Awards for Excellence

Citation

(2007), "Awards for Excellence", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 25 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lht.2007.23825caa.002

Awards for Excellence

Outstanding Paper Award Library Hi Tech

"Digital libraries of the future – and the role of libraries

Donatella CastelliISTI-CNR, Pisa, Italy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce the digital libraries of the future, their enabling technologies and their organisational models.Design/methodology/approach – The paper first discusses the requirements for the digital libraries of the future, then presents the DILIGENT infrastructure as a technological response to these requirements and, finally, it discusses the role that libraries can play in the organisational framework envisioned by DILIGENT.Findings – Digital libraries of the future will give access to a large variety of multimedia and multi-type documents created by integrating content from many different heterogeneous sources that range from repositories of text, images, and audio-video, to scientific data archives, and databases. The digital library will provide a seamless environment where the co-operative access, filtering, manipulation, generation, and preservation of these documents will be supported as a continuous cycle. Users of the library will be both consumers and producers of information, either by themselves or in collaboration with other users. Policy-ensuring mechanisms will guarantee that the information produced is visible only to those who have the appropriate rights to access it. The realisation of these new digital libraries requires both the provision of a new technology and a change in the role played by the libraries in the information access-production cycle.Practical implications – Digital libraries of the future will be core instruments for serving a large class of applications, especially in the research field.Originality/value – The paper briefly introduces one of the most innovative technologies for digital libraries, and it discusses how it contributes to the realisation of a novel digital libraries scenario.

Keywords: Digital libraries, Knowledge managementwww.emeraldinsight.com/10.1108/07378830610715365

This article originally appeared in Library Hi Tech, Volume 24 Number 4, 2006, pp. 496-503.Editor: Prof. Dr Michael Seadle