Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives

Citation

Isfandyari‐Moghaddam, A. (2013), "Digital Libraries and Information Access: Research Perspectives", Library Review, Vol. 62 No. 6/7, pp. 445-447. https://doi.org/10.1108/LR-02-2013-0016

One of the main global challenges in the third millennium is to build a society where everyone can access and share information (Aqili and Isfandyari‐Moghaddam, 2008). Fired and fueled by the engine of new information and communication technologies, the diffusion of digital phenomena including digital libraries which are created to facilitate access to digital information can be considered as a stride towards alleviating the challenge of information access. This view is reinforced by Chowdhury and Foo who say that “information access is the raison d'être of any digital library” (p. 6). Due to such a philosophy, the digital library is treated as a hot topic and an exciting area for research (Isfandyari‐Moghaddam and Bayat, 2008, p. 844), but due to its novelty, and explosive as well as phenomenal growth (i.e. the diversity of the field and the extensiveness of research in it), the editors highlight that it is not always easy to provide a comprehensive view of the entire spectrum of digital library research in one book.

Therefore, since information search and access are at the heart of digital library research and development activities (p. 5), the present collected book aims to cover research and development in different areas related to information access in digital libraries. This 15‐chapter volume is the fruit of a team of 19 contributors who are well‐informed in the digital library domain. After a foreword written by Christine L. Borgman, Chapter 1 deals theoretically with the concept of the digital library and provides an overview of research in digital libraries. Since accessing the information included and stored in any digital library depends particularly upon its design and architecture, Chapter 2 examines the design and architecture of digital libraries in theory and practice. Chapter 3 emphasizes the role that metadata‐enhanced user interfaces can play in improving the process of searching and accessing needed information. Hence, it revolves around the importance of metadata, with a special reference to the user interface of digital libraries. Chapter 4 studies factors affecting the information access in six digital libraries, such as content, retrieval features, interface and access features, and user issues.

Chapter 5 concerns a synergetic view regarding information retrieval through digital libraries. It expands on the idea of collaborative search and retrieval from information seeking, querying, filtering to tagging which altogetherly affect the final product of such a process, namely: access. Picking up on points raised by Kalantzis‐Kalantzis‐Cope and Gherab‐Martin (2011) in Emerging Digital Spaces in Contemporary Society: Properties of Technology who draw attention to various cultural, economic, political as well as social outcomes affected by the features and properties of digital technologies in contemporary society, Chapter 6 focuses on the social element of digital libraries, influenced by Web 2.0 in the context of its impacts on information access in such libraries.

From the information economics perspective, information value increases the more it is used, and this rule holds true regarding digital libraries (Isfandyari‐Moghaddam and Bayat (2008). Chapter 7 therefore takes an etiological approach to the factors negatively inhibiting and positively affecting access to and use of digital libraries. In line with human information retrieval (Warner, 2010) that seeks to facilitate the improvement of the interactive quality of any information retrieval system (including digital libraries), Chapter 8 reviews studies of the interactions between users and digital libraries, and explores the applicability of existing models of information behaviour to the digital library sphere. Because of the dynamism in the world of scholarly information, the appearance of many technological advancements and new phenomena is predictable. Therefore, Chapters 9‐11 deal with some issues which directly or indirectly affect information access through digital libraries. These include electronic publishing, new methods of technology‐driven learning, open access and institutional repositories, and the iSTEM Project which aims to determine the semantic relationships between subject categories of different repositories through several text classification models and to develop operations and processes for integration based on the identified subject category relationships from the different repositories.

A complementary element for accessing information in digital libraries is usability, which is debated in Chapter 12. Chapter 13 bridges one of the main gaps existing in the digital library literature from the intellectual property and copyright perspective. Last but not least, “digital preservation” is examined in Chapter 14. As a concluding discussion, in Chapter 15 the editors summarize recent research and trends concerning, as well as influencing, access and interactions in digital libraries.

To sum up, this volume demonstrates the current situation and orientation of research topics and priorities in digital libraries with an emphasis on information access by users and interaction between them and these libraries. It would, I believe, have benefitted from a discussion relating to education for digital libraries. Education for both users and staff contributes to better interaction with digital libraries and easier access to their content. Moreover, the chapters could have been categorised and clustered into foundational sections (e.g. concepts and theories, case studies, etc.) as this would have given the reader a better understanding of the topic. This collection of works that offers us a multidimensional outlook on information access in digital libraries should be appreciated by a variety of audiences including policy makers, technology‐minded managers and staff, and particularly library and information science students, professors and researchers.