Building Digital Libraries Second Edition

This book will thoroughly orient LIS students and others new to the world of digital libraries, and also ensure that current professionals have the knowledge and guidance necessary to construct a digital repository from its inception.

Whether you’re embarking on the challenge of building a digital collection from scratch, or simply need to understand the conceptual and technical challenges of constructing a digital library, this top-to-bottom resource is the ideal guidebook to keep at your side, especially in this thoroughly updated and reworked edition. Demonstrating how resources are created, distributed, and accessed, and how librarians can keep up with the latest technologies for successfully completing these tasks, its chapters walk you step-by-step through every stage. Demystifying core technologies and workflows, this book comprehensively covers needs assessment and planning for a digital repository;choosing a platform;acquiring, processing, classifying, and describing digital content;storing and managing resources in a digital repository;digital preservation;technologies and standards useful to digital repositories, including XML, the Portland Common Data Model, metadata schema such as Dublin Core, scripting using JSON and REST, linked open data, and automated metadata assignment;sharing data and metadata;understanding information-access issues, including digital rights management; andanalyzing repository use, planning for the future, migrating to new platforms, and accommodating new types of data. This book will thoroughly orient LIS students and others new to the world of digital libraries, and also ensure that current professionals have the knowledge and guidance necessary to construct a digital repository from its inception.

How to Build a Digital Library reviews knowledge and tools to construct and maintain a digital library, regardless of the size or purpose. A resource for individuals, agencies, and institutions wishing to put this powerful tool to work in their burgeoning information treasuries. The Second Edition reflects developments in the field as well as in the Greenstone Digital Library open source software. In Part I, the authors have added an entire new chapter on user groups, user support, collaborative browsing, user contributions, and so on. There is also new material on content-based queries, map-based queries, cross-media queries. There is an increased emphasis placed on multimedia by adding a "digitizing" section to each major media type. A new chapter has also been added on "internationalization," which will address Unicode standards, multi-language interfaces and collections, and issues with non-European languages (Chinese, Hindi, etc.). Part II, the software tools section, has been completely rewritten to reflect the new developments in Greenstone Digital Library Software, an internationally popular open source software tool with a comprehensive graphical facility for creating and maintaining digital libraries. Outlines the history of libraries on both traditional and digital Written for both technical and non-technical audiences and covers the entire spectrum of media, including text, images, audio, video, and related XML standards Web-enhanced with software documentation, color illustrations, full-text index, source code, and more

This fully revised and updated second edition of Understanding Digital Libraries focuses on the challenges faced by both librarians and computer scientists in a field that has been dramatically altered by the growth of the Web. At every turn, the goal is practical: to show you how things you might need to do are already being done, or how they can be done. The first part of the book is devoted to technology and examines issues such as varying media requirements, indexing and classification, networks and distribution, and presentation. The second part of the book is concerned with the human contexts in which digital libraries function. Here you’ll find specific and useful information on usability, preservation, scientific applications, and thorny legal and economic questions. Thoroughly updated and expanded from original edition to include recent research, case studies and new technologies For librarians and technologists alike, this book provides a thorough introduction to the interdisciplinary science of digital libraries Written by Michael Lesk, a legend in computer science and a leading figure in the digital library field Provides insights into the integration of both the technical and non-technical aspects of digital libraries

This excellent reference traces the construction and maintenance of the digital collections and services that have been available day in and day out to users worldwide for more than a decade. It examines applicable guidelines for any library looking to build and manage systems, conduct and evaluate projects, and scout new directions for mainstreaming and hybridizing the building of a digital library. Including contributions from seasoned experts in specializations such as staffing, collection development, and technology project management for digital libraries, Becoming a Digital Library discusses the techniques for finding and training the right people to build a digital library.

Digital Libraries: Policy, Planning and Practice brings together a wealth of international experience in the planning and implementation of digital and hybrid library projects, providing a stimulating and informative handbook and reference for library staff and information managers. It consists of chapters contributed by leading specialists from Europe, North America, South Africa and the Middle East, who offer their insight into the decision-making processes that have shaped a variety of different digitization programmes. Beginning with introductory overviews of the digital library context, the US Digital Library Program and the UK e-lib and hybrid library programmes, Digital Libraries then divides into two main sections on policy and planning, and implementation and practice. The first explores concerns such as financial and resource planning, digitized compared to born-digital content and related service issues, open access to scholarly research archives, policies for and against preservation and their justification, and evaluating electronic information services. The second section is based on case studies on major European and North American digital library projects, including the Glasgow Digital Library, UCEEL (University of Central England Electronic Library), the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (discussed in the context of five international projects), the Indiana University music Variations and Variations2 Project, and the beginnings of the Library of Congress digital program and its integration into core library services. The concluding chapter discusses the way forward for digital libraries in the context of experiences at Tilburg University library, and possible enabling or limiting factors in the future. The result of drawing together these varied and illuminating experiences is a book that offers useful information and comparisons for all digital library project staff, institutional administrators, educators and developers of learning technology. It also provides useful pointers for researchers and project staff involved in archive and museum projects, as well as introducing students to the key ingredients of successful digital libraries.

Equally valuable for LIS students just learning about the digital landscape, information professionals taking their first steps to create digital content, and organizations who already have well-established digital credentials, Purcell’s book outlines methods applicable and scalable to many different types and sizes of libraries and archives.

This authoritative and accessible guide for librarians and computer scientists explores the technologies behind digital libraries, the choices to be made in building them, and the economic and policy structures that affect them.