11/24 Notes

"Digital Libraries: Challenges and Influential Work"
The article describes the evolution of DLI-1 and DLI-2 projects through federal funding initiatives, and problems in information retrieval (heterogenous databases, OAI, hidden digital sources) that have faced such projects. Specialists have sought to transform digital collections into digital libraries that also have the tools that enable users to successfully retrieve information and navigate the libraries. The projects varied-focusing on interoperability among heterogenous libraries, digital object technology, documentation, processing and indexing, and integrated software.


Paepcke, A. et al. (July/August 2005). Dewey meets Turing: librarians, computer scientists and the digital libraries initiative. D-Lib Magazine. 11(7/8).

The author highlights the role that DLI had in forming a partnership between computer scientists and librarians. At the beginning of the relationship, both believed the relationship would give them something they needed: computer scientists thought of it as a way to validate their research, librarians, who saw more funds going into science and technology, a way to access much needed funds.
The increasing importance of the WWW, brought a downside-publishers became interested in commercialization of the resources, which led to restriction to information that both groups though would remain free to access. This restricted scholarly input and communication and still remains a major issue. Two of my papers in Understanding Info focused on copyright, intellectual property law and scholarly publishing and it is astonishing to see how much commercialization by publishers has affected patrons access to resources.

Lynch, Clifford A. "Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age" ARL, no. 226 (February 2003): 1-7.

Lynch focuses on the development of institutional repositories and their effects on scholarly communication. He highlights OAI in decreasing price barriers and uses D-Lib (developed by MIT) as in example of a successful institutional repository. Unlike the other articles, Lynch also devotes a section to potential problems to look out for in developing an institutional repository-namely the creation of administrative policy that determines how and when people can publish their research. The author also brings into focus budgetary concerns, such as planning for long-term preservation and making sure their is money allotted for the repository so scholars can still access it.