Readings for Week of 11/23

The reading for Social Aspects of Digital Libraries is an interesting study because the panel workshop was put together to identify the social conditions that a digital library serves. The group organized their panel and participants by two variables of social needs regarding digital libraries; information needs, and end-user searching and filtering. Three facets of research study were also introduced: human, artifact, and system-centered. The study called for input from several areas and specialists in research development, so to better improve the relationships between each social aspect of a digital library.

The Infinite Library article isn't accessible in its entirety unless you have a subscription. The webpage is dated 2010, but I think the article is outdated, because at the end it notes that Harvard is one of the participants in Google's Print and Book Search project. I happen to remember from my copyright class that Harvard actually dropped out of the project and are now one of the voices concerning potential adverse library affects caused by the project. Nonetheless, the reader should draw from the article that Google's proposed plan both has potentially positive and negative implications for libraries. On the one hand, it would be great to have a portal from which millions of culturally important documents can be retrieved, but if (and when) it does become unnecessary for the information-seeker to visit the library to find relevant material, the library may face even more scrutiny for obsolescence.

Arms' article on differing viewpoints for a digital library provided a different approach to the study of DLs. It included viewpoint analysis, typically reserved for computer software programming, in the development of DLs. The article looks at the DL from three different viewpoints; the user, the organizational, and the technical. From examining these viewpoints, DL developers can account for structural and social aspects that both relate to the quality and usability of the digital library.