Call for Chapters: Collection Development and Management in Massive Digital Libraries

Posted February 19, 2016

Proposals Submission Deadline: March 30, 2016
Full Chapters Due: July 30, 2016
Submission Date: October 30, 2016

Introduction

The growth of digital libraries from mere subsets of existing library collections to proportions that rival the largest traditional library print collections has surpassed even the most optimistic predictions. With this swift change, however, comes greater responsibility for librarians to ensure the same levels of veracity, consistency and provenance that were the traditional library’s greatest stock-in-trade. While traditional libraries have nonetheless adapted to print-digital hybrids – and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future – the massively scaled, mass-digitized digital libraries in the vein of Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Gallica, Europeana, and others, promise to push this balance toward an all-digital library model.

While this is not seen as a problem in and of itself, there is a need for exploration of the topic to clearly define potential issues and unanticipated benefits. The term Massive Digital Libraries (MDLs) is proposed to describe this specific class of digital library that has digitized and aggregated millions of titles of print books and to illuminate the issues of scale inherent in these projects. The size of these digital libraries as well as their growing influence increases their importance in the disciplines of library and information science, digital humanities, and computer science.

MDLs’ potential for benefit is equal to their potential for harm; as a result, a clear examination of MDLs becomes necessary. MDLs have raised issues of copyright protection, content access and diversity, collection development, metadata clarity and uniformity, the importance of scanning quality, as well as the question of whether books truly can be separated from their physical containers without impacting their historical values, traditional roles, and contextual meanings.

Objective

This book will examine Massive Digital Libraries, which includes Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Gallica, Europeana, and the like. The publication will seek the opinions, research projects and case studies of those interested in how MDLs impact libraries, library users and librarianship in general. With the shift to the online paradigm, libraries need to examine whether such tools will be adequate for their users’ needs. This book will attempt to examine MDLs from these various angles.

For more information and to submit see: http://www.igi-global.com/publish/call-for-papers/call-details/2104