DIGITAL LIBRARIES

Digital libraries are organized collections of information resources and associated tools for creating, archiving, sharing, searching, and using information that can be accessed electronically. Digital libraries differ from traditional libraries in that they exist in the "cyber world" of computers and the Internet rather than in the "brick and mortar world" of physical buildings. Digital libraries can store any type of information resource (often referred to as documents or objects) as long as the resource can be represented electronically. Examples include hypertexts, archival images, computer simulations, digital video, and, most uniquely, real-time scientific data such as temperature readings from remote meteorological instruments connected to the Internet.

The digitization of resources enables easy and rapid access to, as well as manipulation of, digital library content. The content of a digital library object (such as a hypertext of George Orwell's novel, 1984) includes both the data inherent in the nature of the object (for example, the text of 1984) and metadata that describe various aspects of the data (such as creator, owner, reproduction rights, and version). Both data and metadata may also include links or relationships to other data or metadata that may be internal or external to any specific digital library (for instance, the text of 1984 might include links to comments by readers derived from a literary listserv or study notes provided by teachers using the novel in their classes).

The concepts of organization and selection separate digital libraries from the Internet as a whole. Whereas information on the Internet is chaotic and expanding faster than either humans or existing technologies can trace accurately, the information in a digital library has been organized in some manner to provide the resource collection, cataloging, and service functions of a traditional library. In addition, the resources in digital libraries have gone through some sort of formal selection process based on clear criteria, such as including only resources that come from original materials or authoritative sources. Digital libraries are thus an effort to address the problem of information overload often associated with the Internet.

Origins

Although the concept of digital libraries has been traced back to nineteenth-century scientific fiction writers such as H. G. Wells, most library historians credit Vannevar Bush's description of the memex in the July 1945 edition of Atlantic Monthly as the original source. Despite being limited to analog technologies such as microfilm that seem crude in the early twenty-first century, Bush anticipated several key features of digital libraries, including rapid and accurate access to scientific and cultural information.

Contemporary conceptions of digital libraries developed in tandem with the rapid growth of the Internet and especially the widespread, flexible access to digital information afforded by the development of World Wide Web browsers in the early 1990s. For example, in the United States, Phase One of the Digital Libraries Initiative was launched in 1993 when the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provided six universities with nearly $25 million to develop digital library test-beds. Another pioneer digital library effort was the U.S. Library of Congress's American Memory project. This groundbreaking digital collection of historical artifacts was first made available on interactive videodiscs, later on CD-ROMs, and most recently via the Internet. Related digital library projects have been underway in Europe, Canada, and elsewhere since the mid-1990s.

In 1998 Phase Two of the Digital Libraries Initiative (DLI2) was launched with funding from NSF, DARPA, NASA, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The seemingly strange bedfellows supporting DLI2 suggests some of the ethical issues surrounding digital libraries. These include privacy (who can find out about the resources someone has accessed via digital libraries?), security (who decides what information should or should not be freely accessible?), intellectual property (who owns what information?), hegemony (who controls the access to information?), and globalization (who assures that cultural identity is not weakened or even destroyed by digital libraries?).

Challenges: Technical and Ethical

The technical challenges confronting librarians, computer scientists, cognitive psychologists, and others working on the frontiers of digital libraries are formidable. These include interoperability (what protocols and standards are needed to ensure that distributed digital libraries will provide widespread interconnected access?), access (what types of user interfaces are most effective in providing easy access to diverse communities of users seeking information for different reasons?), preservation (what technologies are needed to assure the long-term survival of digital information resources?), and sustainability (what financial resources are needed to support the maintenance of digital libraries, and how can they be procured?).

In a manner similar to the science of genetics and the Human Genome Project, ethical debates about the ultimate status and value of information science and digital libraries may be even more complex than the technological challenges. It is inevitable that much information will be primarily available through digital technologies in the foreseeable future, a result that leads to complex social and ethical questions that must be addressed. How can traditional library values such as providing all people with free access to high-quality information be upheld when large corporations increasingly seek to profit by selling the information they control? Will the "digital divide" (that is, the unequal access to information technologies currently inherent in the growth of the Internet, which is largely controlled by Western powers such as the United States and the European Union) be decreased or increased by the development of digital libraries? How can the validity of information resources be established when increasingly sophisticated technologies threaten fundamental concepts such as authorship and copyright? How can digital libraries be designed to improve education at all levels?

In his 2000 book Digital Libraries, William Y. Arms concludes that "a dream of future libraries combines everything that we most prize about traditional methods with the best that online information can offer. In some nightmares, the worst aspects of each are combined" (p. 272). Although the future of digital libraries is unclear, digital libraries will nevertheless influence the future.

THOMAS C. REEVES

SEE ALSO Education;Hypertext;Information.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arms, William Y. (2000). Digital Libraries. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. This volume remains the definitive description of digital library concepts and structures.

Bush, Vannevar. (1945). "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly 176(1): 101–108. This article has influenced several generations of the designers of hypertext, hypermedia, and digital libraries.

INTERNET RESOURCES

Arms, William Y. Digital Libraries. Available from http://www.cs.cornell.edu/wya/.

Bush, Vannevar. (1945). "As We May Think." Atlantic Monthly 176(1): 101–108. Available from http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm.

"Digital Libraries Initiative Phase Two." National Science Foundation. Available from http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/.

U.S. Library of Congress. "American Memory: Historical Collections for the National Digital Library." Available from http://memory.loc.gov/.