Building Digital Libraries

Librarians embarking on the challenge of building a digital collection have their work cut out for them - and here is the book to help launch and complete the mission! Easy to understand, this guide demonstrates how resources are created, distributed, and accessed - and how librarians can keep up with the latest technologies for successfully completing these tasks. Chapters walk you step-by-step through all of the stages. This book offers detailed advice for: planning for and assessing the purpose of your digital repository; acquiring, processing, classifying and describing digital content; storing documents; choosing a platform; specific technologies useful to digital repositories (XML, SOAP, and more); sharing data; federated searching of repositories; understanding information-access issues; analyzing repository use; and, migrating to new platforms and accommodating new types of data. Librarians looking for a timely, comprehensive guide to creating a digital collection will find this book an invaluable resource.