Digital Libraries
Collaborative Electronic Reviews
Department of Library Science and Instructional Technology
Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven CT

LSC 551-70
Fall 1999

Reviews by:
Karen Ball
Gayle Bogel
Lisa Brenner
Deborah Coretto
Sue Crego
Marilyn Geiger
Mark Gore
Dawn Higginson
Eric Jones
Dianne Lyons
Kathleen Marszycki
Robert Murphy
Kris Piecyk
Jodi Stacy
Amanda Timolat

Tennant, Roy. (1999). Personalizing the Digital Library. Library Journal Digital, July 1, 1999:

Reviewed by Karen Ball

Organization of a huge variety of resources has become more of a problem for digital libraries. One solution to help users find what they need and avoid frustration is to set up a personalized library interface, like "My Yahoo" or "My AOL." The user can choose to automatically view information and news (new items, etc) in several different categories and edit categories as needed. The advantages for the library are numerous: better PR, potentially improved user service (they get to what they know they always want to see faster) and potentially more clients served. This all assumes that the hardware and software work as designed.

This solution seems to be best for large, comprehensive digital libraries, like those at universities. The examples Tennant discusses are major university library systems, each with a slightly different configuration of hardware and software. The basics to set this up are a PERL program and a text file for each user. The text file stores the user¹s information and history of choices, and the program produces the customized interface based on the text. Some universities have added SQL (structured query language) databases for search functions as well. The software for these programs is available from the universities, though the hardware requirements are somewhat different for each. Tennant gives specific technical recommendations for what each software program requires. He also describes the server requirements as "negligible" though that will certainly depend upon the number of users and the amount of customization.

For large scale digital libraries, this approach makes the library seem friendlier, and that is important to consider. Digital libraries have been described as lonely places, because users are normally accessing them from a distant terminal, without human contact from the digital library staff. Also, by making the resources most used by each client more quickly available to that client, the library better serves its purpose.

Threaded discussion question:

As technology develops, many programs and ideas find applications on smaller scales. At what point would you consider installing a program which would allow each user to customize your digital library interface (like "My AOL" or "My Yahoo")? At what point would the potential benefits to the library outweigh the costs of time and hardware?

Hunter, Philip. 1999. "Digitizing Wilfred." Ariadne, Vol. 21, September, 1999. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue21/digiwilf/

Reviewed by Karen Ball

"Digitizing Wilfred" is an interview of Philip Hunter by Stuart Lee. Hunter has developed the Wilfred Owen Multimedia Digital Archive related to World War I and British poets, and has also developed online tutorials or "virtual seminars" that are related to the archival contents. In 1995, Hunter began this project as a way to show how technology and the internet could be practically applied to teaching and learning. The value of reading this interview is that Lee¹s questions begin at the formation of the idea for the archive and the online teaching, and Hunter discusses in detail the processes that his group went through in developing the resources that were needed. He explains which software they used, and how they updated it, and what uses were considered when they made their choices. He also discusses in some lesser detail the process for deciding which materials to digitize based on use, collection size and cost. The assessment process that the group used and the fact that they had a "digital specialist" to consult made this interesting. Hunter¹s group received more money after they began their project, and so were able to expand their digitization project. Hunter also talks about the programs that his group developed to achieve specific goals, such as using a combination of frames and Javascript to build a "path creation scheme" which allows users to create trails of their notes and the materials they used (the page for this part of the archive has a quote from Vannevar Bush). This particular program links the URL of the item being viewed by the student and matches it to the text the user has put in. That information is then stored in an SQL database until the path is requested again. Editing existing paths is a problem for them, however. Some solutions lead to new, unexpected problems! The future according to Hunter is for more money and more digitizing based on their success thus far.

Question>

[Food for thought: should all digital libraries have online tutorials connected to their content? Would that be a possible goal for further development and expansion of our libraries?]