A user's understanding of the libraries they work in, and hence of what they can do in those libraries, is encapsulated in their 'mental models' of those libraries. In this paper, we present a focused case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries, based on observations and interviews with eight participants. It was found that a poor understanding of access restrictions...

Digital libraries are becoming more ubiquitous and their contents can be of interest not only to the communities that create them but also to individuals and organizations around the world. The content of most digital libraries is not visible to web search engines and the internal search engines of many digital libraries do not support cross language access. In this paper, we present some ideas...

The recent academic and commercial e orts in digital libraries have demonstrated the potential for wide-scale, on-line search and retrieval of cataloged electronic content. By improving access to scienti c, educational, and historical documents and information, digital libraries create powerful opportunities for revamping education, accelerating scienti c discovery and technical advancement, an...

A user's understanding of the libraries they work in, and hence of what they can do in those libraries, is encapsulated in their 'mental models' of those libraries. In this paper, we present a focused case study of users' mental models of traditional and digital libraries, based on observations and interviews with eight participants. It was found that a poor understanding of access restrictions...

In comparison to traditional libraries, digital libraries provide efficient and qualitative services by collecting, organizing, storing, disseminating, retrieving preserving the information. Digital support preservation besides making information retrieval delivery more comfortable. It provides online access historical cultural documents whose existence is endangered due physical decay. The maj...

Digital libraries are large, organized collections of information objects. Well-designed digital library software has the potential to enable nonspecialist people to conceive, assemble, build, and disseminate new information collections. This has great social import because, by democratizing information dissemination, it provides a counterbalance to disturbing commercialization initiatives in t...