An article in the Business Section of Sunday's New York Times Business section titled Playing Catch-up in a Digital Library Race reminded me of remarks made by Jim Neal at the VALE conference. It states that the National Library of Norway has already scanned about 170,000 books, 250,000 newspapers, 610,000 hours of radio broadcasts, 200,000 hours of TV and 500,000 photographs. The article by Natasha Singer echoes Jim Neal's thoughts by stating "Until recently, however, many American institutions and academic centers have concentrated on making scans of their own special treasures, or collaborating with one another on themed projects, rather than combining their electronic resources into a single online access point."
The key is having a single online access point. Google Books is a popular resource for digital information, but it can't digitize everything. What is the solution? This is a challenge for today's librarians to construct the digital library of tomorrow.
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