The Whole Digital Library Handbook

the whole

e d i t e d b y d i a n e k r e s h

digital

library

handbook

CONTENTS i

THE WHOLE

DIGITAL

LIBRARY

HANDBOOK

Edited by Diane Kresh

for the Council on Library and Information Resources

American Library Association

Chicago 2007

While extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of information

appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied,

on the accuracy or reliability of the information, and does not assume and

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errors or omissions in this publication.

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Copyright © 2007 by the American Library Association. All rights reserved

except those which may be granted by Sections 107 and 108

of the Copyright Revision Act of 1976.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify the Wikipedia articles

excerpted on pages 2–3 and 241 under the terms of the GNU Free Documenta￾tion License, Version 1.2, or any later version published by the Free Software

Foundation (see www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html).

Illustrations from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division and

American Memory Project are reprinted with permission; they are identified in

the text by their LC catalog number.

ISBN-10: 0-8389-0926-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-0926-3

Printed in the United States of America.

11 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The whole digital library handbook / edited by Diane Kresh for the Council on

Library and Information Resources.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-8389-0926-4 (alk. paper)

1. Digital libraries—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Kresh, Diane.

II. Council on Library and Information Resources.

ZA4080.W48 2007

025.00285—dc22

2006027498

CONTENTS

Preface ..................................................................................... ix

1 DEFINITIONS

A Digital Library Is . . . ....................................................................... 2

The Invisible Library

Christine Borgman ..................................................................................... 4

What Are Digital Libraries?

Donald J. Waters........................................................................................ 5

What Is Digital Information?

Abby Smith ................................................................................................. 8

Back to the Future

Richard De Gennaro .................................................................................. 9

The New Cybrarians

Joseph Janes ............................................................................................. 15

Libraries as Places to Linger and Mingle

Alex Wright............................................................................................... 17

Research Libraries Ponder: What’s Next?

Deanna B. Marcum .................................................................................. 18

The Digital Library Federation: Membership Has

Its Privileges................................................................................. 24

What Becomes a Leader Most?

Karin Wittenborg ..................................................................................... 27

Which Came First?

Lorrie Lejeune .......................................................................................... 33

Reference in the Digital Age

Anne G. Lipow ......................................................................................... 38

Primary Resources at Your Fingertips

Roy Rosenzweig........................................................................................ 43

Shelve under E

Scott Carlson ............................................................................................ 48

Value Propositions

Chris D. Ferguson and Charles A. Bunge ................................................ 51

Glossary of Terms

California Digital Library ...................................................................... 56

2 USERS

Growing Up Digital

John Seely Brown ..................................................................................... 68

Nothing but Net

Diana Oblinger and James Oblinger ........................................................ 71

Chips and Dips: Educating and Serving the Net Generation

Stephen Abram and Judy Luther............................................................. 76

Net Gains

Steve Jones................................................................................................ 83

Emerging Roles

Gary Marchionini and Hermann Maurer ............................................... 86

iv THE WHOLE DIGITAL LIBRARY HANDBOOK

Origin of the Species

Daniel Greenstein and Suzanne Thorin ................................................... 90

Diffuse Libraries

Wendy Pradt Lougee ................................................................................ 92

Digital Collections, Digital Libraries, and the Digitization

of Cultural Heritage Information

Clifford Lynch .......................................................................................... 96

Intermediate Consumers

Lorcan Dempsey ....................................................................................... 98

Advanced Photo Shop

Scott Carlson .......................................................................................... 100

Cautionary Tales: Part One

Paul B. Gandel ....................................................................................... 103

Cautionary Tales: Part Two

Geoffrey Nunberg ................................................................................... 106

Strength in Numbers

William Y. Arms ..................................................................................... 108

Who Uses What?

Amy Friedlander .................................................................................... 111

Turn On before Using

Scott Carlson .......................................................................................... 113

The Tipping Point

Jerry D. Campbell .................................................................................. 114

The Case against Information Literacy

Stanley Wilder ........................................................................................ 117

How They View Us: Perceptions of Libraries and

Information Resources............................................................... 120

3 THE LANDSCAPE

The Public Trust

Robert Putnam ....................................................................................... 124

Wagging the Tail

Chris Anderson ....................................................................................... 128

Libraries by the Tail

Tom Storey ............................................................................................. 139

Phoning Home Alone

Christine Rosen ....................................................................................... 142

Keystone Cops

Bonnie Nardi .......................................................................................... 145

Our Computers, Ourselves

Sherry Turkle ......................................................................................... 150

Managing the Internet

Marylaine Block ..................................................................................... 155

Growing Pains

Sharon Gray Weiner .............................................................................. 161

Net Generation Students and Libraries

Joan K. Lippincott ................................................................................. 166

Viewing Patterns

Online Computer Library Center .......................................................... 171

“Is What’s Past, Prologue?”

