Exploring the Digital Library

A Guide for Online Teaching and Learning

Kay Johnson, Elaine Magusin

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780787976279
• eBook ISBN: 9780470596586
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Exploring the Digital Library, a volume in The Jossey-Bass Online Teaching and Learning series, addresses the key issue of library services for faculty and their students in the online learning environment. Written by librarians at Athabasca University, a leading institution in distance education, this book shows how faculty can effectively use digital libraries in their day-to-day work and in the design of electronic courses. Exploring the Digital Library is filled with information, ideas, and

• Discusses how information and communication technologies are transforming scholarship communication
• Provides suggestions for integrating digital libraries into teaching and course development
• Describes approaches to promoting information literacy skills and integrating these skills across the curriculum
• Outlines the skills and knowledge required in digital library use
• Suggests opportunities for faculty and librarians to collaborate in the online educational environment

CHAPTER 1

Digital Libraries: A Cultural Understanding

In the novel Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut has one of his characters invent a device called “Mandarax.” This pocket computer not only functions as a simultaneous voice translator but can diagnose 1,000 common human diseases, teach the delicate art of flower arranging, and display on command any one of the 20,000 popular quotations stored in its memory. Mandarax is eventually marooned on a remote island for 31 years with the last 10 human survivors on earth. The Captain destroys it in a final rage at its useless knowledge and failure to make sense of information, not to mention its little beeping sounds: “As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea” (Vonnegut, 1985, p. 62).

As an apple of knowledge, digital technology has tremendous potential. It has altered the way people access, use, create, distribute, and store information, and it has had a far-reaching impact on almost all facets of society. Yet it seems to be in the very nature of computers to rankle and try the patience of the human beings who use them. Often one may, like Vonnegut’s angry Captain, want to cast the apple out to sea. It is in active roles—as participants, contributors, and informed critics—that it is possible for us to make sense of digital information and help build a global digital repository of useful knowledge. This chapter seeks to define what we mean by digital library, looks at how the academic library is changing to meet the needs of distance learners and remote users, and considers cultural barriers to effective digital library use.

DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN THE MATRIX OF DIGITAL CULTURE

In considering digital libraries and their role in higher education, it is important to keep in mind that they represent only one component of the broader digital environment. Digital technology is all around us, and extends far beyond the most obvious emblem, the personal computer. From DVDs and wristwatches to banking systems and electricity grids, humanity is increasingly reliant on digital technology.

Technically, the word digital refers to the binary digits, the zeroes and ones, that represent data manipulated and stored by a computer. The term is more broadly used to refer to anything relating to computers. It is often said that this is the digital age, a statement that conveys the extent to which computers and technology are pervasive.

Since the introduction of relatively affordable personal computers and the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web, increasing numbers of individuals are using computers at work, school, and home. In September 2001 the Department of Commerce’s Census Bureau found that 50.5% of U.S. households had an Internet connection (National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Economics and Statistics Administration, 2002a). There has been a dramatic rise in household Internet access in other nations as well (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2002). Internet use is spreading into everyday life, with 88% of online Americans reporting that the Internet plays a role in their daily routines, such as communicating with family and friends and looking up information (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2004). Today’s mass media is bursting with excitement about such things as the “knowledge economy” and the “information society,” indicating further the extent to which information and communication technologies have penetrated almost everywhere. Of course, where there are haves, there are also have-nots. There is the gap between the “information rich” and the “information poor,” and various organizations are working to bridge the digital divide—to address inequities in the ability to access and effectively use information technologies.

The digital environment extends beyond technological issues. Gere identifies a digital culture that has emerged out of a complex set of interactions among elements such as “nineteenth-century capitalism, twentieth-century warfare, the postwar avant-garde, the counter-culture, post-modern theory and Punk,” revealing digital culture to be not merely a product of technology but rather part of a cultural continuum (2002, p. 15). Digital culture influences not only the production and distribution of music, film, literature, and art but even the themes of our cultural products.

Libraries have traditionally represented a culture of the book, and call up for many the tactile associations of pages, bindings, and dust jackets. Libraries have been places of quiet reflection, inquiry, and sustained reading. They not only are timeless and comforting in a too-hectic world but also have preserved the human record through the ages. At the same time, libraries have entered the information superhighway and have come to represent digital culture as much as book culture.

