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WHEN PEOPLE REFER to e-books, they typically mean device-dependent e-books such as those marketed by Gemstar. These are also what most people probably think of when hearing the term 'e-book'--a [...]

ALL DIGITAL LIBRARY projects are not created equal. Some projects attract millions of dollars of research funding, while others create useful collections without a dime of outside support. Some projects [...]

'WHAT DIGITAL LIBRARY software application should I buy?' asks the typical harried library staff member. It usually means that his (or her) boss decided that, to be modern, they must [...]

COPYRIGHT AS WE presently know it is dead. To be specific, copyright law as it currently stands is not only unenforceable, it is widely perceived by the general public as [...]

LIBRARIANSHIP FACES a pivotal and possibly disastrous problem. Our noble and essential work, for which we labor in quiet and unrecognized solitude, mostly attracts people for whom technology holds little [...]

AS I POINTED OUT in a previous column ('The Most Important Management Decision,' LJ 2/15/98, p. 102), it's essential to hire flexible staff to meet the challenges of building digital [...]

ABRAHAM MASLOW once said, 'When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.' Once you understand XML and the opportunities it offers for [...]

IN A PREVIOUS COLUMN, I discussed the importance of interoperability among digital library projects ('Interoperability: The Holy Grail,' LJ 7/98, p. 38ff.). Users should be able to discover through one [...]

WE DIGITAL LIBRARY developers don't get up in the morning wondering how we can ruin the lives of our patrons. Nonetheless, unintended consequences of our work may damage the capacity [...]

THE COMMON BUSINESS practice of co-branding enables an organization to purchase content or service while making it appear as if it were its own. A typical such arrangement may involve [...]

TWO YEARS AGO, I looked at the issue of selecting items or collections to digitize ('So Much To Digitize, So Little Time (and Money)' LJ 8/98, p. 36-37). Much new [...]

SOME OF US ARE old enough to remember owning and playing vinyl music records. Now, if you don't have an MP3 player, you're nearly ancient history. And between LPs and [...]

RECENTLY THE PRESS has been full of news about how the music industry is trying to shut Napster down to prevent users from swapping pirated music files. But the genie's [...]

NEARLY TWO YEARS AGO, I asserted that print books were going to be around for quite some time ('The Print Perplex: Building the Future Catalog,' LJ 11/15/98, p. 22,24) and [...]

ACQUIRING INTELLECTUAL content on behalf of a particular group of users isn't always as simple as buying it outfight. Librarians have long used a blend of techniques to acquire content, [...]

SOMEHOW THE ART of Salvador Dali seems to be an appropriate accompaniment to an eclectic group of people interested in electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Overlooking Tampa Bay, an international [...]

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE is rapid and constant. Yet our organizations now depend on technology to serve our clientele as they wish to and should be served. But choosing the technologies that [...]

IT WAS THE BEGINNING of February 2000, and although Daniel Greenstein had been traveling for weeks, he was only halfway through his itinerary. As the new (as of 12/1/99) executive […]

OVER TWO YEARS AGO I identified interoperability--the capacity of a user to treat multiple digital library collections as one--as a key digital library challenge (LJ 11/15/97, p. 31-32). In a [...]

THE OPEN SOURCE software (OSS) movement has garnered headlines in a variety of computing journals, and Linux--an open source operating system--has even been touted as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. [...]

A Database for Every Need MANY DIGITAL LIBRARY projects require database software--whether for a catalog of holdings, subject pathfinders, or other kinds of structured information. Database solutions are actually fairly [...]

IN THIS CRAZY, mixed-up world it can be tough to distinguish fact from fancy, hype from honesty, and the next 'killer' application from vaporware. As information bombards us, we must [...]

UNTIL THE LAST FEW decades, the user interface to the library had long remained relatively unchanged. For decades, the only changes in the card catalog were minor tweaks in production [...]

IN AN EARLIER COLUMN ('In-House Digitizing Options,' LJ 9/15/98, p. 30), I described options for digitizing materials in-house. But sometimes you must go outside your organization for the best solution. [...]

