Digital Library Futures

Initiatives at a cross-cultural level, where libraries, museums and archives work together in creating digital libraries, and making their cultural heritage collections available online, are emerging. Leading academic researchers from the cultural heritage and the publishers sectors approach this issue: Digital library user experience: a focus on current user research; Digital library content: what users want and how they use it; Strategies for institutions: how cultural institutions and publishers respond to the digital challenge.

This thought-provoking treatment of timely topic offers important points of consideration for library administrators and managers, as well as scholars of urban planning, public policy, disaster recovery, and related disciplines.

Formally launched in 2014, ALA's Center for the Future of Libraries works to identify emerging trends relevant to libraries and the communities they serve, promote futuring and innovation techniques to help librarians and library professionals shape their future, and build connections with experts and innovative thinkers to help libraries address emerging issues. The first volume in a new series presented in partnership with the Center, Anonymity explores the roles and ramifications of this hallmark of technology. In the virtual realm, anonymity means that such bedrock values of librarianship as privacy, free speech, and intellectual freedom coexist uneasily with the proliferation of fake news, sexist and racist sentiments, and repugnant ideologies. As trusted guardians of knowledge, libraries and librarians can fill a growing need for reputable information and open dialog. Macrina, founder and director of the Library Freedom Project and a core contributor to the Tor Project, along with co-author Cooper, whose important advocacy in archives informs this work, discuss apps (Whisper, Secret) and forums (Reddit) that promote anonymity as a central feature, even as so-called true anonymity remains elusive because of pervasive user data tracking. They also examine how anonymous content has become valuable fodder for both news organizations and clickbait websites. Will the rise of anonymity and the vulnerabilities it exposes, especially for governments and businesses, lead to a movement against it? Or have our society and its technology passed the point of no return? Bringing issues and viewpoints from outside the profession into the conversation, this book will encourage libraries to think about anonymity and what it means for the future of our institutions.

Legal deposit libraries, the national and academic institutions who systematically preserve our written cultural record, have recently been mandated with expanding their collection practices to include digitised and born-digital materials. The regulations that govern electronic legal deposit often also prescribe how these materials can be accessed. Although a growing international activity, there has been little consideration of the impact of e-legal deposit on the 21st Century library, or on its present or future users. This edited collection is a timely opportunity to bring together international authorities who are placed to explore the social, institutional and user impacts of e-legal deposit. It uniquely provides a thorough overview of this worldwide issue at an important juncture in the history of library collections in our changing information landscape, drawing on evidence gathered from real-world case studies produced in collaboration with leading libraries, researchers and practitioners (Biblioteca Nacional de México, Bodleian Libraries, British Library, National Archives of Zimbabwe, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Sweden). Chapters consider the viewpoint of a variety of stakeholders, including library users, researchers, and publishers, and provide overviews of the complex digital preservation and access issues that surround e-legal deposit materials, such as web archives and interactive media. The book will be essential reading for practitioners and researchers in national and research libraries, those developing digital library infrastructures, and potential users of these collections, but also those interested in the long-term implications of how our digital collections are conceived, regulated and used. Electronic legal deposit is shaping our digital library collections, but also their future use, and this volume provides a rigorous account of its implementation and impact.

"This book in the Library Futures Series examines blockchain technology, a concept with far-reaching implications for the future of record keeping"--

This book will show you how to harness sustainable thinking to move forward with confidence into the unknown.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2011, held in Beijing, China, in October 2011. The 33 revised full papers, 8 short papers and 9 poster papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 136 submissions. The topics covered are digital archives and preservation; information mining and extraction; medata, catalogue; distributed repositories and cloud computing; social network and personalized service; mobile services and electronic publishing; multimedia digital libraries; information retrieval; and tools and systems for digital library.

Information in today’s modernized world has become much more attainable with the use of technology. A resource that has fallen victim to this are library services. What was once a staple of knowledge and communication has failed to keep pace with recent advancements in information service providers. Library practitioners need to learn how to manage change, build influence, and adapt their services to remain relevant within local communities. Libraries can continue to play a key role in future aspects of information provision, but proper research is a necessity. Managing and Adapting Library Information Services for Future Users is a collection of innovative research that encapsulates practices, concepts, ideas, and proposals that would chart pathways for libraries of all types to envision and understand how to thrive and remain relevant in the competitive information provision environment. It is expected to motivate librarians and information scientists to probe further into how libraries would better serve user communities of the 21st century who have options of accessing information from sources other than from libraries. While highlighting topics including artificial intelligence, human design thinking, and alternative finance, this book is ideally designed for librarians, information specialists, architects, data scientists, researchers, community development practitioners, policymakers, faculty members, and students seeking current research on emerging advancements in library optimization.

An ambitious rendering of the digital future from a pioneer of media and cultural studies, a wise and witty take on a changing field, and our orientation to it Investigates the uses of multimedia by creative and productive citizen-consumers to provide new theories of communication that accommodate social media, participatory action, and user-creativity Leads the way for new interdisciplinary engagement with systems thinking, complexity and evolutionary sciences, and the convergence of cultural and economic values Analyzes the historical uses of multimedia from print, through broadcasting to the internet Combines conceptual innovation with historical erudition to present a high-level synthesis of ideas and detailed analysis of emergent forms and practices Features an international focus and global reach to provide a basis for students and researchers seeking broader perspectives