Numerous professional and scientific meetings related to Library and Information Science are held throughout the world covering different scientific, professional and practical issues, among which Digital Libraries certainly fit the bill as a major issue for the field.

Starting with the issue of what a digital library is, one can clearly see from the disposable professional literature differences in conceptions, approaches to problems‚ and ways of organizing or accessing them. Quite a number of professional communities are actively dealing with digital libraries, each from its own perspective. We intend to discuss their approaches as well as results they gained until now.

Products of research related to Digital Libraries (DL) resulted in a growing body of knowledge about the phenomenon, not to mention a growing body of literature. An ever-larger number of people and institutions are joining the digital library community. However, Digital Libraries are still at the beginning stage of their evolution, and thus present many challenges and opportunities for many professional communities and ask for better cooperation between them.

The intention of the paper is to give an overview of issues, problems, possibilities as well as of results which can already be evaluated.

It is obvious that in today's environment, most library users have access to a vast array of online resources on the Internet. Moreover, it is also obvious that generally speaking people use networked services provided not only by libraries, but also by other providers (on both institutional and individual level). Almost everyone who has access to the Internet is trying to get through a ‘selva selvaggia’ of resources and systems.

Today, when we speak about Digital Libraries (DLs), our starting point shall be that we are dealing with a new paradigm of producing, collecting, organizing, disseminating and using information. Such a new paradigm is primarily characterized by the necessity of building up appropriate technical infrastructure and organizational pattern as well as by providing desired content in a new, digital form. But, one has to be reminded of the fact that the nature of the human need to seek for and use information and knowledge has not yet been changed and it is likely that DLs will not make revolutionary step in this direction as fast as it is sometimes predicted: the information is becoming more and more available in digital form, but the users are still, as W. Crawford (1992) claims, analog!

There is no doubt though that DLs today certainly strike the right note of interest among professionals involved in processes of providing access to information. Scholarly and professional interest in maximizing the use of networked information and building DLs has grown rapidly throughout the 1990s. A variety of funding initiatives specifically addressing different issues related to DLs are at this very moment underway in the North America (mostly in the USA and Canada), Europe, Australia, even in Asia, Africa and South America. Since the early 90’s, a number of digital libraries conferences have been organized and DLs topics have been discussed at meetings in a variety of disciplines and professional communities. During that period we have also been witnessing appearance of numerous new journals (printed and online) and online distribution lists on DLs. Libraries worldwide, including national and big research libraries as well as public and special libraries, are undertaking projects in digital imaging and network services. And they are not alone! Other information providers, university computer science departments, individuals etc. are involved in providing content to DLs, organizing and making it available on the World Wide Web. All these institutions and individuals are also concerned with the preservation issues of digital materials, and share this concern with other institutions involved in preservation processes of human knowledge and experience.

The products of research & practice related to DLs result in a growing body of knowledge and literature about them. The effects and impacts beyond the horizon are intriguing and exciting to contemplate, but are still a matter of intellectual speculation and educated guessing (Saracevic, 1999). DLs are still at the beginning stage of their evolution, and thus present variety of challenges and opportunities to many professional communities and ask for better cooperation between them.

Why is this topic well accepted in research and professional community? Is it a result of fear that world will be evolving without books and libraries, thus forcing necessary changes and adaptations? Or is it a result of a view that DLs offer a new frame for exploiting intellectual capacity in global environment?

Researchers and practitioners, librarians and technicians, policy makers etc. have their own conceptions, take different approaches to research and practical issues so realizations of their efforts differ. C. Borgman (1999; 2000) describes two professional communities' approaches (researchers and librarians), Saracevic (1999) is discussing three of them, but is this all? What about archivists, museologists, publishers university teachers, governments and others?

Some professionals interested in DLs working on funded researches have chosen to concentrate their concerns either on infrastructural or on conceptional problems. There is an prevailing opinion today, that at the early stage of DLs’ evolution technical problems and concepts, which are complex and significant to start with, were predominant. They were followed by contributions related to practice appropriate for different institutional settings and goals, and choosing approaches which were more pragmatic and mostly oriented towards design of best operational systems.

