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Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

This paper describes several incunabular assumptions that impose upon early digital libraries the limitations drawn from print, and argues for a design strategy aimed at providing customization and personalization services that go beyond the limiting models of print distribution, based on services and experiments developed for the Greco-Roman collections in the Perseus Digital Library. Three features fundamentally characterize a successful digital library design: finer granularity of collection objects, automated processes, and decentralized community contributions.

2001

Naturally, digital library systems focus principally on the reader: the consumer of the material that constitutes the library. In contrast, this paper describes an interface that makes it easy for people to build their own library collections. Collections may be built and served locally from the user's own web server, or (given appropriate permissions) remotely on a shared digital library host. End users can easily build new collections styled after existing ones from material on the Web or from their local files-or both, and collections can be updated and new ones brought on-line at any time. The interface, which is intended for non-professional end users, is modeled after widely used commercial software installation packages. Lest one quail at the prospect of end users building their own collections on a shared system, we also describe an interface for the administrative user who is responsible for maintaining a digital library installation.

Proceedings of the 5th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries - JCDL '05, 2005

This paper introduces a new framework for building digital library collections and contrasts it with existing systems. It describes a radical new step in the development of a widely-used open-source digital library system, Greenstone, which has evolved over many years. It is supported by a fresh implementation, which forced us to rethink the entire design rather than making incremental improvements. The redesign capitalizes on the best ideas from the existing system, which have been refined and developed to open new avenues through which users can tailor their collections. We demonstrate its flexibility by showing how digital library collections can be extended and altered to satisfy new requirements.

International Journal of Digital Libraries

This paper describes the Perseus Digital Library as, in part, a response to limitations of what is now a print culture that is rapidly receding from contemporary consciousness and, at the same time, as an attempt to fashion an infrastructure for the study of the past that can support a shared cultural heritage that extends beyond Europe and is global in scope. But if Greco-Roman culture cannot by itself represent the background of an international 21st century culture, this field, at the same time, offers challenges in its scale and complexity that allow us to explore the possibility of digital libraries. Greco-Roman studies is in a position to begin creating a completely transparent intellectual ecosystem, with a critical mass of its primary data available under an open license and with new forms of reading support that make sources in ancient and modern languages accessible to a global audience. In this model, traditional libraries play the role of archives: physically constrained spaces to which a handful of specialists can have access. If non-specialists draw problematic conclusions because the underlying sources are not publicly available and as well documented as possible, the responsibility lies with the specialists who have not yet created the open, digital libraries upon which the intellectual life of humanity must depend. Greco-Roman Studies can play a major role in modeling such libraries. Perseus seeks to contribute to that transformation.

Rapid development of information communication technologies (ICTs) has made an environment globally to the growth of digital libraries. Digital libraries (DL) are facilitating researchers, scholars, learners, information professionals to access their information in variety of formats and learning support at their desktops without any geographical barrier. They are providing electronic based (e-based) information delivery to its users crossing the boundaries of time, space and location. DL users can be reached remotest corners of the world to fill their thrust of information. It makes a gateway to the users for retrieving and browsing of desired information from its huge resources like one stop shopping of big shopping mall. It provides extra services of 24X7 hour uninterrupted access through Internet to the users at their desktop. . It supports teaching, learning and research while reaching unreachable without walls. Greater revolution has occurred in the libraries recent past converting paper-based libraries to electronic based ones. With the emergence of WWW and availability of national and global networks, libraries have turned their attention to digital collections rather than building printed-based collection. In this way, librarian's role dramatically changed and is responsible for what digital repositories available for their users and how users can access to the available information within the physical walls of the library or elsewhere.

In 2008 BCU Cluj started digitizing its special collections and periodical materials with basic tools and methodology. Since the early period the digitization laboratory grew and gained valuable experiences. It developed a workflow that enables us to manage and track every step of the digitization. DSpace software was implemented to help manage library collections and to enable us a possible connection to the Europeana digital library. The challenges and the solutions of the implementation of this open source software are described here. The paper also discusses the possibilities that the institutions with digital collection can have in providing access to the electronic materials as a new library service.

1999

This paper briefly describes both organizational and technical issues and approaches involved in creating an operational digital library at the University of Crete, found at . We investigate and describe our approaches and experiences, the last few years, on setting in operation a Digital Library with many collections. We had to analyze the library goals and user needs, to select appropriate software, to make flexible design for the additional functionality needed, to adapt and extend the selected software to make it applicable to the current demands, to install and configure the software, to improve it using feedback, and to interact with document authors and librarians to make the digital library friendly, usable and easily maintainable, and even to collect and digitize the library material. The final system is operated by current library personnel. The main technical issues are related to the design, implementation and application of features of digital libraries, such as multilingual storage and interface, generalization of the software to permit searching on heterogeneous collections, adding support for the Z39.50 protocol and tools that simplify the configuration, administration and data insertion to the digital library, as well as tools to input or modify the metadata and to upload data, when submitting new documents in the digital library.

1998

The library traditionally has performed a role within the information chain, where publishers and libraries act as clearing houses between authors and users. In this model various institutional parties perform specialized functions. Publishers are especially oriented towards authors, for whom they perform, in the case of science, a dissemination role, manage quality control, produce the ‘canonical archive’ (i.e. the global archive of scientific knowledge) and offer authors recognition through publication of their ideas and findings (Rowland 1997). Libraries are especially oriented towards the end user, for whom they provide selective filtering of information, storage of information resources, a variety of services (such as cataloguing and indexing, document delivery etc.) and support. The interrelationships between authors, publishers, libraries and users (including other parties as well, such as bookshops and subscription agents) have resulted in a highly efficient logistical syste...

Presentation d iscusses the designing o f Digital li brary as par the user expectations. Presentation discusses issues like Query formation, Document Matching, Ranking of search results and presentability.

Journal of Information Science, 2000

Recent proliferation of research in digital libraries has given rise to a number of working digital libraries around the world. These digital libraries have been defined, designed and developed differently, and therefore the experience that one might have from one particular digital library might not be the same with other digital libraries. Current status of twenty digital libraries around the world: twelve from the US, three from the UK, two from Australia, one from New Zealand, one from Singapore, and one from Canada, has been reviewed. Various features of these selected digital libraries were collected from their home pages, journal articles and the information published on the Web. The parameters used to study the chosen digital libraries include: contents, type of library, organization, user interface, access, information retrieval, search features, output format, and links to other Internet resources. While some of the chosen digital libraries cater for specific subject or document format, others play the role of digital as well as virtual libraries giving access to the local digital collection as well as remote collections accessible through the Web. While most of these digital libraries have been developed for use in-house or by authorised users, some digital libraries are globally accessible. The chosen digital libraries differ in terms of the information search and output facilities, and very few have the facility to store search histories. Only four digital libraries have books in electronic form -National library of Canada in general area, Gutenberg in subject-specific area, and SETIS and Carnegie Mellon University in special collection area.