NCSU Libraries Focus Online

Volume 21 number 1 - Fall 2000

By Eric Lease Morgan, Digital Library Initiatives

In April 25, 2000, the NCSU Libraries' Digital Library Initiatives (DLI) Department organized the first in an annual series of colloquia on digital libraries, their purpose, and the current state of the art. NC State Provost Kermit L. Hall opened the colloquium, and introductions were delivered by Vice Provost and Director of Libraries Susan K. Nutter, DLI department head Caroline Beebe, and Network Technologies Development Librarian Eric Lease Morgan.

The colloquium featured three prominent speakers who have significant experience with the ideas and concepts behind digital libraries: Clifford A. Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information; Daniel Greenstein, director of the Digital Library Federation; and Donald J. Waters, program officer for scholarly communication for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Lynch shared his ideas about electronic collections and the ramifications for scholarly communication. He began by providing a brief history of the term "digital library," dating the term to as early as late 1979. He alluded to Alan Kay's ideas of talking books and how they might communicate with each other. Lynch thought the idea of a "collaboratory," a term coined by Bill Wolf, might be one path for digital libraries, asking for further definition of which tools to "do scholarship" might belong in the digital library. In such an environment, libraries do not warehouse information so much as provide the means for communication between scholars who then create new types of content. He urged libraries to be aggressive in collecting and preserving this new material.

Greenstein described what he considered to be the greatest challenge facing digital libraries, namely, "They are owned by the institution, not any single department." A digital library needs a shared sense of ownership, and this ownership brings with it a number of library functions spanning the institution: the mediation between users and information; the integration of support and services; and administrative, legal, and privacy issues. The shape of each of these functions reflects the individual institution, and the digital library will also differ from institution to institution. Greenstein challenged the audience "to try to understand how people use the digital environment and this will help us create the digital library." He asked librarians to consider the "repurposing" of digital library collections, as well as building value-added collections.

Waters discussed the issues the Mellon Foundation is addressing in the areas of scholarly communication and publishing. Using examples such as JSTOR, the Bryn Mawr Classical Review, Project MUSE, and Euclid, he reflected on the possibilities of creating, marketing, selling, and editing electronic "works of lasting value." The foundation is especially interested when the results of this process are "born digital." The current state of electronic-book technology is a good example of a technology that does not yet further scholarly research. Waters asked, "For real scholarly analysis to occur, where should the linking, annotation, and synthesis of materials in electronic books exist?"

Nearly 200 librarians and academics from across North Carolina and surrounding states attended the colloquium. The forum fostered intellectual stimulation and exposure to ideas that were new to many in the audience. Questions posed by the audience were thought provoking, and discussion among participants throughout the day proved lively. Some of the more popular questions were about XML, copyright, and image databases. Feedback from the audience, based on electronic survey forms, overwhelmingly expressed approval for additional colloquia on the digital library.