Corresponding to these activities, the work of the community that concentrates on contemplation of basic concepts, as well as on research and discussion on a number of theoretical issues related directly or indirectly to DLs, started to evolve. The members of that group, as Saracevic (1999) points out, come mostly from scientific and academic branch of library and information science (LIS). Not surprisingly, he concludes, coverage has been quite wide, from philosophical issues to economics, to users and use, to fit within structures, to education, to a variety of relations, and to exploration of applications in different fields.

There is no doubt that research and practice are mutually inclusive: everyday practice produce problems and issues that could be solved through research. Researchers would like to get an opportunity to see their solutions applicable in practice. Such a partnership could also be noted when it comes to questions related to development of IT in general and development of new methods and techniques.

As for the research into DLs and related issues, C. Borgman (1999) notes that DLs research builds upon a long history of related work in information retrieval, databases, user interfaces, networks, information seeking, classification and organization, library automation, publishing, and other areas. It dates back several decades or centuries, depending on what is included for consideration, and forms a solid theoretical as well practical base for further developments.

Starting with the issue of what a digital library is, we can clearly from the disposable professional literature differences in conceptions, approaches to problems‚ and ways of organizing or accessing them. As it has been pointed out, quite a number of professional communities have been actively dealing with DLs, each from its own perspective. I intend to discuss their approaches as well as results gained until now.

First of all, it is important to say that DLs research is characterized by the presence of complex problems independently of a preferred approach and by the inclusion of many disciplines. It also calls for national and global cooperation, since basic problems are general and worldwide related. Among them are:

• how to create means and ways for dealing with human knowledge records in the new digitized and networked world
• what to do with the new products such as electronic “book” and e-journal, even with the whole digital collections or digital libraries; how to create or select them, collect, organize, search or preserve them
• how to evaluate ways in which these collections and/or records are used.

Problems here are of technical, organizational, managerial, social, behavioral, legal, economic, and other kinds of nature, and they could be best looked upon from interdisciplinary perspectives, involving researchers and practitioners from different disciplines, such as computer science/engineering, LIS, cognitive science, social sciences, law, policy, economics, publishing, management and others.

When introducing DLs issues and projects to Croatian research and professional community it is necessary to underline these characteristics and problems, since every attempt to talk about how to approach the topic should start with a question – What do we mean when we use the term Digital Library? Are we conscious of these special characteristics of DLs and are we ready to cooperate?

Despite building upon foundation of decades of research and practice in all related areas, the term 'digital library' is relatively new. Since the availability of research funding for DLs has attracted scholars and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds, some of them, as C. Borgman notes (2000), had minimal prior knowledge of related areas such as information retrieval, computer networks, cataloging and classification, library automation, archives, or publishing. It could be added that some of the DLs’ advocates did not have previous experience with human information needs, as well as with information seeking and using habits. They could be taken as technophobes, impressed with great possibilities of new digital technology, but their contribution certainly resulted in some excellent infrastructural solutions as well in provoking some new services. Surely, their understanding and interpretations of the term 'digital library' differ from other definitions.

The other reason for the terminological confusion is that research and practice in DLs are being conducted concurrently at each stage of the continuum from basic research to implementation. Some groups or individuals are working on fundamental issues enabling technologies and throwing more light upon theoretical problems, others are working on applications, or studying social aspects of digital libraries in experimental and field contexts, and yet others are deploying the results of earlier research. It is quite natural that their concerns and foci are understandably different.

