Overview

This chapter continues the consideration of digital libraries’ responses to the social web. It builds on the visual framework introduced in Chapter 9 to consider the transition of digital collections to platforms that align well with how people find information, work and play on the social web; are highly visible and invite interaction; and re-mix and re-use data from other sources. The chapter closes with some thoughts about future digital libraries and libraries’ digital future.

Visualizing the shift from collections to platforms

The starting point for this chapter is Figure 9.2 (p. 215), specifically the branches that pertain to the shift of digital libraries from collections to platforms. Figure 10.1 offers a closer look at these branches and individual sections of this chapter discuss each branch. The left side of Figure 10.1 visualizes the current situation; the right side visualizes some innovations, experiments or possibilities.

The dilemma of the national or local collections focus

The dilemma

The builders and maintainers of real-world digital libraries face a dilemma that comes from two sources:

Digital library builders constructed the first wave of digital libraries at national or local institutional levels, or scholarly publishers built them to move their content online. As the web grew up around them, second-wave initiatives and technologies to give digital libraries web interfaces and to make them more interoperable with each other developed (like metasearch or OAIPMH). Nevertheless, a core assumption was that the communities for whom the digital library was built would visit the digital library at its own URL (that is, the digital library would be a destination site).

The third wave (where the field is now) is integrating digital libraries more fully with the web and web technologies. Much of that work is described in this book. A key realization of digital library builders has been that most digital libraries are not destination sites, and even ones that are need to be discoverable on the larger web, not only by people but also by machines (i.e., via web services and APIs).