Digital Libraries (Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 344 pages
• Published by: The MIT Press
• Edition: 1st Edition December 17, 1999
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0262011808
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0262011808
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 1.5 pounds

Product Review
These days we seem to be creating information faster than we can store it, but the near future is looking bright. Cornell professor William Y. Arms offers a program for that future in Digital Libraries, a synthesis of library and computer sciences that presents the history and current developments in each field with special emphasis on their interactions.

Since the book necessarily must appeal to a broad spectrum of professionals, any given reader will find some parts elementary, but Arms clearly maps the common ground and much of the text will appeal to all. Chapters covering the basics of information management, the Internet, security, archives, and retrieval bridge the traditional books-and-shelves library systems and the often jury-rigged information architecture developed over forty years of computer use.

Digital Libraries contains plenty of sidebars detailing historical information as well as definitions primarily suited to professionals entering the interdisciplinary zone (but which would unacceptably break up the text flow; while it's important to understand both MARC codes and TCP/IP protocols, it's best for each reader to decide what supplementary information is needed). Digital Libraries is an ambitious and important book--if we are to develop truly efficient and accessible information management systems, everyone concerned must understand their shared technical history and move forward as one. --Rob Lightner

Product Review


"Bill Arms offers a comprehensive look at Digital Libraries from many perspectives. He's right: we're just at the beginning of this story. The best is yet to come."
-- Vint Cerf, Senior Vice President, Internet Architecture and Technology, MCI WorldCom

Reader Reviews
While I was a little bit disappointed about the lack of in-depth detail, I must say that _Digital Libraries_ provides an excellent overview of the range of issues surrounding managed collections of digital information. Arms covers everything from the economic and legal issues (nice coverage of the issues involved for publishers!) to the concepts behind object models and structural metadata. The book finishes with a glossary which should prove useful to those trying to wade through the alphabet soup around asset management and digital library technology. Given that this is an overview, I missed a good bibliography for people interested in taking any of the topics in the book to a deeper level. Comment | | (Report this)