First of all, let us look at the definitional level to agree upon elements of definition and diferentia specifica. Surely, definitions can serve many purposes, one of which is to provide a focal point for a community working together. In an attempt to bring closer different research and professional communities definitions of DL’s, it should be noted that the first definitions to be presented raised from the computer and information science research community, and throughout the 1990's evolved in scope and content. The earliest definitions particularly influenced those preoccupied with defining the boundaries of DL’s research. During mid 1990's one of most cited definitions was one which C. Borgman proposed in 1992. She argued that a National Electronic Library (the term ‘electronic’ was used instead of today’s dominant term ‘digital’, as is it still the case in some countries) is:

• a service
• an architecture
• a set of information resources, databases of text, numbers, graphics, sound, video, etc.
• a set of tools and capabilities to locate, retrieve, and utilize the information resources available.

In September 1993 the Digital Library Initiative (DLI-1) defined the term implicitly stating only that 'information sources accessed via the Internet are the ingredients of a digital library'. (National Science Foundation, 1993).

These first initiatives were followed by discussions about the notion and nature of a DL. A 1995 workshop that addressed scaling and interoperability issues in digital libraries resulted in several definitions, offered by several working groups, the most general of which defines a digital library as 'systems' that provide 'a community of users with coherent access to a large, organized repository of information and knowledge'. (Lynch and Garcia-Molina, 1995). A 1996 workshop brought a definition of the term ‘digital libraries’ which broadened their scope to encompass two complementary ideas – infrastructure and content as well as community of users/providers. At this point, the scope of DLs extended in several directions, reflecting the contributions of scholars from a dozen disciplines. It moved beyond information retrieval to include the full life cycle of creating, searching, and using information. Rather than simply collecting content on behalf of user communities, it embedded DLs in the activities of those communities, and it encompassed information-related activities of multiple information institutions. (Borgman et al 1996; Borgman, 1999)

Although C. Lynch (1993) clairvoyantly noted that the term digital library is problematic because 'it obscures the complex relationship between electronic information collections and libraries as institutions', there is still no suppstitutive term which could serve the purpose. We may still argue upon its oxymorogical nature (Greenberg,1998) or reject it on the grounds it is "dangerously misleading" (Battin, 1998), but the term became popular and is used universally (the terms 'electronic library' and 'virtual library' are also in use in several countries, but not at such an extend). The reason for that may be find in the fact that the term 'serves as a convenient and familiar shorthand to refer to electronic collections, and conveys a sense of richer content and fuller capabilities than do terms such as "database" or "information retrieval system". At the same time, such uses of the term convey a far narrower sense of a library than one of a full-service institution with long term responsibilities' (Borgman, 1999).

To conclude with this short overwiev of terminological issues, it might be added that each DL is determined by three basic elements:

• organized collection in digital form
• necessary technological infrastructure including connections
• access tools

It is also relevant to say that definition of DL should assume the difference between the 'library' as we know it and 'digital library' and frame DLs in terms of their users: users' needs and capabilities determine the tools needed to access and manipulate the content. This could serve as one of important starting point for our discussion related to the planning and developing of DL’s in Croatia as well as to our possible cooperation.

At the beginning of 1990's, academic community, especially in the States, and professional societies played important roles in promoting, advocating and developing concepts and practice of DL's. They were joined by some newly created governmental, regional and even supraregional and international bodies, which provided and/or looked upon official and private funding, discussion forums etc. Investments in infrastructure and education have been seen since as the most important steps for invigorating efforts in building up global information societies, which have to rely on national policy and high-top decision-making level.

During the last decade an impressive number of discussions and presentations of research results were organized at national and international conferences and workshops. Early conferences were organized by individual universities and agencies. Later conference series were supported by professional societies, most notably the Association for Computing Machinery (Fox and Marchionini, 1996) and the Advances in Digital Libraries, (Proceedings of the IEEE, 1998). The First European Digital Library Conference was organized in 1996 (in 2000 the fifth conference is held in Portugal) and First Asia Digital Libraries Workshop was organised in 1998 (Yen & Yang, 1998). The initial goal of these conferences was to attract an emerging European/Asian professional community to these events and then to address the mutual interests of those involved. The last years CoLIS3 conference was completely devoted to DLs issues. It attracted over 50 experts from more than 20 countries who discussed wide range of topics divided in 10 main sections, from Context, Relations, Interaction, Design, Representation, Information Retrieval and Evaluation, to Management, DL&Mass Media and Conceptions&Applications.

