The Future of Learning with Digital Libraries

Author(s):  
Chang Chew-Hung ◽  
John G. Hedberg

While the prospect of using digital libraries for learning becomes more appealing with growing repositories of resources, it is not clear what factors other than the use of technology, determine the learning outcome for an individual. The focus of research on using digital libraries for learning has been on the richness of information that digital libraries afford and on the ability of digital libraries to organize information for information query and research. Any meaningful learning activity using digital libraries must therefore utilize their features for exploration and information gathering around a well designed task or inquiry, to result in effective higher order learning outcomes. The design of the inquiry task is provided by a teacher or even devised by the student, but it is not necessarily inherent within the digital library. However, digital libraries have the capabilities to be more supportive of student learning by providing tools that support processes such as investigation, analysis, transduction of information and scaffolding of inquiry process. Often, students use the digital library for information gathering but turn to other software applications for organizing information and constructing the arguments and learning artifacts for the learning task. While it requires the teachers’—and maybe students’—resourcefulness to choose the right type of tool for the activity, the future of learning with digital libraries rests on integrating supportive tools into a seamless learning environment.

Author(s):  
James Macharia Tutu

Intellectual property poses a major challenge to digital libraries. This is because access to information in digital libraries is limited by laws, licenses and technology adopted by intellectual property owners. Similarly, intellectual property renders it difficult for digital libraries to make orphan works discoverable and accessible. Furthermore, intellectual property fragments copyright ownership, making it difficult for digital libraries to obtain the right clearance on content. To cope with these challenges, digital libraries have embraced the open access movement which allows reading, copying, downloading and sharing of digital content as long as the creators of the works are cited and acknowledged. Besides, digital libraries offer access to digital works produced under creative commons licenses. These licenses give the copyright owners the liberty to modify the copyright of their works to give room for sharing, use, and building upon the work.


Author(s):  
Hideyasu Sasaki

The principal concern of this article is to provide researchers and practitioners in information science and technology with legal references on the concepts, issues, trends, and frameworks of intellectual property protection regarding multimedia digital library in engineering manner. Digital library is the global information infrastructure in the networked society (Borgman, 2003). A digital library, as an information system, consists of digital contents in databases and retrieval mechanisms. The right protection of digital library is a critical issue in the digital library community that demands frameworks for recouping their investment in database design and system implementation. Intellectual property law gives incentive to advance appropriate investment in database design and implementation with two types of intellectual property protection: copyright and patent (Jakes & Yoches, 1989; Junghans & Levy, 2006). Multimedia digital contents take a variety of forms including text, images, photos, and video streams, which often commingle in multimedia digital libraries. Nevertheless, present legal studies are not satisfactory as the source of technical interpretation of the intellectual properties regarding multimedia digital libraries. The intellectual property protection of the multimedia digital libraries demands clear and concise frameworks.


Author(s):  
Hideyasu Sasaki

In this chapter, we discuss the issues on patent and trade secret issues on digital libraries, especially patentable parameter-setting components which are implemented as computer-related inventions in digital libraries. In addition, we discuss the directions for embedding and protecting numerical parametric information as a trade secret in the patentable parameter-setting components performing retrieval operations of digital libraries with the future of intellectual property protection in the multimedia digital libraries. The scope of this chapter is restricted within the current standard of the U.S. laws and cases in transnational transaction and licensing of intellectual properties regarding the digital library.


Author(s):  
James Macharia Tutu

Intellectual property poses a major challenge to digital libraries. This is because access to information in digital libraries is limited by laws, licenses and technology adopted by intellectual property owners. Similarly, intellectual property renders it difficult for digital libraries to make orphan works discoverable and accessible. Furthermore, intellectual property fragments copyright ownership, making it difficult for digital libraries to obtain the right clearance on content. To cope with these challenges, digital libraries have embraced the open access movement which allows reading, copying, downloading and sharing of digital content as long as the creators of the works are cited and acknowledged. Besides, digital libraries offer access to digital works produced under creative commons licenses. These licenses give the copyright owners the liberty to modify the copyright of their works to give room for sharing, use, and building upon the work.


