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.

"This book offers a global perspective on the development and design of a digital library and highlights its benefits over a traditional library"--Provided by publisher.

Viewing digital libraries as sociotechnical systems, networks of people and technology interacting with society. The contributors to this volume view digital libraries (DLs) from a social as well as technological perspective. They see DLs as sociotechnical systems, networks of technology, information artifacts, and people and practices interacting with the larger world of work and society. As Bruce Schatz observes in his foreword, for a digital library to be useful, the users, the documents, and the information system must be in harmony. The contributors begin by asking how we evaluate DLs—how we can understand them in order to build better DLs—but they move beyond these basic concerns to explore how DLs make a difference in people's lives and their social worlds, and what studying DLs might tell us about information, knowledge, and social and cognitive processes. The chapters, using both empirical and analytical methods, examine the social impact of DLs and also the web of social and material relations in which DLs are embedded; these far-ranging social worlds include such disparate groups as community activists, environmental researchers, middle-school children, and computer system designers. Topics Documents and society • the real boundaries of a "library without walls" • the ecologies of digital libraries • usability and evaluation • information and institutional change • transparency as a product of the convergence of social practices and information artifacts • and collaborative knowledge construction in digital libraries

Web Dragons offers a perspective on the world of Web search and the effects of search engines and information availability on the present and future world. In the blink of an eye since the turn of the millennium, the lives of people who work with information have been utterly transformed. Everything we need to know is on the web. It's where we learn and play, shop and do business, keep up with old friends and meet new ones. Search engines make it possible for us to find the stuff we need to know. Search engines — web dragons — are the portals through which we access society's treasure trove of information. How do they stack up against librarians, the gatekeepers over centuries past? What role will libraries play in a world whose information is ruled by the web? How is the web organized? Who controls its contents, and how do they do it? How do search engines work? How can web visibility be exploited by those who want to sell us their wares? What's coming tomorrow, and can we influence it? As we witness the dawn of a new era, this book shows readers what it will look like and how it will change their world. Whoever you are: if you care about information, this book will open your eyes and make you blink. - Presents a critical view of the idea of funneling information access through a small handful of gateways and the notion of a centralized index--and the problems that may cause - Provides promising approaches for addressing the problems, such as the personalization of web services - Presented by authorities in the field of digital libraries, web history, machine learning, and web and data mining - Find more information at the author's site: webdragons.net

This book provides a companion volume to Digital Library Economics and focuses on the 'how to' of managing digital collections and services (of all types) with regard to their financing and financial management. The emphasis is on case studies and practical examples drawn from a wide variety of contexts. A Handbook of Digital Library Economics is a practical manual for those involved – or expecting to be involved – in the development and management of digital libraries. - Provides practical approach to the subject - Focuses on the challenges associated with the economic and financial aspects of digital developments - Will be valuable to practitioners, and tutors and students in a wide variety of situations

A revitalized version of the popular classic, the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, Second Edition targets new and dynamic movements in the distribution, acquisition, and development of print and online media-compiling articles from more than 450 information specialists on topics including program planning in the digital era, recruitment, information management, advances in digital technology and encoding, intellectual property, and hardware, software, database selection and design, competitive intelligence, electronic records preservation, decision support systems, ethical issues in information, online library instruction, telecommuting, and digital library projects.

This edited book about Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) is for senior administrators in higher education and people in charge of designing new learning environments. Written by experts, it will discuss trends in technology, implications for educationa

Comparative studies in information and library science published in the past ten years have reflected a broad spectrum of backgrounds, interests, and issues, but until now services between different countries, Asian nations in particular, have never been gathered or organized into a single source. As demand from researchers, students, directors, and practitioners for pertinent literature continues to grow, there is a definite and increasing need for a focused guide to international and comparative librarianship. International and Comparative Studies in Information and Library Science: A Focus on the United States and Asian Countries consists of eighteen previously published articles divided into seven categories that address issues such as research methodologies; information policy; professional education; information organization; and school, academic, and public libraries. It also features a comprehensive bibliography of related articles, books, proceedings, and other publications in both English and Chinese and four appendixes that list curricula, journal titles, conferences, and websites relating to International and comparative librarianship available at the time of publication. With this important compilation, Yan Quan Liu and Xiaojun Cheng fill an important and previously unmet need. Book jacket.

Digital Scholarship 2009 includes four bibliographies: the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2009 Annual Edition, the Institutional Repository Bibliography, the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, and the Google Book Search Bibliography. The longest bibliography, the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: 2009 Annual Edition, presents selected English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Most sources have been published between 1990 and 2009; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included. Peter Jacso said in ONLINE (vol. 27, no. 3 2003, pp. 73-76): "SEP [Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography] is compiled with utter professionalism. It reminds me of the work of the best artisans who know not only every item that leaves their workshops, but each component used to create them--providing the ideal quality control. . . . The selection of items is impeccable. I have yet to find journal articles irrelevant to the scope of the bibliography. SEP could be used as a benchmark in evaluating abstracting/indexing databases that proudly claim to have coverage of electronic publishing, but do not come close to SEP."

This volume is the first to examine the social, cultural, and political implications of the shift from the traditional forms and functions of print-based libraries to the delivery of online information in educational contexts. Libr@ries are conceptualized as physical places, virtual spaces, communities of literate practice, and discourses of information work. Despite the centrality of libraries in literacy and learning, the study of libraries has remained isolated within the disciplinary boundaries of information and library science since its inception in the early twentieth century. The aim of this book is to problematize and thereby mainstream this field of intellectual endeavor and inquiry. Collectively the contributors interrogate the presuppositions of current library practice, seek to understand how library as place and library as space blend together in ways that may be both contradictory and complementary, and envision new modes of information access and new multimodal literacies enabled by online environments. Libr@ries: Changing Information Space and Practice is intended for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and educators in the fields of literacy and multiliteracies education, communication technologies in education, library sciences, information and communication studies, media and cultural studies, and the sociology of computer-mediated space.