Notes on Pomerantz

With the rise in DL, regular libraries are becoming more community gathering spaces than storage spaces. Authors goal is to "demonstrate that in many ways digital libraries really are places in the conceptual sense, and will continue to broaden and enrich the roles that libraries play in people's lives and in the larger social milieu" (p. p. 506)

"A library adds value to information resources by organizing them and making them available" (p. 505)

Libraries bring together a physical location with the intellectual virtual space, connecting people and ideas as a community (p. 506)

DL includes: systematic access to info; ideas that the info creates or stimulates; and a community of invested people

?my question: Is the info in a digital library different from that in a physical library?

Digital libraries on their own cannot meet the human needs of users but they can meet the information needs (is this true?)

Place

In the past decade, interlibrary loan has increased as a way to provide access without actual ownership

?Does this mean that curating and selecting texts will become less important to most librarians who will depend on text curated and selected by whomever they are subscribing to to provide access to the materials?

Information architecture determines how the informaiton will be organized and made available to the user (how would the semantic web affect information architecture) (p. 511)

Is it important to be able to separate out physically a special collection? What does it do for information to have a separate room or floor in the library that features a special collection? (p. 512)

Tool to monitor library service quality, LibQUAL+ which asks users how they feel about the space and how the space makes them feel

Should digital spaces "mimic" physical spaces or are there better ways to create inviting digital environments? (p. 518)

Are there some beautiful digital libraries?

See http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/250-plus-killer-digital-libraries-and-archives/ 

Digital libraries are also openning up new possibilities, for example the personal library (p. 519) and even 3 D virtual libraries.

RSS feeds are a way that we can pull users into libraries

Sharium, space where we can collaborate on library projects or information gathering like wikipedia

Information commons, p. 524 which brings together information, technology and people

Comment 1

I found this article very interesting from an ontological perspective: how do places be? What makes something a "place". Pomerantz and Marchionini (2007) clearly feel that place need not be physical. And, while they are somewhat convincing to me, I still feel after reading that a digital library can never be a "place" like a physical library.

Questions I noted as I read

1. Is the info in a digital library different from that in a physical library?
2. What are the limitations with reference work in a digital library?
3. Authors state, Digital libraries on their own cannot meet the human needs of users, but they can meet the information needs (p 506). Is this true?
4. Should digital spaces "mimic" physical spaces or are there better ways to create inviting digital environments? (see Pomerantz and Marchionini p 518)
    
5. In the past decade, interlibrary loan has increased as a way to provide access without actual ownership

Does this mean that curating and selecting texts will become less important to most librarians who will depend on text curated and selected by whomever they are subscribing to to provide access to the materials?

6. Is it important to be able to separate out physically a special collection? What does it do for information to have a separate room or floor in the library that features a special collection? (p. 512)
7. Maybe digital libraries are allowing for more user interaction and input? (p. 526).

These seem to be key ideas in the essay

Three key elements to thinking about place (p. 507)

1. physical conceptual continuum--refers not only to the physical space we find ourselves in, but the evocations of physical space, ideas and images of physical spaces
2. the stakeholders
3. the functions of the place--ideas are selected, stored and in certain formats and structures. Ideas are selected and organized

Authors argue that the structure of physical space differ in what materials they include but overlap with digital in the actual ideas. 

Seems like the focus in this essay is that libraries contain "ideas", so ultimately it doesn't matter within what "place" those ideas are contained.

I got a bit fixated on question 6 above when thinking about the notion of "place".  I have visited many special collections in libraries, and they are pretty amazing physical spaces because they are marked as "special" and designed to reflect the quality of their collection.  I recently went to the San Fran public library and toured their AIDS exhibit. It has a very strong visual effect, and also there is a sense of engagement in walking through the exhibit: would a digital library AIDS exhibit have the same impact?

Pomerantz, J. & Marchionini, G. (2007). The digital library as place. (Links to an external site.) Journal of Documentation, 63(4), 505-533 

1. Author suggests a kind of archived reference material that can then be useful for other users. I wonder if the semantic web could also make this information more useful?

I wonder if digital libraries could add some kind of "mapping" software that a user would use as they did a search so they could trace back their process?