Digital library is commonly seen as a type of information retrieval system which stores and accesses digital content remotely via computer networks. However, the vision of digital libraries is not limited to technology or management, but user experience. This book is an attempt to share the practical experiences of solutions to the operation of digital libraries. To indicate interdisciplinary routes towards successful applications, the chapters in this book explore the implication of digital libraries from the perspectives of design, operation, and promotion. Without common agreement on a broadly accepted model of digital libraries, authors from diverse fields seek to develop theories and empirical investigations that to advance our understanding of digital libraries.

Digital libraries are now a reality and yet their implementation and use is still not at an optimum. This text examines the various options for setting up digital libraries from digitising information in the first place to providing the interface to access the information held by the digital global library.

"This books presents a holistic view of the new digital library scene ... it is an essential guide to good digital practice and techniques" - back cover.

The technological interoperability of digital libraries must be rethought in order to adapt to new uses and networks. Informative digital environments aimed at responding to heritage, cultural, scientific or commercial demands have taken over the global cyberspace and have redesigned the techno-informative landscape of the Web. However, while the technological models demonstrate their effectiveness and explain to a large extent the creation of digital libraries, archives and deposits, the subjacent concept of uses continues to cause debate. The information technologies used by heterogeneous digital libraries enable a technical interoperability of content. This is not enough to allow the adhesion of a public connected to very different information profiles and techniques. This book explores the avenues of a user-orientated interoperability where the questions of consultation interfaces and content description processes are studied. Discusses Metadata as a resource for linking Provides a practical approach A valuable resource for anyone involved in digital library developments and digital collections and services

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Asian Digitial Libraries, ICADL 2002, held in Singapore in December 2002. The 34 revised full papers, 20 revised short papers, and 14 posters presented together with 7 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 170 submissions. The papers are organized in sections on information retrieval, multimedia digital libraries, data mining in digital libraries, special purpose digital libraries, digital library services, digital libraries for community building, information retrieval and Asian languages, building and using digital libraries, metadata issues, algorithms and protocols, human-computer interaction, and digital library infrastructure.

"This book is an in-depth collection aimed at developers and scholars of research articles from the expanding field of digital libraries"--Provided by publisher.