DL Library Support?

Am I going mad, or was there a thread here several days ago about libraries to support DL?

 

No Gert, you're not going mad. I saved that link.

Due to your question, I clicked on that saved link, but it doesn't come back to what I saved. It comes back to this: click here.

I don't understand what's going on.

 

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one who missed it. lol

I checked with Chip and he said he thinks it's a function of the board software going slowly wonky. Well, actually he said something about indexing so I just nodded politely like I knew what he was talking about. {g} The thread isn't really gone, it's just not there when we look for it, a sort of Heisenberg Uncertainty Thread. He thinks it will reappear in the not too distant future. I certainly hope so because you guys had a LOT of interesting links I plan to check out when it does.

 

I think that Nova Southeastern has a pretty good digital library. They made a PR splash lately about it being the largest in Florida. I don't know if they'll allow a non-student to subscribe to the library for a fee, or perhaps let you audit an undergraduate course to gain access to the library (for a bigger fee).

 

Here's a story about Nove Southeastern and the joint university/public library: http://chronicle.merit.edu/free/2001/12/2001121001t.htm

San Jose State is also planning a joint university/public library: http://library.sjsu.edu/jointlibrary/

I don't know to what extent these will be accessible online.

 

Looks like "Conan the Librarian" has eliminated the original thread. We probably revealed secrets only to be shared amongst the Ancient Guild of Librarians.

 

I examined each and every one of the links that you posted and I saved about 80% of them for future reference.

 

Consortium of 12 Universities Begins Project to Deliver Academic E-Books.

ebrary.

 

Cornell will build core system for national online science library.

 

Yale, Stanford work with company to put 5,000 books online for research

 

Online portal aimed at helping doctors

This is article about use of a "web diary" to help physicians structure and document their online library work.

 

I think that at some point, on-line libraries will reach the point where they can support real graduate level research. But that day hasn't arrived yet.

Even if the text of tens of thousands of books are scanned into digital form, that will still be the equivalent of a community college library, and inadaquate for more advanced work. We are gonna need to see at least a million volumes on-line, plus 15 to 20,000 journal titles.

What they could do is alter the Library of Congress Cataloging-in process to include the submission of a digital copy of every work published in the US. Then the Library of Congress could create an organized and searcheable database of all texts published in the US from 2002 on. They could probably limit that to scholarly titles at first, and skip the popular fiction and mass-market titles.

In twenty years, most books might be published in digital form. Books will consist of down-loadable data. We will read them on lap-tops. Paper books will be a historical curiosity. (I'll be sorry to see that day arrive.)

That makes the future of the library problematical. If all of us can download every book in print, will all those large buildings still have a function?

It also raises questions about the future of publishing. If we can download text from a library, how is that different from buying text from a publisher? Will we eventually have to pay a fee for every download? Will free public and university libraries cease to exist? Will there be underground academic versions of Napster, distributing texts for free without paying publishers for the rights?

 

For scientists, this future is already here. The company I work for has licenses to nearly 900 online journals -- all the major journals in the chemical, biological, and medical fields. Since scientists use journals for research far more than monographs etc, the paucity of online books is of somewhat minor consequence.

 

Mmm, I take all predictions of the demise of libraries or of printed books with a great big shaker of salt.

Books continue to be a wonderfully appropriate technology for many people -- no batteries to run out or power cord to trip over, no connection to the Internet required, smaller than a notebook computer (though larger than a PDA), and not likely to become "dead media" any time soon.

I love having access to information online -- I also love books, and I believe printed and digital info can complement each other nicely.

 

A Bridge to the Future: Observations on Building a Digital Library

 

Noesis: Is it a library with built-in searching or a search engine with a built-in library?

This article is about Noesis, "an online library and search engine for the field of philosophy."

 

Luna: Building Digital Image Collections Online.

This article describes digital image services and software that facilitate access to well-organized sets of high-quality reproductions for teaching of the visual arts. A snippet:

• In the teaching and collecting of the visual arts, perhaps the two greatest frustrations are gaining access to disparate collections and maintaining a set of high-quality reproductions of theworks. One-of-a-kind works are available only where they reside and must be viewed in the form of a reproduction everywhere else. As a result, small colleges and universities with limited resources struggle to maintain, catalog, and share their specialized collections. In contrast, larger institutions must manage multiple collections and serve the needs of thousands of users, from students to curators. Collaboration among institutions has been frustrated in the past by technology limitations, leading to extraordinary duplication of effort using extremely fallible tools. Some of us can recall slide presentations in the classroom when a jammed carousel or a misplaced slide interrupted art history presentations. Happily, the World Wide Web and digital imaging technology have revolutionized the way institutions can access and utilize the visual arts. Thanks to digital imaging technology, students, scholars, and librarians now have instant access to a wealth of high quality images. ...

 

From Aesop to Isotopes: Digital Libraries Offer Vast Online Resources.

This article provides links to ten digital libraries with different areas of focus.

 

Oxford Univ Press reference website

UK Publisher Plans Giant Research Web Site.

Discusses a proposed subscription website, http://www.oxfordreference.com, to be established by Oxford University Press with 1.5 million entries by 2010. It will "dwarf existing general knowledge sources in print and could be the biggest on the Worldwide Web."

 

As usual, I messed up the URL so that it's not clickable. Should be http://www.oxfordreference.com