Digital Library

Similarities between Traditional and Digital Libraries

A digital library shares several features with a traditional library. Like a traditional library, a digital library supports services for information storage, management, search, retrieval, archiving, and preservation. Both include information in many forms, such as books, magazines, maps, artwork, audio, and video collections. Traditional library collections are controlled collections, where controlled means that information has been reviewed and screened for inclusion in the library, carefully documented and indexed or otherwise organized for efficient search and retrieval, and controlled with respect to circulation either within or outside the library.

Differences between Traditional and Digital Libraries

Key differences between traditional and digital libraries are that the physical structures of a traditional library are replaced by virtual and logical structures in a digital one. A digital library does not need to be housed in a physical building, and users need not physically visit the library to access information. A digital library can exist at multiple virtual locations, and users can access library information from their homes, offices, cars, or any location supported by digital access technologies. The Internet and World Wide Web have been key enabling technologies for digital libraries.

The information objects in a digital library are logical rather than physical representations. Instead of a physical book, for example, there exists a digital file or record that represents the book. The digital representation can be metadata or descriptive attributes of a book, such as author, title, abstract, publisher, and publication date, or it can include the full text in digital [Page 110]form. Logical representations have several advantages over physical objects. Digital information objects are not restricted to one fixed ordering. For example, books and other physical objects must be arranged in libraries by one ordering system, such as call numbers or alphabetically by author. A digital library can have many logical organizations of information objects. Digital representations of information objects can be easily sorted by author or just as easily rearranged and sorted by publisher, subject categories, or publication date. Digital information objects that can be manipulated by digital technologies are also easy to change. For example, a book in digital image form can be converted to text through the application of optical character recognition (OCR) software. Digital information objects may be more easily decomposed and manipulated as parts or aggregated into new information objects. For example, it can be possible to retrieve a single chapter, figure, or illustration from a digital book and reassemble parts into a new digital object.

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