Are digital libraries, as opposed to physical ones holding books and magazines, detrimental to our culture

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Are digital libraries, as opposed to physical ones holding books and magazines, detrimental to our culture?

Viewpoint: Yes, digital libraries are inherently vulnerable to a wide array of disasters, and they are not adequate repositories for historic manuscripts.

Viewpoint: No, digital libraries are not detrimental to our culture. They increase access and reduce the costs of communication.

Perhaps at the heart of this debate is one's personal definition of culture. Some might define it in tangible terms. They might examine artwork, books, architecture, and styles of dress to better understand aspects of a community. Intangible things might also be considered. Freedom of expression and the various styles of communication people use in their daily lives also help to define culture. Culture is oddly delicate and strong at the same time. Some aspects of culture, such as religion, have been known to endure almost any attack; yet other aspects of culture, such as personal freedom, have been known to be fragile. In some societies, the ability to read a controversial book is made nearly impossible.

As keepers of information, libraries store books that might otherwise be difficult to read or obtain. They are sometimes the only resource for out of print books, offering invaluable opportunities with regard to education and research. In terms of history, libraries preserve important documents, periodicals, and books for future use and study. Almost any historian will say that in order to understand where we're going, we must understand the past and, in that way, the written word should be seen as a critical element in the definition of culture.

As the world evolves, so does our way of producing and maintaining the written word. The computer age brought about a whole new type of library—the digital library. But what effect will digital libraries have on our culture, if any? What will be the cost? Will digital libraries only serve to dehumanize us?

Some say digital libraries are, in fact, more humanizing than physical ones. They point to one's ability to personalize the information shared. However, others find this disturbing. They worry about censorship and the ability to wipe away entire texts with a single keystroke.

When a book is published in physical form, it becomes a part of recorded history. It is a tangible example of the culture in which it is produced. It is also a record of originality, which, in a historical sense, can be verified. Critics of digital libraries often point to the problem of determining what edition of a text is being read.

At their core, the purpose of libraries is the preservation of information. Both sides of the debate would refute the abilities of the other in achieving this goal. Proponents of digitization find several faults with a "paper-based" collection. The cost of paper (both in production, as well as environmentally) can be quite high, especially considering that many thousands of books are simply destroyed when their sales do not reach a publisher's expectations. There is also a cost in maintaining the amount of space physical books take up, with the additional cost of cataloguing and sorting. These spaces are also vulnerable to fire, water, and age. However, digital libraries share some of these problems as well. Servers and databases are vulnerable to natural catastrophe as well as hackers, electrical shortages, and Internet problems. Economically and technologically, digital libraries also have a number of obstacles to overcome. Computers are progressing at an incredible rate as well as the hardware and software required to maintain them. A database preserved with one format may be obsolete in only a few years and the information contained within irretrievable. Also, the cost for updating an entire system every couple of years and transferring the data is exceptionally high.

One aspect of libraries is the exchange of cultural ideas as well as social interaction. Both styles of libraries have positives and negatives in these regards. Although the digital library does not possess the same "face-to-face" interaction that a physical library would have, it does help remove social barriers. Online users feel comfortable interacting in a cyber-environment and are easily able to find others of similar interest. Cultural ideas can be exchanged without the fear of immediate reprisal or prejudice. However, with digital libraries, there are few restraints preventing those maintaining the database from editing or manipulating the data stored within. Access to certain cultural content may be restricted or even refused. The sharing of all ideas is a vital part of a library's existence and function. Culture cannot progress without the exchange of ideas, no matter what some people feel about those ideas.

Perhaps one problem facing the proponents of either style of library is the unspoken belief that "one way is the only way." Many people fear that by accepting the views of the other side it will mean that they are completely surrendering their way of life. However, there may exist a comfortable medium somewhere between these two philosophies. The existence of one doesn't have to mean the demise of the other. In fact, libraries could profit from a meeting of the minds that utilized the best elements of both the physical and digital world.

—LEE A. PARADISE

Viewpoint: Yes, digital libraries are inherently vulnerable to a wide array of disasters, and they are not adequate repositories for historic manuscripts.

Librarians as Guardians of Culture

Libraries are repositories of information, from the scientific and factual to the literary and fanciful, in all sorts in media. The mission of libraries is to collect, organize, disclose, protect, and preserve this information. The duty of professional librarians and the goal of their discipline—information science—is to determine how to accomplish this mission in the best way possible, for the sake not only of their present and anticipated future clientele, but also of posterity in general.