DEFINING DIGITAL LIBRARIES

The antecedents of the digital library can be found in the writings of Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider. In a 1945 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Dr. Bush envisioned the development of a device that he called the “memex,” a mechanized system based on microfilm technology used to store, search, and display humanity’s knowledge. In Libraries of the Future (1965), Licklider took the concept further and crafted the vision of a computer-based library. Librarians were early adopters of computers, with library automation beginning in the 1950s in the form of punched cards. Printed catalogue cards were replaced by machine-readable cataloguing format (MARC), which made it easier for librarians to share cataloguing data. Librarians converted their card catalogues to online public access catalogues (OPACs) and began using computers to manage the circulation of materials to borrowers. When the online information retrieval industry was in its early years librarians became expert searchers, using terminals to access remote computers to conduct information searches on behalf of library users. Librarians purchased indexes and other information products on CD-ROM to enhance their collections. With the development of the World Wide Web, and the move in the online industry to Windows-based, mouse-driven graphical user interfaces, librarians began designing Web sites to manage and provide remote access to online collections.

Librarians have been “digital” for some time, but it was not until the 1990s that the subject of digital libraries began to receive significant attention. A growing number of journal and monograph publications as well as conferences are devoted to the topic, and initiatives have grown up around research and development. The Digital Library Federation (http://www.diglib.org/), founded in 1995, is a consortium of American academic libraries, the British Library, and other agencies that are “pioneering in the use of electronic-information technologies to extend their collections and services” (Digital Library Federation, 2005, para. 2). Chowdhury and Chowdhury (2002) outline some of the major global initiatives, which include the Digital Libraries Initiative, Phase 1 (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/dlione/) and Phase 2 (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/) in the United States, the Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme in the United Kingdom (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/), the Delos Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries (http://delos-noe.iei.pi.cnr.it/), and the Canadian Initiative on Digital Libraries (http://www.collectionscanada.ca/cidl/). Academic Info (http://www.academicinfo.net/digital.html) provides a directory of digital library collections and resources, organized by subject.

Digital library projects are spread around the globe and present a diverse experience of what is meant by a digital library. Consider the digital libraries described in Exhibit 1.1. Each varies in the communities it serves, its purpose, the material formats and subject areas it includes, and many other aspects, yet each may still be called a digital library.

ACM Digital Library, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, and the New Zealand Digital Library are purely digital libraries. However, many, such as the California Digital Library (CDL), are frequently found as components in hybrid library models that provide access to online resources and services to both on-site and remote users while at the same time providing users with access to physical resources housed in library buildings. CDL is a University of California library and collaborates with and assists UC campuses and their libraries.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, holding millions of physical objects, such as books, manuscripts, drawings, sound recordings, and films. Not surprisingly, the Library of Congress Web site functions as a gateway to search the vast physical collections using online catalogues. Although the digital collections make up only a fraction of its holdings, the Library of Congress offers an

Exhibit 1.1. A Sampling of Digital Libraries

impressive digital library. American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov) is the “flag-ship” of the library’s digital collections, providing access to millions of digitized documents, photographs, sound recordings, motion pictures, and text from the American historical collections of the library and other institutions. THOMAS (http://thomas.loc.gov/) is the entry point for full-text legislative information, bills, and congressional records. Digital images accompany most of the records in the library’s Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html). The Global Gateway (http://international.loc.gov/intldl/intldlhome.html. ) links to international digital library collaborations and to the library’s digital collections focusing on history and cultures around the world. The library also offers an “Ask a Librarian” e-mail-based reference service.

What the libraries shown in the exhibit all do is provide access to organized collections of information resources in digital format that users are able to access over an electronic network. Numerous definitions of digital libraries appear in the literature, and this can cause some confusion. It may help to offer the observations of Christine L. Borgman, who has identified two main streams in digital library definitions. One stream represents a technical focus and is put forward primarily by digital library researchers. Their emphasis is on “digital libraries as content collected on behalf of user communities.” Generally, these definitions include technological capabilities such as methods for creation, organization, maintenance, and access and retrieval of information collections. The other stream identified by Borgman addresses the practical challenges of transforming library institutions, and is advanced by librarians who focus on “digital libraries as institutions or services” (1999, p. 229).

Borgman notes a third usage of the term that, for the most part, falls outside of the research and library communities’ definitions. These are the Web sites, online databases, and CD-ROM products that identify themselves as digital libraries. The extent to which these electronic collections are organized, or designed for specific user communities, varies. Our concern here is primarily with the digital library as an extension of the academic research library. However, when we address digital library culture we are mindful that faculty and students encounter diverse types of digital libraries in their research activities. These electronic information collections may or may not be associated with a library.

