The roles of digital libraries in teaching and learning

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM April 1995/Vol. 38, No. 4 67

The Roles of DigitalLibraries In Teaching

and LearningGary Marchionini and Hermann Maurer

Libraries have long served crucial roles in learning. The first great library, in Alexandria 2,000years ago, was really the first university. It consisted of a zoo and various cultural artifacts inaddition to much of the ancient world’s written knowledge and attracted scholars from aroundthe Mediterranean, who lived and worked in a scholarly community for years at a time. Today,the rhetoric associated with the National/Global Information Infrastructure (N/GII) alwaysincludes examples of how the vast quantities of information that global networks provide (i.e.,digital libraries) will be used in educational settings [16]. This paper describes how digital

This paper describes how digital libraries are evolvingto meet the needs of teaching and learning and iden-tifies issues for continued development. We distin-guish formal, informal, and professional learningand argue that digital libraries will allow teachers andstudents to use information resources and tools thathave traditionally been physically and conceptuallyinaccessible. We illustrate the types of informationresources digital libraries offer to teachers and learn-ers and discuss some of the issues and challenges dig-ital libraries present for teaching and learning.

How Do Libraries Support Teachingand Learning?A library is fundamentally an organized set of resources,which includes human services as well as the entire spec-trum of media (e.g., text, video, hypermedia). Librarieshave physical components, such as space, equipment,and storage media; intellectual components, such as col-lection policies that determine what materials will beincluded and organizational schemes that determinehow the collection is accessed; and people, who managethe physical and intellectual components and interactwith users to solve information problems.

Libraries serve at least three roles in learning. First,they serve a practical role in sharing expensiveresources. Physical resources, such as books and peri-odicals, films and videos, and software and electronicdatabases, and specialized tools, such as projectors,graphics equipment, and cameras, are shared by a com-munity of users. Human resources—librarians (alsocalled media specialists or information specialists)—support instructional programs by responding to therequests of teachers and students (responsive services)and by initiating activities for teachers and students(proactive services). Responsive services include main-taining reserve materials, answering reference ques-tions, providing bibliographic instruction, developingmedia packages, recommending books or films, andteaching users how to use materials. Proactive servicesinclude selectively disseminating information to facultyand students, initiating thematic events, collaboratingwith instructors to plan instruction, and introducingnew instructional methods and tools. In these ways,libraries serve to allow instructors and students to shareexpensive materials and expertise.

Second, libraries serve a cultural role in preservingand organizing artifacts and ideas. Great works of litera-ture, art, and science must be preserved and madeaccessible to future learners. Although libraries have tra-ditionally been viewed as facilities for printed artifacts,primary and secondary school libraries often also serveas museums and laboratories. Libraries preserve objectsthrough careful storage procedures, policies of borrow-ing and use, and repair and maintenance as needed. Inaddition to preservation, libraries ensure access to mate-rials through indexes, catalogs, and other aids that allowlearners to locate items appropriate to their needs.

Third, libraries serve social and intellectual roles bybringing together people and ideas. This is distinctfrom the practical role of sharing resources in thatlibraries provide a physical place for teachers and learn-ers to meet outside the structure of the classroom, thusallowing people with different perspectives to interactin a “knowledge space” that is both larger and moregeneral than that shared by any single discipline oraffinity group. Browsing through a catalog in a libraryprovides a global view for people engaged in special-ized study and offers opportunities for serendipitousinsights or alternative views. In many respects, librariesserve as centers of interdisciplinarity—places shared bylearners from all disciplines. Digital libraries extendsuch interdisciplinarity by making diverse informationresources available beyond the physical space shared bygroups of learners. One of the greatest benefits of digi-tal libraries is bringing together people with formal,informal, and professional learning missions.

Formal learning is systematic and guided by instruc-tion. It takes place in courses offered at schools of var-ious kinds and in training courses or programs on thejob. The important roles libraries serve in formal learn-ing are illustrated by their physical prominence on uni-versity campuses and the number of courses that makedirect use of library services and materials. Most of theinformation resources in schools are tied directly tothe instructional mission. Students or teachers whowish to find information outside this mission have inthe past had to travel to other libraries. By making thebroad range of information resources discussed in thisarticle available to students and teachers in schools,digital libraries open new learning opportunities forglobal rather than just local communities.