Donald Hawkins .................................................................................... 176

CONTENTS v

Net Effects

Greg Notess ............................................................................................. 178

Famine or Feast?

Paul B. Gandel and Richard N. Katz ................................................... 182

From a Distance

Ron Chepesiuk ........................................................................................ 187

Law Review

Jennifer Burek Pierce ............................................................................. 191

4 THE MARKET

What We Know Will Hurt Us

Joseph Janes ........................................................................................... 198

Internet Searching Gets Thumbs Up

Deborah Fallows..................................................................................... 199

Et Tu, Yahoo!?

George Plosker ........................................................................................ 201

Fear No Evil

Gary Price .............................................................................................. 206

Scanning the Horizon

Gordon Flagg ......................................................................................... 206

As Google Goes . . .

Gordon Flagg ......................................................................................... 208

Google, the Khmer Rouge, and the Public Good

Mary Sue Coleman ................................................................................. 209

Scribes of the Digital Era

Jeffrey R. Young ..................................................................................... 218

Apples and Oranges

Anne R. Kenney, Nancy Y. McGovern, Ida T. Martinez,

and Lance J. Heidig ............................................................................... 222

Web Value

Greg Notess............................................................................................. 225

5 TOOLS

The User Is Not Broken: A Meme Masquerading

as a Manifesto

Karen G. Schneider ................................................................................ 232

Invasion of the Pod People

Christine Rosen ....................................................................................... 233

Striking a Balance

Marshall Breeding.................................................................................. 235

Getting the Goods

Buff Hirko .............................................................................................. 238

Where’s Wiki???............................................................................... 241

Sticky Wikis

Paula Berinstein ..................................................................................... 242

Playing Well with Others

Kim Guenther ......................................................................................... 249

Caught in the Webbing

Marshall Breeding.................................................................................. 251

Defining Findability

Peter Morville ........................................................................................ 255

vi THE WHOLE DIGITAL LIBRARY HANDBOOK

Internet Libraries ........................................................................... 259

Ten Tips for a Better Blog

Rebecca Blood ......................................................................................... 262

Blog Beginnings

Rebecca Blood ......................................................................................... 264

The Blog Files

Lee Rainie............................................................................................... 267

Coming Soon: Doing Research with Your Cell Phone

Scott Carlson .......................................................................................... 269

Digital Library Services for All

Lori Bell and Tom Peters ....................................................................... 271

The Future of e-Books

Lynn Silipigni Connaway ....................................................................... 276

iPods Add Wow Factor

Michael Stephens .................................................................................... 281

More on Pod People

Sheri Crofts, Jon Dilley, Mark Fox, Andrew Retsema,

and Bob Williams ................................................................................... 285

Wireless Libraries and Wireless Communities: Why?

Stephen Abram ....................................................................................... 289

IM the Walrus

Aaron Schmidt and Michael Stephens ................................................... 294

6 OPERATIONS

I Am the Very Model of Computerized Librarian

Diane M. O’Keefe and Janet T. O’Keefe................................................. 300

Starting Out

Abby Smith ............................................................................................. 301

Principles for Good Digital Collections

Timothy W. Cole ..................................................................................... 302

Just Say the Word

Karen Coyle ............................................................................................ 305

Starting a Digitization Project

Collaborative Digitization Program...................................................... 309

Technical Infrastructure/Image Creation

Department of Preservation and Conservation,

Cornell University Library .................................................................... 313

Factors to Consider When Choosing Digital Formats

Caroline Arms and Carl Fleischhauer ................................................... 314

Digitization = Access

Abby Smith ............................................................................................. 318

Going Where the Users Are

Jeffrey Penka .......................................................................................... 321

Chatting It Up

Buff Hirko .............................................................................................. 326

Making Chat Work Better

Steve Coffman and Linda Arret ............................................................ 328

Copyright Need-to-Know Basics

June Besek ............................................................................................... 330

CONTENTS vii

Copyright Term and the Public Domain

in the United States

Peter B. Hirtle........................................................................................ 336

