Introduction to digital libraries by G.G. Chowdhury and Sudatta Chowdhury)

This was the third of the preparatory reading books for my course and I did like this one a great deal. It did all the things that the research methods book didn’t do. It talked about the theory behind the forming of digital libraries and then used many practical examples from different digital libraries to illustrate the different approaches and methods currently being used.

One part did make me laugh when it talked about digital libraries throughout the world and limited itself to the UK, US, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand, which granted even if the authors only know English and European languages (which I’d question having seen their names) I wonder why they didn’t look at other areas, even a lot of Chinese digital libraries have an English language interface. This brings up a question I had about the book which kept talking about how digital libraries were able to conquer the language barrier, but the authors gave no explanation to what exactly they meant by this, was it because the websites could be accessed in different languages? Or because you could translate the web pages? Either way it didn’t make much sense to me as if you’re looking for something to read on a particularly topic you will need to be able to read the language that the document is in, just as you would in a normal library and the digital environment can’t change that. (This is discussed though quite briefly in chapter 9)

The book addressed definitions and features of digital libraries, how research is done and how digital libraries are funded. The book then shifted into the area of design, selection of material, do you hold your own material or material held elsewhere on the web? and collection management including journals, databases and eBooks. The chapter on digitisation gave a straight forward (albeit brief) overview of the digitisation process, I felt more emphasise should have been made on copyright, and the things to consider when trying to get copyright, and perhaps less emphasis should have been spent on selecting equipment/processes. I did like however, how they talked about how taking the image was only half the process and the other half was assigning the metadata and making the image accessible. (In practice this last part is the part that surprised me the most this year).

Information organisation looked at the failings of traditional cataloguing methods for digital information and looked at digital content marking and manipulation. I thought this was very interesting, but was surprised to see how that the use of digital resources integrated into standard library OPACs was not included.

Information access and user interfaces looked at different ways of designing digital libraries to suit both the information needs of the library and the user needs of the library. As well as looking at user searching patterns of users who use digital libraries, and the best and the clumsiest ways to be able to provide such information to the user.

The chapter on digital preservation didn’t address the use of digitisation in preservation of physical documents, a bit of an oversight in my opinion, but rather focused on the preservation of digital resources (mainly web pages). They gave the excellent example at the beginning of the chapter of when Bush took office they wiped clean the white house web pages and 14,000 links were destroyed and all the Clinton pages vanished over night. These are now archived elsewhere. I remember finding similar archives of government pages in the UK when I was working at King’s Fund. With the huge amount of data on the web it seems a little ridiculous to try and archive too much, but I like the idea of being able to search a historical version of the web and see sites how they used to be. It would be quite interesting and also a great historical resource for modern historian/political science people to study how things were.

Digital Library services looks at the often neglected side of services within a digital library. How the traditional view of libraries as a reference point is not as true in the digital environment and many companies and publishers are attempting to fill in that role. They did talk about the enquiry services, free, members based and fee based available from digital libraries, but on the whole this seemed like an area that should be strengthened, especially to include more personal services. In the 6 years since the book was written I wonder how and if this has improved.

The chapter on social, economic and legal issues starts of by talking about the digital divide and how only 6 per cent of the world’s population uses the internet. According to 2008 figures this number has now increased to 20 per cent, with the amount of users in Europe, USA, Canada and Asia almost doubling, though Africa shows no increase at all.

The think I felt was lacking the most within this book was the use of digital libraries to present unique materials to scholars who would otherwise be unlikely to access them, because of costs, travel etc. I’m thinking specifically of the International Dunhuang Project at the British Library, my favourite digital library, and the reason why I got interested in library work in the first place, and my dream job site! 30 pages from the end and there is still no mention of scholarly use of unique historical sources and the advantage of electronic copies verses the original materials. I found this omission to be very surprising. (In the evaluation chapter mention of a library of this type is made but the only evaluation given of it is economic).

The only downside to this book is that it was published in 2003, which is quite a long time in the digital age, and as such some of their information comes across as a bit dated, and quite a few of the examples they use are no longer available. (Another argument for digital archiving perhaps?) Overall though I found the book very interesting and informative and I am looking forward to my class on digital libraries, which unfortunately I have to wait a whole year for!

John Harthan – The History of the Illustrated Book

This was a perfect companion to Bland’s book, it was Lavishly illustrated (though the majority were black and white reproductions) and focused more on the style of the developments rather than the techniques. It gave more of a background to the use of books, and their social history, and how they fit into the wider European cultural context. It started with a lovely double illustration of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, followed by some Egyptian porn! (Before descending into the religious books produced during the middle ages). It looked at development and movements throughout Europe, comparing different countries in different periods.

The last section on the Book Beautiful I found most enjoyable, perhaps this ties into reading so much William Morris lately. But it did make me laugh when it referred to Chipping Camden, as a “Delightful little limestone costswold town”as it was one of the villages that went to my high school, and “delightful” is not a word I’d use to describe it as we went through it every day! It also helped me discover two new artists, the first was the illustrator for Oscar Wilde’s Sphinx, Charles Ricketts and the next was an absolutely gorgeous illustration by Kay Nielsen which a quick internet search later revealed that Nielsen in fact did MANY gorgeous illustrations and I must find out more about him.

It was a very good book, references wise and fun to just sit and read the whole way thought. We have a reference copy in our reading room but I may break down and buy my own anyway as it seems to only be about £14 on amazon.

William Morris The story of the Glittering Plain.

While not quite as good as The wood beyond the World this was still fantastic. It was such a lovely tale of sinister people, fantasy, and the search for love. I am really enjoying the way he writes and the story is unlike anything you'd find in a modern book. I also liked the fact that there was no good or evil, and that the land of eternal bliss and happiness wasn't, and that he didn't try and tie up all his loose ends, or explain the Princess and her love. All told it was a wonderful story I think the thing it reminded me the most of was Gilgamesh. Also the edition I read was a lovely 1905 hardback edition with a gorgeously decorated front cover. Horray for ebay!