This Conference and many others organized lately proved that the goals of first initiatives and projects were modest by today's standards. The predominant approaches could be best seen as related to research interest in DL-1 program, specifically in:

• how to capture data and metadata of all forms (text, images, sound, speech, etc.), categorize and organize them,
• how to advance software and algorithms for browsing, searching, filtering, abstracting, summarizing and combining large volumes of data, imagery, and all kinds of information; and
• how to utilize networked databases distributed around the nation and around the world (National Science Foundation, 1993).

The DLI-2 program which followed the DL-1 is characterized by far more concern for social, behavioral, and economic aspects of DL’s. At that stage, research areas that encompassed a broader range of academic disciplines were identified, and idea of service to user communities become implicit. Research topics were divided into a number of areas such as human-centered research, content and collections-based research, and systems-centered research (National Science Foundation, 1998).

Alongside with US projects, stand efforts of G-7 group, EU and some national funded projects, especially in Australia, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Scandinavian counties, which support the development of a global information infrastructure, access to culturally and linguistically diverse content and preservation issues.

The European Union (EU) funds and promotes a wide range of information-related research and development under Directorate–General XIII, Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research. Many other countries have established national information infrastructure programs and associated research and development support mechanisms.

Among many important events lets us underline an international conference organized by UKOLN on behalf of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), CNI, BLRIC, CAUSE and CAUL in 1997. (Beyond, 1997). The Conference 'Beyond the Beginning: The Global Digital Library', brought a number of consistent themes, which clearly shown diversity of interests and preoccupation's:

• related to the developing world of digital information, and its impacts on professionals and infrastructures;
• related to the changing relationships between information, education and learning, with their fascinating and tantalizing glimpses of possible societal futures;
• related to measuring activities in the information field, in real institutions and in research environments;
• related to progress in the essential field of metadata, where it was obvious that efforts continued to make the internet live up to its potential by making its contents easy to navigate; and
• related to recent developments in the domain of user authentication;
• related to current issues in the fraught area of intellectual property, source of thorny problems made even sharper when global requirements are taken into account.

The Conference, as many others organized since the mid 1990's, including CUC conferences, gave opportunity to many researchers and practitioners to present results of their DLs research and development programs.

When deciding about building up DL’s and providing their content on the Internet, three critical groups of issues have to be looked upon:

• who is the intended user population,
• what are the unique features of the content that is provided and,
• how to ensure the quality of the content.

These issues form the framework for content related work and have to be understood by all of those engaged in planning process of DL’s.

The first users of DLs, as it is known, were found among students, teachers/professors, researchers/scholars, librarians, authors, publishers, information providers, and practitioners. Contributors of information resources included primarily publishers, universities, professional societies, libraries, authors, editors, and compilers. (Borgman, 1992). Today, we can assume that the users as well as providers belong to a much wider audience. Thus the need to organize content and making it available at most effective and efficient way becomes very important.

When deciding about the content that needs to be provided in the DL, one has to understand users' information needs and access capabilities of the intended user population. Together with the building up of infrastructure, these issues could be seen as necessary prerequisites.

The other ‘big issue’ is the type/s of content that can be presented in DL’s, including selection principles and policies. This could range from conversions of historical materials, cultural heritage etc. to kinds of information that have no analogues in the physical world.

There is no doubt among professionals that transferring online public access catalogs (OPACs) to the Internet for wider public use was an early example building up the connections between conventional information formats to digital ones. But, these attempts also provoked discussion about the next stage of development which, alongside with bibliographic data, have to offer full-texts, images, and possibilities of users’ interactive roles. A wide range of digital collections stand today between the traditional library and the digital library, and the story about ‘hybrid libraries’ could be taken as a hot one at the moment. There is no doubt that successful 'hybrid library' would offer users seamless access to integrated print, electronic, local and remote resources, thus making the whole concept depending on the content offered in digital form as well as on best access provided to all sort of resources.