In 1644 the poet John Milton wrote in Areopagitica that whoever "destroys a good book, kills reason itself." The censorship, destruction, and restriction of books has been a standard tool of repressive or authoritarian powers for as long as people have been literate. The Roman Catholic Church maintained its Index librorum prohibitorum (List of forbidden books) from 1559 until Pope Paul VI declared it void in 1966. The Karlsbad Decrees of 1819 ruined many promising academic and journalistic careers in Germany over the next several decades. Even though Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) makes strong antiracist statements, U.S. school boards have sometimes tried to ban the book because it includes the word "nigger."

Because of the power of the printed word to promote free thought and threaten the status quo, the most despotic regimes even discourage literacy. They understand that books contain clear records of science, art, religion, politics, fantasy, exploration, and all human aspirations for better lives and higher culture—in short, all that they wish to control, subvert, or obliterate. But books and their content are destroyed not only deliberately by philistine, barbarous, or dictatorial forces; they are also destroyed unwittingly by well-meaning, civilized people who do not adequately understand the nature of the book as the primary locus of culture.

Librarians are among the busiest guardians of culture because they must constantly and vigilantly resist not only the occasional fanatics who actively seek to destroy books, but also the ordinary gentle souls who believe they are preserving the cultural content of books and other information storage media, while in fact their actions contribute to destroying it. A case in point of well-meaning people accidentally destroying the culture of ages is the use of a kind of format migration called preservation digitization.

Format migration is the transfer of intellectual or artistic content in its entirety and without significant distortion from one medium to another. Examples include microfilming a book, transferring a Hollywood movie to videotape from 35 mm film, making a compact disc (CD) of Bing Crosby songs from 78 rpm records, or, in the case of Johannes Gutenberg in the 1450s, typesetting the Bible from a medieval manuscript. Taking a photograph of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (1503-1506) is not format migration because the content of the photo is less than and inferior to the content of the original painting. When the migration of an entire content has been completed in all of its depth, the original format is sometimes considered expendable. The movie might lose some nuances on video, but Crosby is likely to sound better on a CD than on a record. The typesetter probably would want to preserve the medieval manuscript even after the printed copy appears, but the microfilmer might be less likely to try to preserve the book. Leonardo's original masterpiece will never become expendable, no matter how many other formats portray that image.

Relative Permanence of Media

The standard portable storage unit for personal computers, the floppy disk, was invented in 1971 for IBM by Alan Shugart and David Noble. By 1998 it had undergone a rapid series of improvements, from an 8 in, 33 kilobytes disk to various 8 in, 5.25 in, 3.5 in, and Iomega Zip disks with increasing amounts of storage space. With some exceptions, the disk drives required to read these different kinds of floppies are incompatible with each other, which means that, if the data stored on floppies is to be retained, extensive format migration of software is necessary whenever computer hardware is upgraded.

Providing hardware to read obsolete storage media is not a priority for the high-tech electronics industry. For example, reel-to-reel audiotape players and their replacement parts, which were common and cheap in the 1960s, are scarce and expensive in 2002. Yet, if the information recorded on the original medium is to be preserved for future generations to hear, this hardware must somehow be kept widely available and in good repair. In the 1990s much information was transferred to compact discs with read-only memory (CD-ROMs), but no one knows how long CD-ROMs can last and still be readable. Estimates range from between 10 and 200 years.

For libraries, the costs of preserving electronic media, providing updated hardware about every 5 or 10 years to read them, and migrating formats to accommodate this new hardware are staggeringly high compared to the cost of indefinitely maintaining books on shelves and microfilms in drawers. Cost estimates for maintaining digitized data abound in professional library journal articles. The consensus seems to be that, for every digitized file, the cost of keeping it usable will increase every 10 years by at least 100% over the original cost of digitizing it. These costs include software migration, new hardware, and labor. The maintenance of digital collections is very labor intensive.

In general, the expected lifespan of any particular information storage medium decreases proportionately to the recency of its invention. That is, the usual stuff that ancient people wrote on lasts longer than the usual stuff that medieval people wrote on, which lasts longer than the usual stuff that we write on today. Cave paintings on stone exist that are tens of thousands of years old. Clay tablets from ancient Babylonia and papyrus scrolls from ancient Egypt survive, as do vellum and parchment manuscripts from the medieval era. The average paper made in 1650 is more enduring than the average paper made in 1850.

