Digital Libraries

Citation

Fourie, I. (2010), "Digital Libraries", The Electronic Library, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 760-761. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471011082068

The implementation and maintenance of digital libraries, as well as theoretical reflection on key concepts and issues is of growing importance in the library and information sector. Digital Libraries, capturing contributions from a number of mostly French‐speaking experts in the field under the editorship of Fabrice Papy, is therefore, a timely publication. The intention of the book seems to be to share information on opportunities and challenges faced by digital libraries and the innovative opportunities it may offer for both users and providers.

Apart from the preface, Digital Libraries, consists of 17 chapters covering the following: the role of librarians and information officers in digital libraries, reflection on the possibility of having a digital library without a librarian, the experiences and perspectives of the reader, university students' information strategies, digital libraries and democracy, accessing library catalogues, heuristic visualisation for the OPAC, 3D interaction for digital libraries, using facets to classify and access digital resources, publication of legal documents online, the availability of scholarly and pedagogic material online for use in French universities, the Revel@Nice Project (focusing on online periodicals and journals), evaluation of the use and users of digital journal libraries, the development and continuity of digital collections in libraries, ergonomic standards and the use of digital libraries, the description of a document information system within a university context, and the question of whether libraries have a future in Academia.

The choice of themes is certainly relevant, and of interest to scholars in the field of digital libraries. Owing to the style of writing, I am not quite sure to what extent Digital Libraries will appeal to practitioners in libraries and information services. I am especially concerned about some unusual choice of phrases, and some statements, e.g. “an exogenous catalog” (p. 6) and “a system that works very precisely and only delivers results that are 100 per cent relevant to the user's question requires a professional librarian or information officer. However, general users are therefore unable to use such a system on their own” (p. 4).

Digital Libraries concludes with a brief, but seemingly sufficient index. Although the names of all authors and their institutions are given at the back of the book there is unfortunately nothing on their expertise or any e‐mail contact detail. Although probably acceptable and the results of using reference management software, I am not enthusiastic about the reference technique giving a three letter code and number for every reference, which is then also used in the text. I prefer to see only the author name and date – but this is a personal preference. Some chapters have references, others not.

Digital Libraries should add value to the knowledge base of researchers and scholars in the field. The reader, however, need to be warned that the English at times seems a bit awkward – something which I would expect the publisher to address.