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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 1–5Cite as

Digital Libraries

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Synonyms

Electronic libraries

Definition

Digital libraries (DLs) are complex information systems that have facilities for storage, retrieval, delivery, and presentation of digital information. They are complex in nature because of the broad range of activities they may need to perform, and because they may need to serve multiple types of audiences. Thus, the broadest definitions include the people and agents/actors involved, as well as the software, content, structure/organization(s), services, policies, procedures, etc.

Historical Background

One of the earliest detailed works about digital libraries (DLs) was prepared by Licklider [8], who envisioned a network of computers with digitized versions of all of the literature ever published. However, the term “digital library” became widely used only around 1991, in connection with a series of workshops funded by the US National Science Foundation, which later led to significant NSF support of R&D DL projects (http://www.dli2.nsf.gov/),...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Candela L, Castelli D, Ioannidis Y, Koutrika G, Pagano P, Ross S, Schek HJ, Schuldt H. Setting the foundations of digital libraries: the DELOS manifesto. D-Lib Mag. 2007;13(3/4)

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  3. Digital Library Curriculum Development Project homepage (2007). http://curric.dlib.vt.edu/

  4. Gonçalves MA. Streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, and societies (5S): a formal digital library framework and its applications [PhD thesis]. Virginia Tech: Department of Computer Science; 2004.

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  5. Gonçalves M, Fox E, Watson L, Kipp N. Streams, structures, spaces, scenarios, societies (5S): a formal model for digital libraries. ACM Trans Inf Syst. 2004;22:270–312.

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  8. Licklider JCR. Libraries of the future. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press; 1965.

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  9. Pomerantz J, Oh S, Wildemuth B, Yang S, Fox EA. Digital library education in computer science programs. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries; 2007.

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  12. Reddy R, Wladawsky-Berger I. Digital Libraries: Universal Access to Human Knowledge – A Report to the President. President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), Panel on Digital Libraries; 2001.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

    Venkat Srinivasan, Seungwon Yang & Edward A. Fox

Authors
  1. Venkat Srinivasan
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  2. Seungwon Yang
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  3. Edward A. Fox
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Venkat Srinivasan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Dept. of Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara, 93106--5110, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Amr El Abbadi

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Srinivasan, V., Yang, S., Fox, E.A. (2016). Digital Libraries. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_874-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_874-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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