2013 ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Christophe Geiger

Challenged by new technology, copyright is currently in turmoil. Increasingly regarded by the general public as a curb to the universal dissemination of knowledge, it seems to have no alternative but to include access to information in order to meet the challenges posed by the knowledge society.3 It might even be its ability to bring together opposing but complementary views that will guaranty its durability in the future and whether it can adapt to a new economic, technological and social environment. Copyright law has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to new developments in the past and has the necessary tools to ensure that this continues to be the case in the future, although the massive technological changes will probably require rethinking the mechanisms for its implementation. It is, therefore, necessary not to think in terms of opposing rights, but of the complementary nature of copyright and the right of access to information, so as to reconcile the two, which is both necessary and desirable. The issue of how to accommodate those two rights is of course of particular importance for libraries that wish to use the fantastic opportunities of digital technologies to both preserve and make accessible works in a easy and cost effective way to the public. Conceiving an optimal legal framework, allowing digital libraries to expand while at the same time securing a fair return to creators and editors might therefore constitutes one of the main challenges for copyright in the digital age. Accordingly, it will be necessary, first of all, to reiterate a number of basic principles of copyright law and carry out a brief historical survey. A study will then need to be carried out of how the advent of the information society has changed the existing balances. This will be followed by a brief discussion of recent developments in the legal provisions currently in force. This in turn would lead us to consider both the changes necessary to those provisions to ensure better access to information as well as certain initiatives that are either under way or planned, with the aim of striking a balance between the interests involved.


Author(s):  
Christophe Geiger

Challenged by new technology, copyright is currently in turmoil. Increasingly regarded by the general public as a curb to the universal dissemination of knowledge, it seems to have no alternative but to include access to information in order to meet the challenges posed by the knowledge society.3 It might even be its ability to bring together opposing but complementary views that will guaranty its durability in the future and whether it can adapt to a new economic, technological and social environment. Copyright law has shown a remarkable ability to adapt to new developments in the past and has the necessary tools to ensure that this continues to be the case in the future, although the massive technological changes will probably require rethinking the mechanisms for its implementation. It is, therefore, necessary not to think in terms of opposing rights, but of the complementary nature of copyright and the right of access to information, so as to reconcile the two, which is both necessary and desirable. The issue of how to accommodate those two rights is of course of particular importance for libraries that wish to use the fantastic opportunities of digital technologies to both preserve and make accessible works in a easy and cost effective way to the public. Conceiving an optimal legal framework, allowing digital libraries to expand while at the same time securing a fair return to creators and editors might therefore constitutes one of the main challenges for copyright in the digital age. Accordingly, it will be necessary, first of all, to reiterate a number of basic principles of copyright law and carry out a brief historical survey. A study will then need to be carried out of how the advent of the information society has changed the existing balances. This will be followed by a brief discussion of recent developments in the legal provisions currently in force. This in turn would lead us to consider both the changes necessary to those provisions to ensure better access to information as well as certain initiatives that are either under way or planned, with the aim of striking a balance between the interests involved.


Author(s):  
Mohamad Rahimi Mohamad Rosman ◽  
Mohd Nasir Ismail ◽  
Mohamad Noorman Masrek

Digital library is no longer considered a lavish use of technology but rather a mandatory need for users, especially postgraduate students. Each year, public and academic libraries invest a lot of money to subscribe to various digital resources, such as online databases, electronic books, electronic journals, and electronic magazines. However, many of these organizations have difficulties justifying their digital library investment due to lack of usage among the users. This underutilization of digital libraries is credited to the lack of digital library engagement among the users. Digital library engagement is defined as a deep and long-time use of digital library resources. Some researchers equate engagement to usage; however, engagement goes beyond the generic term of usage and may include multiple dimensions such as affective, cognitive, and behavioral. Previous works on the digital library have mostly focused on the generic definition of use instead of engagement. Researchers believe that the lack of study on digital library engagement causes the underutilization of digital libraries' resources. Despite the rising interest in the digital library, no research has studied digital library engagement predictors. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the predictors of digital library engagement at the conceptual level. A structured literature review methodology was adopted; a total of 135 pieces of literature were included in this study. In total, 30 predictors of digital library engagement were identified, and these predictors were grouped into four factors: technological, individual, organizational, and contextual factors. Grounded on the previous literature on the digital library, the contributions of this paper are as follows: first, this paper identified a list of predictors of digital library engagement from past digital library literature, second, this paper categorized the predictors into four factors, and finally, this paper proposed a conceptual model for further validation of the predictors.


Author(s):  
Arun Kumar Chakraborty

The Chapter begins with a definition of digital library approaches and features, examines ways in which open source and social software applications can serve to fill digital library roles. In order to incorporate Web 2.0 functionality effectively, digital libraries must fundamentally recast users not just as content consumers, but as content creators. This chapter analyzes the integration of social annotations – uncontrolled user-generated content – into digital collection items. The chapter briefly summarizes the value of annotations and finds that there is conceptual room to include user-generated content in digital libraries, that they have been imagined as forums for social interaction since their inception, and that encouraging a collaborative approach to knowledge discovery and creation might make digital libraries serve as boundary objects that increase participation and engagement. The chapter concludes with a review of positive and negative outcomes from this approach and makes recommendations for further research.


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