Currently, pilot projects related to DLs or better to say digital collections are underway in Croatia as well, including digital collections of Croatian cultural heritage, exam literature collection, digital textbooks, virtual medicine etc.

One of issues of special interest to the whole DLs community is preservation of digital materials. National libraries or other repositories, which are often major contributors to electronic library networks, are in the position to negotiate the rights to acquire electronic content. Therefore, legal deposit may be a formidable tool for the enhancement and harmonization of practices concerning public access to electronic information (UBC Recommendations, 1999). But, national libraries which have specific duties concerning national bibliographic services could also play an important role in reviving cultural identities by promoting content which cannot be easily commercialized in a global context. This is especially important for 'small nations' which have to find way to complement information provided by widely used search engines, whose search structure is English oriented.

As in many other countries in the world, foundations for the revolution in dissemination of information in Croatia were set with the advent of national academic and research communication network - CARNet. From the early 1990’s till today, CARNet has been developing not only information infrastructure but also providing or making possible to its members to provide network related content. CARNet users and providers have at their disposal different applications and programs (for the access, processing and organization of information), and can rely on network standards and protocols (for connecting networks, protecting privacy of an individual, security of information, security of networks) as well as on professionals who assist teachers, application and service developers, and users in general. (Vučić, 1998)

One of CARNet’s fields of interest is connected with the evolution of DLs in Croatia, as it is obvious from this year’s CUC as well as from some pilot projects which involve and perpetuate cooperation between scientists from different fields.

It has been shown that the variety of concerns within the DL's research community reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the topic and the necessity of bringing members of these communities together. This statement holds good for Croatian DLs community, since some of its members who are based in computer science are largely concerned with enabling technologies and networks, could only develop great infrastructure, but without relevant content. The others, based in library and information science are largely concerned with content, organization, user behavior, and publishing, but their efforts will be of no account if they do not dispose of proper technological and communicational infrastructure. The research related to sociological or economical issues of DLs is needed to explain specific social context and economic models, respectively, and applications of DLs research in areas such as education, health, geography, archeology, psychology etc. are bent upon using best experience to development of their own disciplines.

I would like to stress that DLs are not 'specialty' to any one field or area of research or practice, to any one social institution, or to any one community. Thus, any serious attempt, and especially initiatives to build up the national DLs program should call for better cooperation and exchange of ideas, knowledge and experience.

Interest in digital libraries research and practice has expanded rapidly throughout the 1990s. Major funding initiatives in the U.S., European Union, and elsewhere have influenced research and development. Nevertheless, the term "digital library" (as well as terms 'electronic library' and 'virtual library') has still multiple meanings and many definitions are used. Research areas include variety of topics ranging from ‘high end computing and computation’, ‘large scale networking’, ‘high confidence systems’, to ‘human centered systems’ and ‘education, training, and human resources’. (Borgman, 2000)

DL's could be seen as a qualitative base for services which stand to benefit from research on almost all aspects of providing knowledge and information, ranging from content, collections to use and users' communities.

Conversely, researchers studying many digital library problems need partnerships with information institutions (libraries, archives etc.) to study and test in operational settings different social, behavioral, and economic aspects of DLs.

Many fundamental technical problems in DLs research remain to be solved. As DLs become more sophisticated, more practical, and more embedded in other applications, the challenges of understanding and evaluating their uses and users become even more urgent. These are inherently interdisciplinary problems, and will require the contribution of researchers from many backgrounds.

Let me conclude with a statement given by E. Valauskas, one of pioneers in DLs activities: "Give me real books …for the time being, and a real library. I may have CD-ROMs, electronic journals, microfilm, microfiche, books and periodicals on diskette, software, cassettes, computers, and videos in my library, but paper still seems to be a quite popular medium. And the statistics back me up ... Let’s just hope that we use technology not as a means to re-invent libraries in a ridiculous self-image, but as a vehicle to reach a broader audience even better than we do right now..." (Valauskas, 1992)

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