Why Librarians Care about Copyright

Carol Henderson .................................................................................... 340

7 PRESERVATION

Digitization Is Not Preservation—at Least Not Yet

Abby Smith ............................................................................................. 342

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Digital Preservation

Brian Lavoie and Lorcan Dempsey....................................................... 345

Strategies for Preserving Digital Content

Abby Smith ............................................................................................. 358

The Key to LOCKSS: An Interview with Victoria Reich,

Director, LOCKSS Program

Cris Ferguson .......................................................................................... 363

8 THE FUTURE

Reinventing the Library

Geoffrey Freeman ................................................................................... 370

The Third Law

Michèle V. Cloonan and John G. Dove ................................................... 374

Keeping It Open

Nancy Kranich ........................................................................................ 378

A Modest Proposal

Roy Tennant ............................................................................................ 387

Looking for Bucks

Bill Becker .............................................................................................. 392

Getting the Right Stuff

Jill Ann Hurst ........................................................................................ 397

Tips for Managing E-Resources

Marilyn Geller ........................................................................................ 402

Index ................................................................................................... 409 x

PREFACE

From dots per inch to dot-coms . . .

building the digital library

Information is being produced in greater quantities and with greater frequency

than at any time in history. The ease with which electronic information can be

created and published makes much of what is available today gone tomorrow.

Digital is now often the first choice for creating, distributing, and storing con￾tent, from text to motion pictures to recorded sound. As a result, digital con￾tent embodies more and more of the world’s intellectual, social, and cultural

history, and the preservation of such content has become a major challenge for

society.

Libraries collect and preserve books and other materials for future genera￾tions to ensure that every citizen has equal access to information. With the

advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, libraries can extend their

reach, unbound by time or place. The Internet has made shared knowledge

and technical collaborations across national boundaries a viable endeavor. This

is a defining moment for libraries. Universal connectivity, once the stuff of

science fiction and Dick Tracy comics (remember the two-way wrist radio?),

is at our fingertips, and what we do with this capability will be our legacy.

Technological innovation and the ubiquity of communication tools, eco￾nomic uncertainty, changes in workplace and educational structures, the glo￾bal economy, generational differences, the blurred distinction between the

production and consumption of information, and heightened national secu￾rity are just some of the factors affecting the creation of digital library pro￾grams. In addition, there is an almost insatiable demand for content to meet

the needs of the more than 6 billion Internet users worldwide. And libraries

no longer have the market cornered on information services. Studies have shown

that today’s students turn first to the Internet and that many library patrons

are willing to settle for less, favoring convenience over comprehensiveness.

The proliferation of “born digital” web content, the expansion of wireless

technology, the explosion of e-commerce and other e-services, and the addi￾tion of new players in the marketplace (search engines, content providers)

argue for dynamic digital library programs that will

1. Employ technologies that make library collections and resources more

widely accessible to patrons around the world and, in so doing, shrink

the digital divide

2. Collect, create, and disseminate significant publications in electronic

formats so library and research collections continue to be universal and

comprehensive

3. Build collaborations with both national and international institutions to

create shared assets enabling libraries to store, preserve, provide access

to, and expand their resources

4. Create a culture of technical and strategic innovation so libraries can

fulfill both traditional and new initiatives—a digital library’s potential

is limited only by the imagination of its creators

5. Reinvent libraries and move toward flexible, responsive, user-centered

institutions

x THE WHOLE DIGITAL LIBRARY HANDBOOK

Digital libraries are still evolving. Since the days of early experimentation

with projects like Carnegie Mellon’s Mercury Electronic Library and CORE—

a joint venture with Bellcore, Cornell University, OCLC, and the American

Chemical Society—there are now many models to choose from and many sto￾ries to tell. The articles included here are intended to give practitioners a

taste of what’s available in the professional literature on a wide range of issues

affecting the creation and sustainability of digital libraries. As with the Whole

Library Handbook series, the articles included here have been excerpted; they

are available in their entirety elsewhere, both on the Web and in hard copy.

The Whole Digital Library Handbook is intended to be a guide, not a bible.

And because it is impossible to separate the creation of digital libraries from

the times in which we live, we have included many pieces authored by folks

outside of librarianship, for example, experts and commentators on the im￾pact technology has had on our lives and the implications for service profes￾sions like librarianship. If we have done our work well, the material presented

should raise more questions than it provides answers, engender further in￾quiry and discussion, suggest opportunities to form new networks and asso￾ciations, give some early adopters their due, and generate excitement about

experimenting, innovating, and collaborating.