Audio has migrated, not always successfully, from Thomas Edison's wax cylinders to 78 rpm records, 33 rpm records, reel-to-reel tapes, 8 track tapes, cassette tapes, CDs, digital audio-tapes (DATs), and beyond. Media deteriorate, and hardware to preserve or rescue them cannot always keep pace. Frank Zappa's reel-to-reel audiotapes from the 1960s were discovered in advanced states of deterioration in the 1980s. Fortunately most of the music was able to be recaptured digitally and transferred to CDs, but that is only a temporary solution.

Nitrate-based movie film can literally burn itself to ashes and acetate-based film is subject to vinegarization. Polyester-based film is considered safe, but it can still shrink away from its emulsion. The movie Star Wars (1977) had to be digitally restored in the 1990s. The result was magnificent, but precarious. Film negatives, when properly cared for, are more permanent than digital photography. Film librarians and preservationists know how to keep film negatives intact for hundreds of years, but no one yet knows how to preserve digital media for that long, or even whether it is possible to do so. The format migration of movies is mind-boggling. From nitrates and acetates to safety films, movies since the late 1970s have appeared in Betamax, video home system (VHS), laser disc, and digital versatile disc (DVD) formats.

Through all of these media developments, the codex form of the book has survived nearly unchanged since the fifteenth century. It is durable, versatile, functional, and simple. It requires nothing except the naked eye to read it. When printed on nonacidic paper and kept from fire, moisture, and other dangers, it easily lasts for centuries.

Digitization for Preservation versus Digitization for Access

Given the nature of the various media, preservation digitization does not work, and thus it is folly for libraries to pursue such a policy. Sometimes when library administrators choose digitization to preserve the content of fragile materials, they fail to realize that the digital medium will soon prove even more fragile than the medium it supersedes. The content, already in danger from its old medium, will be in even more danger from its new medium.

There is more to content than just the words and images on a page or the sounds on a tape. The book itself is physical evidence of the time and culture in which it was current. For example, the same seventeenth-century text may have appeared in simultaneous editions. Printed in a large format (folio or quarto) and bound in tooled calf, it would have been a limited edition with specialized appeal to a wealthy clientele; in a small format (octavo or duodecimo) with a plain sheepskin binding, it would have been a common, inexpensive trade publication intended for a wide audience. Such primary physical evidence of the history of the transmission of knowledge is lost by digitization, thereby diminishing the worth of a library's collection, which is determined by its research value.

Books printed on acidic paper present a major preservation problem. OCLC World Cat, the world's largest database of book titles, contains thousands of records for books that no longer exist, but existed in 1969 when this database was founded as the on-line catalog of the Ohio College Library Center. Many of these losses are due to acidic paper. Deacidification of paper preserves the original book, but either electronic format migration or microfilming can destroy that physical evidence. Moreover, deacidification makes economic sense. In the 1990s, counting both materials and labor, an average-length book of 300 pages cost between $85 and $120 to microfilm, photocopy, or digitally scan, while mass deacidification cost only $17 per volume.

Techniques, procedures, and policies for indefinitely preserving printed materials are well known and widely practiced, but no one knows how to preserve content that exists only in digital form. Print it out and save the hard copy? Very cumbersome and labor intensive. Back up the digital files to multiple sites? Then what to do when the hardware to read them becomes scarce? Download source code from the Internet to on-site files? Then what to do when the author of the on-line file changes the code? How many versions and which versions of each file should be preserved? Producing a new edition of a printed book or article takes months, but updating a computer file to produce a new edition of a Web page takes seconds. With books, typically the first or the latest edition is definitive; with Web sites or computer files, how can we know?

As digital full-text document delivery services between far-distant libraries become more common; as the publishers of academic, professional, and scientific journals and even popular periodicals move toward publishing only on-line versions; and as digitally scanned hard copy is discarded, another nightmare emerges for preservation librarians.

Weeding, the process by which libraries occasionally dispose of parts of their collections, is a necessary evil from the point of view of library administrators who must save shelf space. However, it is a despicable and unforgivable practice from the point of view of historians, antiquarians, and connoisseurs of the book arts. In the long run, libraries never prosper by weeding, but they often prosper, especially in terms of their scholarly reputations, by refusing to weed. For example, one of the most important scholarly resources in the United States is the collection of the Library Company of Philadelphia. Founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin as a circulating library for subscribers, the Library Company, no longer a circulating library, created and maintains its stellar reputation as a research facility for early Americana in part by never having weeded either its original eighteenth-century circulating collection or subsequently acquired subcollections, even after those books had ceased to be frequently consulted. Digitization is an inadequate alternative to weeding because, even though it preserves the textual and graphic content, it destroys the physical evidence in and of the book.

