Digital libraries present the next step in the development of complex information systems aiming to be knowledge management centers of the whole society. Their development started a decade ago and since then digital libraries have grown from initial stages when they were just IT experiments into fully functional institutions serving as centers for knowledge exchange and long term digital content preservation. At that time, scientists and professionals from many fields have been concerned with issued such as building of basic information infrastructure or defining criteria for digitalization of diverse material. In addition to these hot topics through time digital libraries offered some other content: quality digital material suitable for educational purposes as well as selection of many digitized cultural artifacts which made them popular. Current trends in DL development show refinement of initial aims and goals: main topics now include metrics, social implications of DL deployment, creation of user centered services, protection of online collections, human-computer interaction etc. New DL projects are being constantly proposed, bringing together scientists and professionals from many scientific areas and parts of the world in order to make DL better place for knowledge and culture exploration. Understanding these complex information systems and issues surrounding them mean taking active part in evolution of institutions which supply information for students, scientists, IT professionals and many other. Target group: CS, LIS and other student groups, librarians and individuals whose job is closely related to IT but do not have general notion about digital libraries, their functions, role in society, structure, history of development etc.
Participants should leave workshop with:
- basic knowledge about what digital libraries are
- general notion about structure, functions and role of digital libraries in society today
- information about key IT projects having digital libraries in their focus
- reasons for digitization of their (presumably) paper material
- general knowledge of basic procedures of digitalization
- current problems surrounding the DL development
- information on how to obtain more material about DL .