What Is a Digital Library Anymore, Anyway?

Abstract

The authors explore how digital libraries have evolved over the years and what form they have now taken."This paper describes an information model for digital libraries that intentionally moves "beyond search and access", without ignoring those basic functions, and facilitates the creation of collaborative and contextual knowledge environments. This model is an information network overlay that represents a digital library as a graph of typed nodes, corresponding to the information units (documents, data, services, agents) within the library, and semantic edges representing the contextual relationships among those units. The information model integrates local and distributed information integrated with web services, allowing the creation of rich documents (e.g., learning objects, publications for e-science, etc.). It expresses the complex relationships among information objects, agents, services, and meta-information (such as ontologies), and thereby represents information resources in context, rather than as the result of stand-alone web access. It facilitates collaborative activities, closing the loop between users as consumers and users as contributors."