Using Massive Digital Libraries

摘要

The library world is no different from other spaces when it comes to increases in scale. If big enough, they have a way of creating qualitative effects with ramifications decidedly different from what came before. Several digital libraries have grown enough in size that some librarians see in them novel information entities. Offering unprecedentedly large and diverse digitized content, they are thought to bring distinct challenges to issues of copyright, collection development, user service and cataloging. Not surprisingly, the literature on these so-called massive digital libraries (MDLs) is quite slim in comparison to that on their smaller counterparts.