Digital libraries

Citation

Bawden, D. (2005), "Digital libraries", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 61 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jd.2005.27861dae.001

Digital libraries

Introduction to Digital LibrariesG.G. Chowdhury and S. ChowdhuryFacet PublishingLondon2003359 pp.ISBN 1-85604-465-3

Digital Libraries: Policy, Planning and PracticeEdited by J. Andrews and D. LawGowerAldershot2004263 pp.ISBN 0-7546-3448-5

Digital Library Use: Social Practice in Design and EvaluationEdited by A.P. Bishop, N.A. Van House and B.P. ButtenfieldMIT PressCambridge, MA2004341 pp.ISBN 0-262-02544-2Keywords: Digital libraries, Information science, Electronic information resourcesReview DOI 10.1108/0220410510607543

In these days of information overload and infobesity, it is not unusual to find several competing books on any given topic. It is, perhaps, less usual to find several that complement each other nicely, especially when they arrive, presumably uncoordinated, from different publishers. That is the happy position that we find ourselves in, with this triumvirate of books dealing with the digital library phenomenon. We should pass quickly over the temptation to say that, if the authors truly believed what they were writing, and the publishers what they were publishing, these texts should have appeared as e-books or as web-based texts. There is still a good deal of life in the traditional printed book format, and these are good examples of why it persists.

Chowdhury and Chowdhury is the textbook par excellence. It is clearly and explicitly aimed at students of librarianship and information science, for whom it is intended as a core text. Its 15 chapters cover the whole range of the subject, from definitions, characteristics and examples to trends in research and development, and an outline of some major research projects. All significant topics - the digitisation process, the management of digital collections, access and interfaces, information organisation and retrieval, and so on - get a clear and nicely balanced coverage. The pedagogical mission is helped by an outline at the start of each chapter, and a summary at the end, and there is good selection of references. This will prove to be valuable to students and tutors for several years to come. It is written in such a way, with concentration on basic principles, that it will not date quickly, and the publishers should consider a new edition when needed.

Whereas the Chowdhurys' book was aimed at students, with practitioners a secondary audience, the opposite is true of the volume edited by Andrews and Law. This is aimed as "digital library project staff, institutional administrators, educators and developers of learning technology", with students the secondary audience. Following the editors' introduction, its 13 chapters - each by different authors - provide perspectives on, and experience of, a variety of issues and case studies. The issues include digital preservation policies, the evaluation of digital services, types of service provision, and the impact of open access. Case studies include a retrospective on the eLib project, and practical examples from the Library of Congress, the Universities of Central England and Indiana, and a collaborative digital library serving the city of Glasgow. These are generally well written, and in a fairly consistent style. The book is well produced, though bizarrely the back cover carries a description of a quite different book. This will be a useful source of background material for its intended audience, though it will become outdated faster than the other two books reviewed here.

MIT Press has an excellent reputation for scholarly books in this area, from authors such as William Arms and Christine Borgman. The volume edited by Bishop, Van House and Buttenfield lives up to this tradition, presenting research-based perspectives of digital libraries as socio-technical systems - networks of technology, documents, people and practices. The 11 relatively lengthy contributions in this volume address these issues using a variety of analytical and empirical research approaches, examining either the consequences of this viewpoint for the design and operation of digital libraries, or the way in which issues of work, groups and knowledge - issues of general interest in social science - are highlighted in the digital library context. The chapters are generally clearly well-written - Christine Borgman's contribution on the design of digital libraries for usability being outstanding in this respect - but generally require some background in the subject for full understanding. This is a book for the researcher or reflective practitioner, rather than for the student or impatient administrator, and succeeds well on its own terms.

Three rather different books, then, aimed at different audiences and focusing on different aspects, and in their own way each showing the usefulness of the printed book format; as textbook for sustained study, as a source of examples for selection for practical relevance, and as an in-depth academic resource for researchers. It may not, however, be unreasonable to ask why none of them have an associated web page, for updating, as is increasingly popular with publishers today. Given the topic, this seems an opportunity perversely missed.

David BawdenCity University, London, UK