No project as broad in scope as this one could have been accomplished by

one person alone. I am gratefully indebted to several organizations and indi￾viduals for their invaluable contributions to this first effort. Some who made a

special effort to provide support, research assistance, suggestions for content,

and the like include Nancy Davenport, former president of the Council on

Library and Information Resources (CLIR), who considered me for this project

and brought me to the attention of ALA; the staff of CLIR and especially

Kathlin Smith, whose even hand and discriminating editorial skills have en￾abled CLIR to create a body of professional literature of staggering propor￾tions; George M. Eberhart, editor of the Whole Library Handbook, whose wise

and good-humored counsel saw me through to the end; David F. Kohl, who

helped untangle some bureaucratic entanglements; Laura Gottesman, Deborah

Thomas, Cassy Ammen, and Abbie Grotke, former colleagues of mine at the

Library of Congress whose collective knowledge of digital library programs

was essential to me in defining the scope of this book; Christie Hartmann,

future librarian, whose editorial assistance and expert knowledge of Microsoft

Word carried the day; and Cynthia Fostle, whose careful copy editing greatly

improved the book. Several journals and publications were extremely gener￾ous in allowing excerpting of many articles: Dick Kaser and the staff of Infor￾mation Today Inc., Dana Sobyra and the staff of The Chronicle of Higher Educa￾tion; Gary Ink and the staff of Library Journal; Adam Keiper, managing editor of

The New Atlantis; and Nancy Hays and Teddy Diggs and the staff of Educause.

And finally, my two Millennials, sons Matthew and Nathaniel, who know more

about digital technology than I ever will.

Diane Kresh

Arlington, Virginia

March 2007

DEFINITIONS 1

D 1 EFINITIONS

CHAPTER 1

“Consider a future device for individual use, which is a

sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a

name, and, to coin one at random, ‘memex’ will do.

A memex is a device in which an individual stores all

his books, records, and communications, and which is

mechanized so that it may be consulted with

exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged

intimate supplement to his memory.

“It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably

be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of

furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting

translucent screens, on which material can be

projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard,

and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like

an ordinary desk.”

—Vannevar Bush, “As We May Think”

(Atlantic Monthly, July 1945)

2 THE WHOLE DIGITAL LIBRARY HANDBOOK

A digital library is . . .

A LIBRAR A LIBRARA LIBRARY IN WHICH a Y IN WHICH significant proportion of the resources are avail￾able in machine-readable format (as opposed to print or microform), acces￾sible by means of computers. The digital content may be locally held or ac￾cessed remotely via computer networks. In libraries, the process of digitization

began with the catalog, moved to periodical indexes and abstracting services,

then to periodicals and large reference works, and finally to book publishing.

Some of the largest and most successful digital libraries are Project Gutenberg,

ibiblio, and the Internet Archive.

Advantages Advantages

While traditional libraries are limited by storage space, digital libraries have

the potential to store much more information simply because digital informa￾tion requires very little physical space to contain it. As such, the cost of main￾taining a digital library is much lower than that of a traditional library. A tradi￾tional library must spend large sums of money paying for staff, book

maintenance, rent, and additional books. Digital libraries do away with these

fees.

Digital libraries can immediately adopt innovations in technology provid￾ing users with improvements in electronic and audio book technology as well

as presenting new forms of communication such as wikis and blogs.

• No physical boundary. No physical boundary The user of a digital library need not go to the

library physically.

• Round-the-clock availability. A ound-the-clock availability major advantage of digital libraries is

that people from all over the world can gain access to the information at

any time, as long as an Internet connection is available.

• Multiple accesses. Multiple accesses The same resources can be used at the same time

by a number of users.

• Structured approach. A Structured approach digital library provides access to much richer

content in a more structured manner, that is, we can easily move from the

catalog to the particular book, then to a particular chapter, and so on.

• Information retrieval Information retrieval. Information retrieval There is flexibility in the use of search terms,

that is, key words. A digital library can provide very user-friendly inter￾faces, giving clickable access to its resources.

• Preservation and conservation. An e reservation and conservation xact copy of the original can be

made any number of times without any degradation in quality.

• Space.When the library has no space for extension, digitization is the

only solution.

