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Foundation of Library and Information Science

Notes scientists who participated in these projects, many of whom had considerable experience with
library automation and information retrieval long before there was an Internet.
There is little discussion and less agreement in the literature about what constitutes a digital
library. Especially thoughtful treatments of this subject are by Miksa and Doty (1994) and Levy
and Marshall (1994). One may insist on a relatively narrow definition based explicitly on the
properties of the traditional print library or consider a continuum of broader possibilities. The
most inclusive view takes a digital library to be, as its starting point, essentially what the
Internet is today. But from this extreme perspective the metaphor of the traditional library fails
in several respects.

10.1.1 Characteristics of a Digital Library

Cleveland (1998) describes some characteristics of digital libraries that have been gleaned from
various discussions about digital libraries (DLs), both online and in print:
DLs are the digital face of traditional libraries that include both digital collections and
traditional, fixed media collections. So they encompass both electronic and paper materials.
DLs will also include digital materials that exist outside the physical and administrative
bounds of any one digital library.
DLs will include all the processes and services that are the backbone and nervous system
of libraries. However, such traditional processes, though forming the basis digital library
work, will have to be revised and enhanced to accommodate the differences between new
digital media and traditional fixed media.

DLs ideally provide a coherent view of all of the information contained within a library,
no matter its form or format.
DLs will serve particular communities or constituencies, as traditional libraries do now,
though those communities may be widely dispersed throughout the network.
DLs will require both the skills of librarians and well as those of computer scientists to be
viable.
10.1.2 Properties of a Digital Library

Table 10.1 describes essential properties of a digital library ranging from quite traditional to
extremely broad views. A digital library contains digital representations of the objects found in
it. A quite recent understanding of “digital library” probably also assumes that it will be accessible
via the Internet, though not necessarily to everyone. But the idea of digitization is perhaps the
only characteristic of a digital library on which there is universal agreement.
Beyond the idea of digitization, a digital library is a library. Or is it? What makes a library a
library? Do we really want the digital libraries we are building to be libraries? What are the
essential features of a “library”? The first column of Table 10.1 summarizes essential
characteristics of a traditional library. Each of these properties can be considered from the point
of view of a digital library. The extent to which each property is incorporated defines that digital
library. For example, a digital library may be organized by human specialists (indexed, classified,
catalogued) or it may be entirely unorganized, using free text searching for providing some or
all access to the objects in the library. A digital library also has properties that traditional
libraries do not; these are not discussed here.
The traditional library has a physical location, embodied in its physical building. Most of the
objects in a traditional library are information resources of some kind, depending on the type of
library. In some traditional libraries, recreational materials are also included. The works in the

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