Open digital library on digital libraries

Abstract

The information revolution we live nowadays provides the technological power that fuels an unmatched need for preserving, collecting, storing, organizing, propagating, accessing, sharing, constructing, etc. information and knowledge, and digital libraries appropriately support this need. They go beyond the basic functions of searching, browsing, and accessing information, towards being much more adaptive, reflective, contextual, and providing for collaborative environments that allow users to contribute (socially constructed) knowledge to the content, both actively by the means of adding semantic annotations, reviews, and so on, and passively via their use patterns, resulting in a vivid information and knowledge core that benefit of both professional and collective wisdom. In this paper we present our collaborative digital library that we have built to support the learning of the digital libraries subject, as a focused collection of digital objects, along with methods for access and retrieval, for selection and organization, and for maintenance of the collection.