Digital Library Projects

August 4, 2009 · Posted in Digital Libraries · Comment

Digital Libraries have the power to change the way the library and the library user interact. Seems like a pretty obvious statement, and one that I have to write an essay about in a few weeks. At first I thought about the blatant changes- communication will take place over the network instead of at the reference desk, as is already the case in most university libraries. This has the benefit of making personalized reference assistance available to those who are not able to physically visit the library, and 24/7 services allow users to ask for help when they really need it- 3am on the due date anyone?

But today I stumbled across something that opened my eyes to the possible depth of the change. The National Library of Australia’s (NLA’s) project for the digitization of newspapers is being undertaken using Optical Character Recognition software. This software has some limitations, and the finished digital text needs to be read over and corrected- a potentially massive task when the scope of the project is considered. To deal with this issue the NLA is allowing the user to correct the text themselves. This example helps to illustrate how dramatically the digital environment may change the user/library dynamic.
I’ve been reading a lot recently about the switch in focus from libraries as collecting houses to libraries as community services. I think that this sort of invitation to the user community to contribute to digital library projects can help to ensure that the digital library of the future retains a strong community focus, and prevent digital libraries from becoming mere online collections of content.

©Rachael Palmer 2009