All types of libraries are applying online technologies to their resources and services. Synonyms for the digital library include virtual library, electronic library, and library without walls. As the growth of electronic networks became a hot topic in the library literature in the early 1990s, D. Kaye Gapen defined the virtual library as “the concept of remote access to the contents and services of libraries and other information resources, combining an on-site collection of current and heavily used materials in both print and electronic form, with an electronic network which provides access to, and delivery from, external worldwide library and commercial information and knowledge sources” (1993, p. 1). It is this type of library—a hybrid of the print and the digital, including a gateway to online resources that extends the library collection beyond its physical walls—that researchers most frequently encounter in academic libraries today.

TRANSFORMING THE ACADEMIC LIBRARY

Academic libraries usually use their Web sites as gateways to various online resources that include research databases, library catalogues, electronic books, electronic journals, electronic course reserves, selected Web sites, and locally developed digital collections. Some of these resources are made available on the basis of licensing and are restricted to faculty, students, and staff associated with the institution; others are freely and publicly available. Some of the digital resources may be full-text versions of print equivalents; others are “born digital,” existing in electronic form only. Some may be digital surrogates, records that represent the physical items that are accessible through the library’s holdings or from other library collections. Exhibit 1.2 lists the main categories of physical and digital materials students or faculty members can expect to access through their academic library.

Significant changes are taking place in the academic library in response to available technologies, the needs and wants of remote users, and the increasing popularity of distance and online learning. William Y. Arms tells us, “The fundamental reason for building digital libraries is a belief that they will provide better delivery of information than was possible in the past” (2000, p. 4). Researchers can access a digital library anytime and anywhere that the necessary technology is available. A digital library delivers to the user’s desktop not only bibliographic data about library collections and journal publications but also abstracts and full-text documents. It can link researchers to unique collections and archives from all over the world. Digital libraries are capable of delivering services as well as information. A digital library user may take an online library orientation or tutorial, renew materials online, use e-mail to request particular materials or services, or interact with librarians in real time using chat-based reference services.

For colleges and universities whose students and professors meet on-site, remote access to the library from home or work offers a flexible, convenient approach to accessing library services and resources. As traditional institutions expand their programs to incorporate distance and online learning, the digital library is becoming an increasingly important component in the support they offer their students. For distance education institutions and virtual universities, digital libraries are a significant element in their ability to provide their learning communities with “library services and resources equivalent to those provided for students and faculty in traditional campus settings” (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2004, para. 12). Digital libraries offer flexible approaches to delivering library materials and course reserves anywhere in the world. Many of the resources required to support university-level studies are not available digitally, but the number, depth, and scope of scholarly resources available online is improving as demand for electronic access increases. Communication tools such as e-mail, chat, and discussion boards enhance interactions among distance librarians, faculty, and students. Web-based forms streamline processes for requesting materials and services from libraries. Digital library users also benefit from the online search tutorials developed by librarians.

Exhibit 1.2. Physical and Digital Materials in the Academic Library

In the United States, distance education course enrollments at the undergraduate and graduate levels increased from 1.7 million to 3.1 million between 1997-98 and 2000-01. In 2000-01, 56% of all postsecondary institutions offered distance education courses, compared to 34% three years earlier (National Center for Education Statistics, 2004, para. 2-3). A picture of the range of distance and online learning options available worldwide can be had by visiting some of the online education directories available on the Web, such as World Wide Learn (http://www.worldwidelearn.com/) and Peterson’s Distance Learning (http://www.petersons.co...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• CHAPTER 1 - Digital Libraries: A Cultural Understanding
• CHAPTER 2 - New Dynamics for Scholarly Communication
• CHAPTER 3 - Digital Libraries in Teaching and Course Development
• CHAPTER 4 - Beyond the Mechanics of Online Retrieval: Information Literacy
• CHAPTER 5 - Using the Digital Library in Higher Education
• CHAPTER 6 - Faculty-Librarian Collaboration in Online Teaching and Education
• CHAPTER 7 - Collaborating on Information Literacy: Case Study 1
• CHAPTER 8 - Collaborating on the DRR and Reusing Learning Resources: Case Study 2
• CHAPTER 9 - Beyond Digital Library Culture Barriers
• Appendix: - Web Resources
• References
• Index