BEFORE BEGINNING any project to digitize material (either published or unpublished), you shouldn't assume you have the right to do so. It's an act of publication to digitize something and [...]

WITHIN A DECADE, many libraries have gone from having virtually no online presence to offering an incredible variety of online information resources. No wonder our users are confused. When they [...]

OVER THE LAST SEVERAL years we have made much progress in building digital libraries, but one major problem remains largely unsolved. The digital library is a lonely place. When we [...]

IT'S A VISCERAL, deeply affecting feeling to hold a very old book in your hands, gently turning the brown and fragile pages, experiencing the unique smell of aged paper, and [...]

I RECENTLY TOOK library catalogs to task for being the wrong solution for the right problem--general information discovery (Digital Libraries, LJ 2/15/03, p. 28). But I believe that federated or [...]

NEARLY THREE-AND-A-HALF years ago I wrote about digital reference in these pages (LJ 6/15/99, p. 30ff.). Clearly, we have come a long way. Back then computer-based chat was nearly the [...]

IN LAST MONTH'S column (LJ 10/15/02, p. 26ff), I outlined why it is time for us to rethink our most basic bibliographic standards: MARC elements, MARC syntax, and AACR2 (the [...]

WHEN MARC was created, the Beatles were a hot new group and those of us alive at the time wore really embarrassing clothes and hairstyles. Computers were so large, complex, [...]

FACULTY AND RESEARCHERS at universities worldwide gather and interpret data, advocate new ideas, and extend human knowledge. This work is sometimes shared with other scholars and researchers as working papers, [...]

MY FIRST TIME was on a Gale bus. It was during the recent annual conference of the American Library Association, while traveling between the Georgia World Congress Center and my [...]

AS AMAZING AS technological progress in libraries has been in the last decade, more dramatic opportunities await. One such opportunity, under the prosaic name 'Web Services,' would knit together software [...]

YOU DON'T NEED to be a futurist or a rocket scientist to know that our profession is rapidly changing. Our clienteles--not to mention their abilities and needs--are changing demographically, and [...]

OUR LIBRARIES ARE increasingly dependent on metadata. Besides the obvious (our catalogs), other uses are becoming more commonplace. Virtually any content we digitize and make available to our clientele requires [...]

IN DIGITAL LIBRARY work, we often talk about metadata, what I jokingly call 'cataloging by those paid better than librarians.' A more serious definition would be 'a structured description of [...]

ANYONE WHO HAS worked a reference desk has seen users pleased with a quick and mediocre answer when, with a bit more time and effort, they could get a better [...]

YOU KNOW YOU want it. Or you know someone who does. One search box and a button to search a variety of sources, with results collated for easy review. Go [...]

FOR DECADES, librarians have been cataloging books and journals for their libraries' collections. So it's only natural that some who embrace the Internet talk about 'cataloging the net.' They envision [...]

SO YOU WANT to build a digital library. You have some money or some staff to throw at the project--ideally, both. Now what? More specifically, what do you choose to [...]

AS FAST AS digital libraries are being built, they still remain islands of order in a sea of chaos. Locating them by using web search engines or subject directories is [...]

INFRASTRUCTURE: hardly anyone thinks about it until something goes wrong. It's the computers we rely on to provide information, news, and communication. It's the network that ties them together. You [...]

CATALOGING HAS basically remained unchanged for decades. Despite the development of Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) and the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2d Edition (AACR2), what is recorded about a library item is [...]

Digital librarianship differs from any previous type of librarianship. Sure, you still select, acquire, organize, provide access, and preserve, but these basic library activities are completely different in the digital [...]

Decades ago, OUR professional predecessors laid the foundation upon which so much of library technology rests. Through sheer hard work and determination, they created a metadata standard for the interchange [...]

With the recent influx of millions of dollars in grant funds and a fast-growing awareness of the potential of digital technologies to transform access to information, digital library hype has [...]

Francine Fialkoff said 'yes' to my pitch to her those many years ago for me to write a Digital Libraries column, which debuted in November 1997. It has been an [...]

'Growing up on a farm, you learn to fix just about anything with bailing wire, Later, duct tape came onto the scene.... Digital librarianship isn't all that different. It helps [...]