Building the Sci/Tech Digital Library Part 3: Adding Electronic Services

摘要

In my last two columns I provided ideas for establishing a Web-based sci/tech library and populating it with electronic reference sources and digital journals. In this final installment on building the sci/tech digital library I will discuss options for adding services to your Web library and integrating it with your existing information organization. The task that has occupied most of us for the last decade has been getting information into digital form. Early efforts, involving conversion from paper, have proven difficult and expensive. However, now that most digitizing efforts go directly from text files to SGML or HTML, digital publication has gone from experimentation to production. But, is a collection of digital documents a library? Clearly not! This error in strategy is why Information Technology organizations typically do a poor job at creating information systems. In order to function as an online library, a system must: 1. Have a critical mass of information 2. Integrate information and service 3. Manifest the same information ergonomics that can be seen everyday at a library information desk.