Important aspects of modern digital libraries

Abstract

Digital Libraries have been the subject of more than a decade of attention by researchers and developers, and yet in all this time implementations have not matched the promises. Even today, when there is new wave of enthusiasm for digital libraries based on a number of open access initiatives, the majority of systems is concentrating on content and provides limited or just basic functions for users. In this paper we first discuss some aspects from a digital library initiatives. We then present what we believe can be expected from a digital library system based on current developments in information technology. We explain the basic functions, which are required to support finding and accessing material by a reader. Next we explain some extended functions, which support the use and re-use of documents-links and annotations-and the need to support learners in addition to readers and writers. Finally, we present our vision for and our concerns about large digital libraries and e-learning portal systems. Our vision include for example intelligent and conceptual search including results visualization, white lists and adaptive user interfaces. Our concerns are based on a dramatic increase in plagiarism due to the massive amounts of information that is ready for everyone to copy and paste, a fact that may impact on how we conduct and deal with publications in the future.