R. Morales-Salcedo, H. Ogata, and Y. Yano
E-learning, digital libraries, personalizable interfaces, CSCW, CSCL,personal and group spaces
Digital libraries have the potential to not only duplicate many of the services provided by traditional libraries but to extend them. Basic finding aids such as search and browse are common in most of today’s digital libraries. But just as a traditional library provides more than a catalog and browseable shelves of books, an effective digital library should offer a wider range of services. Using the traditional library concept of special collections and the concept of virtual spaces, in this paper we propose that explicitly creating collections using virtual spaces in the digital library—virtual collections—can benefit both the library’s students and teacher’s contributions and increase its viability. We first introduce the concept of a virtual collection, outline the costs and benefits for defining such collections, and describe an implementation of collection-level metadata to create virtual collections for learning proposes in a distributed digital library. We conclude by discussing the implications of virtual collections for enhancing interoperability and sharing across digital libraries, such as those that are being developed as part of the Ubiquitous digital library.
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