Digitization is a proper tool for access, not for preservation. The original content in its original medium can be kept in a climate-controlled vault away from the everyday use that will wear it down, while the digitized version of this same content can be made freely available to library users, even thousands of miles away, via the World Wide Web. If used carefully, digitization can be a boon for providing access to otherwise inaccessible collections. It can indirectly aid the cause of preservation by allowing the original medium to remain undisturbed after the digitizing process has been completed. However, microfilming can damage or destroy books and digital scanning can tear paper. Digitization cannot work for archives or manuscripts, because in those cases the format is an inextricable part of the content. Reformatting books or other physically readable media digitally can provide greater access to content, but the preservation of the medium ensures the preservation of the content.

Concern for library security and worry about library disasters increased in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Many irreplaceable archives and artifacts were lost at New York's World Trade Center. Those passengers of United Airlines flight 93 who saved the U.S. Capitol from destruction probably also saved the Library of Congress, which is across the street from the Capitol. In view of all library disasters, whether natural, accidental, or deliberate, one fact must be remembered: machine-readable data, whether analog or digital, is less stable and shorter lived than data that can be read with the naked eye. When a library burns, there is some chance to save the books and even the microfilms, but there is no chance to save the electronic media.

Virtual libraries inherently lack security, with each being only as safe as its server. A better plan to enhance the security of culturally important library collections is decentralization. The Digital Libraries Initiative, which began in 1994 under the aegis of the National Science Foundation, recognizes that the security of materials is gained not by digitization alone, but by decentralizing holdings and using digitization only to make their content more widely and democratically available.

—ERIC V.D. LUFT

Viewpoint: No, digital libraries are not detrimental to our culture. They increase access and reduce the costs of communication.

The promise of digital libraries is a world where ideas are more available, where individuals have new ways to express themselves and be heard, and where the costs of communications can be minimized. The threats include the ham-fisted use of technology, the deaths of small, authentic cultures, and the loss of the aesthetic joys of books and magazines.

These risks are real. History is full of instances, from manned flight to the use of pesticides, where innovations have brought disastrous, unintended consequences. Culture can be lost irretrievably, as was proven with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, beginning in 48 b.c. The visceral delights of a medium, such as radio theater, can be crushed under the weight of a new form of communication.

Certainly, the advent of digital libraries changes our time-honored relationship with books and magazines. This relationship includes access to knowledge and respect for learning, deliberation, and the official record. The written word has been key to shifts in power across social strata, the emergence of new ideas, and the establishment of safeguards for freedom, including freedom of the press. Much of the world's law, art, and religion has been built and sustained by the written word. How will this culture be altered by the juggernaut of digital libraries? Will people have more or less freedom? What institutions will be challenged? How will power shift? What will be lost and what will be gained?

Fundamentally, digital libraries create new paths to knowledge. They change who has access to information, what form this information takes, how it is filtered, and who is authorized to add to the body of knowledge. Tools such as search engines and metadata coding assume a major role. Ownership and authority are challenged. Digital libraries alter the way we view, understand, and use books and magazines. While this cultural change is inevitable, loss is not. In fact, there is already evidence that digital libraries are enriching our culture.

Functions

From a technical standpoint, digital libraries have much to recommend them. First, their contents are more widely accessible, thanks to electronic connectivity. Millions of publications are now available for free through the Internet. Others are available for fees or with special authorization, such as from business partners.

Access, of course, is more than just having a connection. One also must be able to find the material. Locating materials on-line is possible thanks to ever more sophisticated search engines and indexes. Under most circumstances, finding information within specific documents in electronic form is significantly easier and faster than finding the equivalent information in books or periodicals. Can this efficiency work against understanding and against the serendipitous acquisition of knowledge? While there is definite value to a "library effect," wherein books, periodicals, or paragraphs that are nearby the sought material provide new insights and enrich contexts, there are technical analogues. Tools, such as collaborative filtering, can provide similar outcomes to the library effect through suggesting or presenting similar materials. Even if these tools do not provide an exact replacement, digital libraries create a variety of new ways to grab a reader's attention and create awareness by clustering documents based on key words, expert opinion, algorithms tied to use, and many other models.

There is no denying that today the form factor of the printed word is superior to accessing written material through personal computers, personal digital assistants, and electronic books. Markup on paper is simple, and there is no concern about batteries or glare or the intrusive sounds of fans and disk drives. However, these liabilities should be balanced against the new electronic capabilities to share markup, commentary, and references globally. The hyperlinking of documents to share references is enormously valuable.

