Use it in a sentence

The latest issue of the on-line magazine D-Lib is available. This should be a helpful resource for my Digital Libraries class.

This week, in Digital Libraries, we're introducing ourselves and signing up for our group projects. The groups will be improving i-DLR, Interactive Digital Library Resource Information System, which will also be a helpful resource.

A definition for Digital Library is a little more than half way down this page in i-DLR, with links to other definitions (note to Review and Revise project group: the Berkeley link is broken). Reading those links leads one to believe that there isn't a great deal of agreement on the definition.

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Bridges, would recommend that I put the definition in my own words. In its broadest sense, the Internet itself could be considered the ultimate digital library. But that makes the concept of Digital Library almost unusable, so I prefer a definition that includes a deliberate selection of resources. I will allow, in my definition, automated selection with carefully designed web crawlers, such as those used by INFOMINE.

So, for my initial definition (I'm sure it will change during this course), I'll go with: A digital library is a collection of selected information sources that are stored in computers and accessed electronically. Examples include:

• digitized collections of books like Cornell University Library's Historical Math Monographs


• digitized collections of photographs and artifacts like those produced as part of the Library of Congress' American Memory Project


• directories of information sources like the Librarians' Index to the Internet or the Kentucky Virtual Library

That last example also has services like a traditional library. Perhaps one could define "virtual library" as a digital library with traditional library services.

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