Creating a Virtual Library: A How‐To‐Do‐It Manual for Librarians

Citation

Murray, I.R. (2001), "Creating a Virtual Library: A How‐To‐Do‐It Manual for Librarians", Library Management, Vol. 22 No. 1/2, pp. 103-115. https://doi.org/10.1108/lm.2001.22.1_2.103.7

The omnipresence of the Internet and the World Wide Web has stimulated interest in all sectors of society. Organisations of every kind now seek to have a presence on the Web. Librarians and information professions too are facing the not inconsiderable task of designing, creating and maintaining Web sites.

This book, part of a series of US publications, takes a step by step approach to demystify what might at first sight be a daunting task. It is written by a group of librarians – the staff of the Mid‐Hudson Library System (New York). It is appropriate to cite their purpose: “This how‐to manual provides clear instructions for mounting a relatively advanced virtual library within a short period of time, for low costs, and even with an initially under‐trained staff” (Preface). It is well to explain that they use the term “virtual library” to mean that all services are provided through the Internet and not in a building. Initially, they set themselves the task of educating library and archival managers and they assume that its audience does have some knowledge of Web site development. Do not, however, let this put you off as the level of knowledge assumed is not too high and the clarity of explanation throughout is excellent. The main subject matter concerns the administration, content and policymaking required to create the virtual library and most attention is given to four content areas: electronic resources connections, or pages of links to other resources, not necessarily Web; general Web libraries, pages of Web resources relating to subjects grouped together; special resource collections, which concentrate on one topic of special interest – for example local history; and finally, digital archives, printed material scanned into digital form and made available through the Web medium. Nine chapters, an index and what is termed a “Webliography” (unsurprisingly a bibliography of Web sites) complete the book. Each chapter describes the technical and theoretical basis behind a component of the virtual library and then uses the practical experience of the Mid‐Hudson staff to illustrate its implementation.

It is an extremely thorough textbook and there are many illustrations and useful diagrams to illustrate the points. One particularly useful feature is the use of margin notes to bring to the reader’s notice noteworthy information. This reviewer found interesting the fact that Verdana and Georgia fonts were regarded as optimised for Web pages. With regard to the technical aspects of implementing the virtual library there are useful common‐sense guidelines – keep it simple, do not be over ambitious. The librarians at Mid‐Hudson Library did not feel obliged to learn html or complex programming languages, and instead they suggest using tools such as Hotmetal Pro. Personally, I do believe that understanding of the structure of Web pages is assisted by gaining some knowledge of the underlying code, but it is probably a relief to some that the business of creating and mounting a virtual library on the Web does not require that much by way of expertise. Final chapters touch upon some more recent developments in the evolving WWW landscape such as XML, Metadata, and dynamic HTML.

This is a very comprehensive and thorough book – if you are keen to build such a thing as the virtual library then this is an essential purchase.