Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…

The "NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Museum Edition," is a co-production with the Marcus Institute for Digital Education in the Arts (MIDEA), and examines six emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in education and interpretation within the museum environment: BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), crowdsourcing, electronic…

Even in the age of Google, digital repositories can add tremendous value to an institution. Yet creating and maintaining these collections is no small task. Digital repository advocates will concede that the challenges in building and maintaining these collections can daunt even the most intrepid supporters. Three repository directors share their…

This paper describes the impact that technological change over the past few decades has had on a number of key interfaces to the library catalog, including the user, resource, abstract/index, and union catalog interfaces. Areas of focus for future development are then highlighted, including: (1) reassessing data requirements and conventions in…

Reviews technological innovations that have allowed the emergence of digital libraries and fostered new multidisciplinary collaborations; identifies areas of collaboration between librarians and engineers; and gives examples from digital spatial library projects funded by the National Science Foundation that involve maps, cataloging, data…

Describes the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) efforts in China, Germany, Canada, Scotland, Jamaica and Brazil. Discusses FirstSearch, an end-user reference service, and WorldCat, a bibliographic database. Highlights international projects developing increased OCLC online availability, database loading software, CD-ROM cataloging,…

With the explosion in information resources being developed by computer scientists, subject specialists, librarians, and commercial companies, the challenge for the information professional is to keep abreast of the most significant developments and to distill the information for a wide range of users. This paper looks at some of the developments…

This paper discusses the indexing, collection, and maintenance processes, as well as the retrieval interface, to public digital libraries. The paper begins by briefly surveying both Internet technical report collections and World Wide Web search engines. It goes on to describe a prototype digital library, the New Zealand Digital Library for…