• Networking. A Networking particular digital library can provide the link to any other

resources of other digital libraries very easily; thus a seamlessly inte￾grated resource sharing can be achieved.

• Cost. In Cost theory, the cost of maintaining a digital library is lower than

that of a traditional library. A traditional library must spend large sums

of money paying for staff, book maintenance, rent, and additional books.

Although digital libraries do away with these fees, it has since been found

that digital libraries can be no less expensive in their own way to oper￾ate. Digital libraries can and do incur large costs for the conversion of

DEFINITIONS 3

1

print materials into digital format, for the technical skills of staff, and

for the costs of maintaining online access (i.e., servers, bandwidth costs,

etc.). Also, the information in a digital library must often be migrated

every few years to the latest digital media. This process can incur very

large costs in hardware and skilled personnel.

Disadvantages Disadvantages

Some people have criticized that digital libraries are hampered by copyright

law because works cannot be shared over different periods of time in the man￾ner of a traditional library. The content is, in many cases, public domain or

self-generated only. Some digital libraries, such as Project Gutenberg, work to

digitize out-of-copyright

works and make them freely

available to the public.

Digital libraries cannot

reproduce the environment

of a traditional library.

Many people also find

reading printed material to

be easier than reading

material on a computer

screen, although this

depends heavily on presen￾tation as well as personal

preferences. Also, due to

technological develop￾ments, a digital library can see some of its content become out-of-date and

its data may become inaccessible.

Academic repositories Academic repositories

Many academic libraries are actively involved in building repositories of their

institution’s books, papers, theses, and other works which can be digitized.

Many of these repositories are made available to the academic community

or the general public. Institutional repositories are often referred to as

digital libraries.

The future The futureThe future

Large-scale digitization projects are under way at Google, the Million Book

Project, MSN, and Yahoo! With continued improvements in book handling

and presentation technologies such as optical character recognition and e-books,

and many alternative depositories and business models, digital libraries are

rapidly growing in popularity, as demonstrated by the efforts of Google, Yahoo!

and MSN. And, just as libraries have ventured into audio and video collec￾tions, so have digital libraries such as the Internet Archive.

SOURCE: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library (accessed

March 26, 2006).

Project Gutenburg

4 THE WHOLE DIGITAL LIBRARY HANDBOOK

The invisible library

by Christine Borgman

DIGITAL LIBRARIES AL LIBRARIES are sets of electronic resources and associated tech￾nical capabilities for creating, searching, and using information. In this sense

they are an extension and enhancement of information storage and retrieval

systems that manipulate digital data in any medium (text, images, sounds;

static or dynamic images) and exist in distributed networks. The content of

digital libraries includes data, metadata that describe various aspects of the

data (e.g., representation, creator, owner, reproduction rights), and metadata

that consist of links or relationships to other data or metadata, whether inter￾nal or external to the digital library.

Digital libraries are constructed—collected and organized—by [and for]

a community of users, and their functional capabilities support the infor￾mation needs and uses of that community. They are a component of com￾munities in which individuals and groups interact with each other, using

data, information, and knowledge resources and systems. In this sense they

are an extension, enhancement, and integration of a variety of information

institutions as physical places where resources are selected, collected, or￾ganized, preserved, and accessed in support of a user community. These

information institutions include, among others, libraries, museums, ar￾chives, and schools, but digital libraries also extend and serve other com￾munity settings, including classrooms, offices, laboratories, homes, and

public spaces. Implicit in this definition of digital libraries is a broad

conceptualization of library “collections.”

One theme is that digital libraries encompass the full information life

cycle: capturing information at the time of creation, making it accessible,

maintaining and preserving it in forms useful to the user community, and

sometimes disposing of information. With physical collections, users dis￾cover and retrieve content of interest; their use of that material is indepen￾dent of library systems and services. With digital collections, users may re￾trieve, manipulate, and contribute content. Thus users are dependent upon

the functions and services provided by digital libraries; work practices may

become more tightly coupled to

system capabilities.

A second theme implicit in the

definition of digital libraries is the

expanding scope of content that is

available. Content now readily

available in digital form includes

primary sources such as remote

sensing data, census data, and ar￾chival documents. Use of scientific

data sets is computationally inten￾sive, raising questions about the

role the library should play in pro￾viding access to the resources and

to the tools to use them. Nor are

scientific data the only challenge.

As more archives and special collec￾South Carolina Department of Natural Resources,

Digital Orthophoto Quadrangles

from remote sensing data