Hyperlinking allows a level of personalization—enriching material to user specifications, providing explanations on demand, and, through expert finder technologies, providing access to real-time human help. An individual can collect and organize information that is directly relevant to his or her point of view. Effectively, this collection can represent a subjective view of the world, which can be easily shared with people of similar interests.

Socially, digital libraries support the creation of smaller-scale communities, made up of people with shared goals or interests. Perhaps these digital communities do not have the same commitment and mutual concern as those communities that literally rub shoulders at physical libraries, but digital libraries provide their own starting points for face-to-face interactions. For those with rare needs and interests, digital libraries may provide the only alternative to being isolated.

A key element of a strong and vibrant culture is the support and protection of creative works. Digital libraries do not eliminate copyright protections, but they do make it easier to copy and distribute works without the permission of their creators. Napster, Gnutella, and other file-sharing tools have enabled large-scale abuses that have taken valuable intellectual property from artists, writers, and communicators. While some creators are happy to have their work distributed widely and certain models indicate a financial advantage, others assert that this inhibits them from producing original works. However, with cryptography, digital water markings, and other protective technologies, it is getting easier to identify and punish those who pirate digital works. Beyond commercial concerns, many writers have discovered that the Internet and text have allowed them to circumvent the publishing industry and find an audience.

In the near term, there are specific problems with the inclusion of copyrighted materials in digital collections. New and old publications are easily incorporated. Books and periodicals created after the Internet revolution have specifications in their contracts for electronic distribution. Older materials can be included because they are out of copyright and in the public domain. But publications from the decades in between cannot easily be added to most digital libraries; this omission is serious and important. It can only be hoped that some legal or social solution will be found so that an historical quirk does not significantly twist research during the coming decades, while this material is less easily accessed by researchers.

Use

A persistent concern among critics of digital libraries is that they will steamroll smaller, more fragile cultures. This result would occur both because of the overwhelming presence of the amplified cultures and because of the tendency for the majority culture to absorb elements of minority cultures. Several historical instances and current trends illustrate this concern. For example, the number of languages used on a dayto-day basis by people in the world has been shrinking each year. On a less visible scale, food services have become homogenized due to the overwhelming advertising power of chain restaurants, which often gain a competitive advantage over local, quirkier restaurants. Pervasive media, such as radio and television, have reduced the number of regional dialects and accents. Even when authentic cultures are not annihilated, they can be lost. There can be a mélange effect of transforming distinct cultural artifacts into something that is more digestible by the larger population, for example the conversion of traditional folk music into popular music.

It is indisputable that digital libraries provide advantages to those cultures that can most easily access and leverage their possibilities. The structure of searches and cataloging is inevitably biased toward those who structure and catalog the material. Given the capabilities of digital libraries to reconfigure modular versions of text, individuals and groups can easily sample, combine, and reinterpret traditional texts. Besides expertise, there is concern that the expense of digital tools distorts the culture by giving a louder voice and more power to the wealthy. However, the trend toward ever cheaper communications and computing power makes it likely that cultural dominance based on an ability to pay for technology will be less of a challenge than paying for printing presses and the physical distribution of books and periodicals.

The widespread distribution and availability of digital texts concerns some critics. Neil Postman, a professor of culture and communications at New York University, points out that cultures retain their power and define themselves as much by what they are able to keep out as by what they are able to create and use. As an example, he cites the challenges faced by cultures that define themselves by a literal interpretation of sacred scripts when they cannot keep out the culture of science.

Historically, there are many examples of cultures that have been too fragile to withstand the introduction of new ideas. A great deal of change and dislocation was created by the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century. Today, the reach of digital technology is worldwide and immediate. Cultures that have been able to withstand previous waves of modernization and have had time to adapt to other challenges may collapse or be distorted by digital library technologies. It is a philosophical question whether people deserve to be exposed to a variety of options rather than to have their information filtered by others. Whether the advance of new technologies simply selects for the most robust and adaptable cultures or whether it selects for the best is a value judgment.

For those who are concerned about the effects of digital libraries in disrupting cultures, there are strategies available. Proponents believe digital libraries can be used to catalog and revivify cultures. With materials in digital form, this process can be abetted by the widespread use of translation tools, which can shift power from dominant languages like English. Given enough societal interest, languages and accents and text can be preserved in a rich and complete manner without having to overcome the traditional burdens of finding an audience and providing capital in the physical world of books and periodicals. There are already potent examples of "dead" languages, such as Hebrew and Irish, being revived. These may be used as models by those who are concerned that authentic cultures will be destroyed or turned into stuffed animals on display in digital libraries. Even reinterpretation and combinations can enrich cultures. In the hands of the composer Aaron Copland, the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" became Appalachian Spring (1944). Historically, Latin was transformed by locals with their own distinct languages into the modern languages of French, Spanish, and Italian.

