Discover Digital Libraries

Discover Digital Libraries: Theory and Practice is a book that integrates both research and practice concerning digital library development, use, preservation, and evaluation. The combination of current research and practical guidelines is a unique strength of this book. The authors bring in-depth expertise on different digital library issues and synthesize theoretical and practical perspectives relevant to researchers, practitioners, and students. The book presents a comprehensive overview of the different approaches and tools for digital library development, including discussions of the social and legal issues associated with digital libraries. Readers will find current research and the best practices of digital libraries, providing both US and international perspectives on the development of digital libraries and their components, including collection, digitization, metadata, interface design, sustainability, preservation, retrieval, and evaluation of digital libraries. - Offers an overview of digital libraries and the conceptual and practical understanding of digital libraries - Presents the lifecycle of digital library design, use, preservation and evaluation, including collection development, digitization of static and multimedia resources, metadata, digital library development and interface design, digital information searching, digital preservation, and digital library evaluation - Synthesizes current research and the best practices of digital libraries, providing both US and international perspectives on the development of digital libraries - Introduces new developments in the area of digital libraries, such as large-scale digital libraries, social media applications in digital libraries, multilingual digital libraries, digital curation, linked data, rapid capture, guidelines for the digitization of multimedia resources - Highlights the impact, challenges, suggestions for overcoming these challenges, and trends of present and future development of digital librariesOffers a comprehensive bibliography for each chapter

Dr. Xie is a Professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has been actively involved in the teaching and research of digital library design and evaluation for about 15 years. Her research interests and expertise focus on digital libraries, interactive information retrieval, human-computer interaction, as well as user needs and user studies. She has received several research grants from research grant programs for the study of digital libraries. She is the principal investigator for the Institute for Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant 'Designing Interactive Help Mechanisms for Novice Users of Digital Libraries and for the Online Computer Library Center/the Association for Library and Information Science Education grant 'Universal Accessibility of Digital Libraries: Design of help mechanisms for blind users." In addition, she is one of the senior personnel on the National Science Foundation Grant 'The Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Interactive Resource Center and Advisory Center.' Her research projects range from the identification of types of sighted users and blind users' help-seeking situations in interacting with digital libraries as well as implications for interface design, digital library evaluation criteria and measures from different stakeholders of digital libraries, and social media applications in digital libraries. She has a strong publishing record in the field of library and information science. This book project is a natural progression in the active focus of Dr. Xie's research, as she has conducted a series of highly cited studies on digital libraries, published numerous papers in top-ranking journals, and presented at several national and international conferences. Her book 'Interactive Information Retrieval in Digital Environments" was published in 2008, and the subject of digital libraries is one of the main topics covered in the book."