to others and to advise other local projects” (Murray
et al, 2002).
Within the UK JISC has set up the Technical Advisory Service for Images
(TASI) for those involved in developing collections of digitized images. On
 Creating Digitized Sources 79

1111 its website (http://www.tasi.ac.uk) TASI provides much information (freely)

2 on managing digitization projects as well as creating, delivering and using
3 digital images. In addition a series of case studies describing image digiti-
4 zation projects with which TASI has been involved are provided. These
51 include:
6
7 • SCRAN – the Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network began in 1996
8 and provides access to a range of digitized information sources including
9 sound, images, moving pictures and text to be used for teaching about
10 history and cultural developments in Scotland. It contains over 1.25 million
1 records from museums, art galleries and archives (http://www.scran.
2 ac.uk).
3111 • Bristol Biomedical Image Archive – this collection of almost 9000 images
4 has been assembled by educators in different countries to assist in
5 e-learning programmes for dental, medical and veterinary students
6 (http://www.brisbio.ac.uk/).
7 • Sudan Archive Photographs Database – this comprises some 30,000 digi-
8 tized photographs with associated text taken in the Sudan during the
9 Anglo-Egypt Condominium Period (1899–1955).
20111
1 Members of the Digitization Subgroup of the Corporate Management Forum
211 Information Technology Working Group at the Australian Department of
3 Communications, Information Technology and the Arts also have experience
4 in implementing a number of projects involving the digitization of cultural
5 heritage materials in national museums, galleries and libraries. They have
6 developed a set of principles for any institution embarking on a digitization
71 programme (http://www.nla.gov.au/libraries/digitization/citwg_princ.
8 html). The first two fundamental principles they suggest are:
9
30111 a) Have clear goals. Decisions will need to be taken about the quality of
1 the images as well as the number of items in a collection to be digitized.
2 Digitizing a collection costs money and the number of items to be
3 digitized will depend on the monies available.
4 b) Be driven by the policy of the institution. A digitization programme should
5 reflect the strategic and operational goals of the institution and obey rele-
6 vant policies. Also, it should reflect internal policies regarding collection
7 access, preservation, collection management and marketing.
8
9 In addition this subgroup noted a number of other principles to be adopted,
40111 as appropriate, based on the goals of the project:
1
2 • Think about the long term requirements, as cheap short-term solutions are
3 not cost-effective in the long term.
44 • Undertake regular re-evaluation of the technology adopted and processes
45 undertaken in order to optimize the effectiveness and efficiency of the
46 digitization programme.
47 • Minimize risks – particularly from loss or damage of originals, or from
48111 using technological solutions that do not meet the required standards.
80 Digital Information Sources

• Integrate digitization procedures into institutional activities – for instance,

acquisitions processes, ensuring proper documentation and storage facil-
ities, recording information about copyright restrictions and permissions,
conserving/preserving and tracking movement of the original, including
information about digitized objects in collection management (or other)
databases.
• Eliminate duplication – such as manipulating originals twice for different
digitization projects.
• Acknowledge provenance – if a digitized copy is being made of an orig-
inal that has been borrowed from another institution (say for a physical
exhibition) then take care that ownership of the original is acknowledged.
• Ensure that appropriate intellectual property legislation is adhered to and
that cultural protocols are respected.
• Collaborate with other institutions as appropriate.
• Manage the digitized objects appropriately, including the creation of
records to describe their content (metadata), and maintenance and preser-
vation of the digital data.
• Manage the originals appropriately as well.
• Be faithful to the original – digital manipulation can be performed if neces-
sary on digital copies . . . but the main digital version should be a faithful
reproduction of the original.

Creating digitized versions of back issues of newspapers is a major challenge

which is being addressed by some. For instance, Gale (part of the Thomson
Corporation), under an agreement with The Times of London has planned
and implemented a digital edition covering 200 years of this, the oldest
continuously published daily newspaper in the English language. The
following principles were adopted during the digitization process:

• Making the complete newspaper, including display and classified adver-

tising, easily retrievable;
• Ensuring the most accurate and comprehensive search results possible;
• Adding a subject category to the metadata of every article, so that the
results could be limited to particular areas of enquiry;
• Making use as attractive and as easy as possible;
• Keeping the delivery times of results to a minimum;
• Indicating the context of publication; alongside every search result a
full-page thumbnail image appears in which the position of an article or
advertisement and the relationship between editorial and advertising
content is highlighted;
• Offering seamless navigation from an individual article to its related full
page;
• In the browse function, hotlinking all article headings from a page of the
paper alongside a large thumbnail page image allowing users to see
the article’s position on a page (Readings and Holland, 2003).

There are very many examples around the world of digitization projects and
several examples were given earlier in this Chapter of Unesco-funded projects
 Creating Digitized Sources 81

1111 covering a range of materials in different countries. A major digitization

2 project in the US is American Memory. The Library of Congress has created
3 some seven million digital items from over 100 historical collections in a
4 variety of formats (written materials, manuscripts, sheet music, maps, motion
51 pictures, photographs and prints and sound recordings) to form American
6 Memory (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html) for its National
7 Digital Library. Figure 3.14 shows a screenshot from the ‘Today in History’
8 feature for November 22nd. This digital library started in 1995 and has been
9 built using technical standards as described in Chapter Four and was an
10 early adopter of OAI-PMH (Arms, 2003).
1 In Europe, the Digital Heritage and Cultural Content (Digicult) programme
2 of the European Union involves various image databases (http://www.
3111 cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/projects_a_g.htm). Since 1999 some 100 projects
4 have been funded under this initiative according to the online publication
5 Cultivate Interactive (http://www.cultivate-int.org). One project, TRIS (Trials
6 Support), brought together the results of some 25 different European projects
7 and as stated on its website:
8
9 The projects have been experimenting with existing technologies to
20111 find novel ways of creating, managing and presenting new classes
1 of digital cultural objects, held by memory institutions across Europe.
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48111 duced courtesy of the Library of Congress)
82 Digital Information Sources

Their goal was to enhance the user experience, by providing innov-

ative means of exploration, learning and entertainment. To this
purpose, the projects focused on the user, in particular, on user
interaction and models for interactivity with high-quality virtual
representations of valuable cultural objects, and the creation and
navigation of virtual cultural and scientific landscapes. The trial
projects addressed a wide range of cultural heritage themes, and
therefore different user communities including tourists, teachers,
young people, SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), historians,
scholars, curators, scientists as well as the individual citizen. (http://
www.trisweb.org/tris/trisportalpro/tris/tris_project_sum.asp).

This Chapter has provided an overview of some of the digital information

sources that might be included in a digital library. The actual range to be
made available within any individual digital library will depend on the needs
of the users. Some of the sources will be publicly available and acquired,
usually through licences. Other sources will be developed ‘locally’ and exam-
ples shown ranged from a bilingual archive collection in North Wales to a
huge archive at the Library of Congress in the US. There is now a fair amount
of experience in managing digitization projects within the digital library
community and much advice is freely available on the Web, as well as in
printed form (Lee, 2001; Tanner, 2001) for those embarking on such a project.

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