The values of the culture that created digital libraries come along with the medium itself. Just as the availability of printing presses established the practical reality that became the principle of freedom of the press, digital libraries bring their own forces for social change. For those who believe that Western culture, with its traditions of analysis and logic, advocacy, and free enterprise, is inherently destructive to the human spirit, there is little that can defend digital libraries. The best that may be said is that the more dehumanizing effects can be mitigated. For example, materialistic aspects can be reduced by making major elements free, as has been advocated by the open source movement. In fact, one of the first projects to spring forth from the electronic community was Project Gutenberg, which since 1971 has enlisted volunteers to convert printed books into free, digital form so they can be made more widely available.

Aesthetics

But what about the feel of a book in one's hands? The smell of the paper and ink? The crisp music of pages turning? What about the special sense of having a personal collection of books on the shelf, or the experience of giving or getting an inscribed copy of a book? Books are more than just content. In the cases of the Koran, Talmud, and Bible, they are venerated religious objects. Periodicals bring their own thrill because they arrive fresh, new, and colorful in the daily mail. Libraries have their own presence, with a hush and a history and experiences of using your library card for the first time. Can digital libraries replace any of these feelings? Can they ever create the same joy or ambience or even sense of awe?

The answers to these questions are inevitably mixed. The complete elimination of physical books would represent a significant aesthetic loss. But the book has faced and adapted to challenges over time. Television and radio have not eliminated the written word. Audio books sell far fewer copies than their original printed versions. It would be an underestimation of the robustness of printed media to assume that digital libraries could vanquish them in the foreseeable future.

It can be argued that the creation of paperback books, which are routinely pulped, reduced the respect for books and possibly for learning. Anything that is cheap and common must gain respect and dignity from something other than scarcity. Indeed, some paperbacks have become collectors' items, and important writers have established themselves in the paperback market. These facts give hope to digital writers, whose work can be eliminated with the flip of a switch. A direct aesthetic benefit of digital libraries is environmental—they keep paper out of landfills and leave trees standing. The aesthetic potential of digital libraries should not be discounted. The medium is still young. It will undoubtedly spawn its own artists and designers who will take hyper-linking, multimedia, and all the other tools the technologists have provided to create something beautiful. Chances are that this work, a very human endeavor, will grow up to be a valued part of our culture.

—PETER ANDREWS

KEY TERMS

ARCHIVES:

The unique internal records of an institution, typically consisting of unpublished material; best preserved in their original order and format.

CODEX:

The standard form of the book, comprised of same-sized sheets of paper or other thin, flexible material that are gathered at one edge and bound between covers.

CONSERVATION/PRESERVATION (CONS./PRES.):

The theory and practice of protecting books, manuscripts, documents, artworks, sound recordings, etc., so that they still may be used hundreds of years from now and may serve as physical evidence for future scholars. Preservation is preventing damage to materials; conservation is treating or restoring them after they have been damaged.

DIGITAL LIBRARY:

A type of electronic library in which the information is stored only on digital media, such as computer disks and CD-ROMs.

ELECTRONIC LIBRARY:

A repository of information stored on any electronic media, either analog or digital, including audio-tapes, videotapes, computer disks, and CD-ROMs.

FORMAT MIGRATION:

Transferring an entire intellectual or artistic content from one medium to another, ideally without truncation or distortion.

FULL-TEXT DOCUMENT DELIVERY:

A service commonly provided by libraries to put the content of periodical articles promptly into the hands of patrons of other libraries via interlibrary loan. Formerly this was accomplished using photocopies and the regular mail, but as academic, professional, and scientific journals move toward publishing only on-line versions, it increasingly is being accomplished digitally.

OCLC WORLD CAT:

On-line Computer Library Center's international digital database of card-catalog records. It is the largest union catalog in the world, with approximately 49 million records in February 2002. A union catalog is a group of catalog records covering two or more libraries.

VIRTUAL LIBRARY:

A type of digital library that has no physical location and provides client access to materials on-line via a remote server.

WEEDING:

The systematic process by which libraries occasionally select portions of their holdings for deaccessioning and disposal. Digitization is increasingly being considered as an alternative to weeding.

Science in Dispute