Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives

Citation

Merčun, T. (2013), "Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 47 No. 2, pp. 209-211. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331311313799

Edited by two renowned authors, Chowdhury and Foo, the latest addition to literature on digital libraries aims to cover research and development, past achievements and future trends, in different areas related to information access in digital libraries. Even though the book limits the scope to a narrower field of access to information within digital libraries, we could not say that it represents a comprehensive overview, but rather a selected set of topics from the field. Four out of 15 chapters (including the introduction and concluding chapter) have been written by the editors themselves, while the remaining eleven chapters have been authored by academics from different continents in order to “provide global coverage in terms of both content and expertise”. The book is enriched with an index and an extensive list of resources for each chapter.

After a brief introduction into the concept of digital library and the contents of the book in chapter 1, the second chapter talks about the general architecture of digital libraries, presenting also some alternative architecture solutions developed for digital library systems in developing, low‐resource countries.

By reviewing features and functions in four user interfaces, chapter 3 looks into the question of how metadata and especially crowdsourced data such as social tags, reviews, recommendations, and ratings provide access and retrieval through user interfaces. In chapter 4, editors discuss various issues related to information access in digital libraries using a selection of six digital libraries as the basis for review. They also indicate some emerging research directions such as social information retrieval, the digital divide, cloud computing, semantic web, and information visualization. The following chapter focuses on collaborative search and retrieval, reviewing literature on collaboration in information seeking, collaborative tagging, filtering, and querying. Also Chapter 6 deals with the topic of social element in digital libraries, describing the impact of Web 2.0 along with its challenges and pitfalls.

Chapter 7 opens up the topic of social inclusion, discussing current barriers and giving some pointers based on how to overcome social exclusion, especially when it comes to building digital libraries for minorities. Chapter 8 gives an overview of current trends in research on the interaction between users and digital libraries, while Chapter 9 touches on the subject of electronic publishing and mobile technology as a means for providing digital information services in libraries.

The topic of open access and institutional repositories in the context of digital libraries is discussed in chapter 10, whereas chapter 11 presents an on‐going project on integrating and expanding taxonomy and subject categories derived from multiple repositories. The next chapter is dedicated to usability issues, especially to different approaches and techniques for conducting usability studies. Chapter 13 addresses the topic of intellectual property and economically sustainable library business models, using Australian Copyright Act as a case study and proposing a copyright registry as a new business model for access to journal materials in libraries.

The last two chapters focus on digital preservation and future research trends. Chapter 14 reviews part efforts in the domain of digital preservation, discusses the main elements that impact the digital preservation today and shows research agendas for the future. In the last chapter, the editors sum up some recent research and trends in different fields (design and architecture, information organization and access, sustainability, cloud computing, socio‐economic and legal issues) and examine their impact on digital libraries.

As Christine Borgman writes in her foreword, chapters range in styles: some describe individual projects and case studies, while others review the literature in a specific area or present the topic in a tutorial manner, some focus on the past, while others look more into the future. Although all aspects are interesting to read, the inconsistency of the chapters and how they approach the topics gives the feeling of a collection of individual papers rather than a comprehensive and coherent text on the topic. Another potential drawback noticed while reading the book was also a strong tendency to present topics through existing digital library projects and systems. While such an approach gives a good and valuable account and overview of current developments, it raises a concern that it may soon be outdated; some projects and systems will probably cease to exist or will evolve into something new and readers who will not be familiar with them might have difficulties following the text.

In terms of content, some critique should be given to chapter 3, where three out of four surveyed systems were actually online library catalogues and not digital library systems, as the authors have called them. With the given definitions of digital libraries in the introduction and all other chapters making a distinction between a digital library and other types of information systems they may be describing, the use of “digital library” term in this chapter creates inconsistency in the book and might cause confusion for a more novice reader in the field.

The publisher promotes the book as a resource for LIS students, academics and researchers interested in digital libraries and access to information, but also as a useful introduction for those developing, managing or just starting out with digital libraries. The assessment is quite to the point. While the book would not do as course material in itself, students, academics and researchers will probably be most interested in reading individual chapters related to their work or field of research as they do provide a good overview of literature and introduction into the selected topic. Also, even though the book is not a how‐to‐do it manual, it would be useful for those just starting out with digital libraries or working on digital library projects, informing them of some important issues to consider in their design and guiding them to further research specific topics. All and all, despite some possible improvements, the book at hand does present a valuable resource on the topic of access in digital libraries and provides the reader with some interesting research perspectives in themes such as the issue of open access in digital libraries, social inclusion/exclusion, user participation, and digital preservation.