Digital library applications and interactive Web: from space to virtual place

Abstract

Introducing this session during the Conference Cultural Heritage Online I was looking for finding a reply to the following questions: How librarians and technologists can exploit the potential of emerging technologies? How can the cultural institutions transform the way digital libraries provide services and resources?

In trying to reply to these questions, after the conclusion of the session, I reflected on what the speakers have presented. They have described how emerging technologies can support the integration of different digital collections, can facilitate community building and extend connectivity to the ubiquitous user. However the speakers of the session have evidenced that there are challenges on existing delivery models of traditional cultural institutions, which have to change.

Two new roles were emerging from the presentations: a new role of digital libraries, a new role of users This two roles are two faces of the same coin: digital libraries are participating to a diffused culture of learning; users are actively engaged in creation, modification, and distribution of information objects in digital libraries as learners in a new virtual space.

Analyzing the different presentations, I can say that the digital libraries applications, with a focus on their users, move from the paradigm of cultural institutions as place to the paradigm of digital libraries as virtual spaces for learning.