Digital Libraries: Archetypes, Metaphors and Impacts

Overview

This paper overviews some of the various aspects of how digital libraries and their designs will influence and change our lives. As people use both personal and institutional digital libraries, their expectations and uses of libraries will change more dramatically than ever before. Library usage, prestige, aegis, and growth are surveyed in this paper. A key question I hope to address as thoroughly (as possible) is to define where the control will be with digital libraries. Will users have greater control or will libraries be taxed to cope with control of the massive, diverse media they will host? Will we as citizens get to choose what we want to access and what will it cost us both monetarily and culturally?

This paper is divided into the holy trinity of library influences. Creators (or at least the standard archetypes I see forming), the libraries themselves (specifically, the metaphors they will work via) and the users (as individuals and as a culture). I’ll try to survey all of the front-runners in each area to develop a model of what I think will result from the current chaos as libraries move online. It is obvious that we are seeing parts of all of these in some form or another on the World-Wide Web. When possible, I will provide references to exact companies, Web locations or organizations that are shaping our digital future. This paper is at best a static representation of the ethereal digital world and a reflection of the high-stakes games underway between players in the information technology world.

PDF Icon Adobe Acrobat PDF version of the full paper