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Unit 10: Classification of Libraries

and there is a conflict of interest between them and publishers who may wish to create online Notes
versions of their acquired content for commercial purposes.
There is a dilution of responsibility that occurs as a result of the spread-out nature of digital resources.
Complex intellectual property matters may become involved since digital material is not always
owned by a library. The content is, in many cases, public domain or self-generated content only.
The Fair Use Provisions (17 USC § 107) under copyright law provide specific guidelines under which
circumstances libraries are allowed to copy digital resources. Four factors that constitute fair use are
purpose of use, nature of the work, market impact, and amount or substantiality used.
Some digital libraries acquire a license to “lend out” their resources. This may involve the restriction
of lending out only one copy at a time for each license, and applying a system of digital rights
management for this purpose.

Metadata Creation
In traditional libraries, the ability to find works of interest was directly related to how well they
were catalogued. While cataloguing electronic works digitized from a library’s existing holding
may be as simple as copying moving a record for the print to the electronic item, with complex and
born-digital works requiring substantially more effort. To handle the growing volume of electronic
publications, new tools and technologies have to be designed to allow effective automated semantic
classification and searching. While full text search can be used for some searches, there are many
common catalog searches which cannot be performed using full text, including:
finding texts which are translations of other texts.
linking texts published under pseudonyms to the real authors (Samuel Clemens and Mark
Twain, for example).
differentiating non-fiction from parody (The Onion from The New York Times, for
example).

10.4 World Wide Web Virtual Library
The World Wide Web Virtual Library was the first index of content on the World Wide Web and
still operates as a directory of e-texts and information sources on the web. It was started by Tim
Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and the World Wide Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva.
Unlike commercial index sites, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages
of key links for particular areas in which they are expert. It is sometimes informally referred to as
the “WWWVL”, the “Virtual Library” or just “the VL”.

Notes World Wide Web virtual library was started by Tim Berners-Lee.
The individual indices or virtual libraries live on hundreds of different servers around the world.
A set of index pages linking these individual libraries is maintained at, in Geneva only a few
kilometers from where the VL began life. A VL specific search engine has operated for some years
and is now (VL search) located on its own server at vlsearch.org.
The central affairs of the Virtual Library are co-ordinated by an elected Council. A central index
(the ‘Catalog’) is maintained and joint services provided by the Council on behalf of the
association.

Notes The Virtual Library was first conceived and run by Tim Berners-Lee, and later expanded,
organized and managed for several years by Arthur Secret, before it became a formally
established association with Gerard Manning as its Council’s first chairman.

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