Much learning in life is infor-mal—opportunistic and strictlyunder the control of the learn-er. Learners take advantage ofother people, mass media, andtheir immediate environmentduring informal learning. The

public library system that developed in the U.S. in thelate nineteenth century has been called the “free uni-versity,” since public libraries were created to providefree access to the world’s knowledge. Public librariesprovide classic nonfiction and fiction books, a widerange of periodicals, reference sources, and audio-and videotapes so patrons can learn about topics oftheir own choosing at their own pace and style. Just ascomputing technology and worldwide telecommuni-cations networks are beginning to change what is pos-sible in formal classrooms, they are changing howindividuals pursue personal learning missions.

Professional learning refers to the ongoing learningadults engage in to do their work and to improve theirwork-related knowledge and skills. In fact, for manyprofessionals learning is the central aspect of their

68 April 1995/Vol. 38, No. 4 COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM

work. Like informal learning, it is mainly self-directed;but unlike formal or informal learning, it is focused ona specific field closely linked to job performance, aimsto be comprehensive, and is acquired and applied lon-gitudinally. Since professional learning affects job per-formance, corporations and government agenciessupport libraries (often called information centers)with information resources specific to the goals of eachorganization. The main information resources for pro-fessional learning, however, are personal collections ofbooks, reports, and files; subscriptions to journals; and

the human networks of colleagues nurturedthrough professional meetings and various com-munications. Many of the data sets and computa-tional tools of digital libraries were originallydeveloped to enhance professional learning.

The information resources—both physical andhuman—that support these types of learning arecustomized for specific missions and have tradi-tionally been physically separated, although com-mon technologies such as printing, photography,and computing are found across all settings. Thissituation is depicted in Figure 1. Digital librariescombine technology and information resourcesto allow remote access, breaking down the physi-cal barriers between resources. Although theseresources will remain specialized to meet the needs ofspecific communities of learners, digital libraries willallow teachers and students to take advantage of widerranges of materials and communicate with peopleoutside the formal learning environment. This willallow more integration of the different types of learn-ing, as depicted in Figure 2. Although not all studentsor teachers in formal learning settings will use infor-mation resources beyond their circumscribed curricu-lum and not all professionals will want to interact evenoccasionally with novices, digital libraries will allow

learners of all types to share resources, time and ener-gy, and expertise to their mutual benefit. The follow-ing sections illustrate some of the types of informationresources that are defining digital libraries.

Scientific Data SetsAn enormous amount of attention is being given tomaking data sets collected by scientific projects avail-able to broader communities of users. Internationalefforts such as the Earth Observing System and thehuman genome project demand large investments of

public resources and cre-ate huge volumes of data.

Multiple forces act topromote the develop-ment of digital librariesof scientific data fromthese projects. First, thetools used to collect,transmit, and analyzedata generate or requiredigital signals; thus, theinformation materialsare in digital rather thanpaper form. Second, thedata must be made avail-

able to scientists worldwide on a timely basis, anddigital electronic networks make this possible.Third, the huge public investments involved encour-age scientists to disseminate data as widely as possi-ble to maintain public support and furthereducational and social progress. Providing access tothese data sets through electronic libraries is animportant challenge, especially in the U.S., wherethe law mandates that publicly supported scientificdata be made freely available to citizens (see thesidebar by Gey).

Digital Libraries


Technology

FormalLearning

InformalLearning

(K-12 and College)Professional

LearningInformationResources

InformationResources

InformationResources

Digital Libraries

(Information Resources + Technology)

InformalLearning

ProfessionalLearning

FormalLearning(K-12 and College)

Figure 1. Current model of technologicalsupport for different types of learning

Figure 2. Digital libraries lead to integratedresources and types of learning

One example of how primary data sets are used ineducation is the Earth System Science Community Cur-riculum Testbed project, which links students andteachers in high schools and universities in an effort tobuild an earth system science (ESS) community(http://www.circles.org. The project aims to build acurriculum for the interdisciplinary field of ESS by link-ing teachers of physics, chemistry, biology, and othersciences to ESS scientists and NASA data sets. Teams ofstudents in each classroom explore topics such as acidrain and global warming by taking advantage of a grow-ing electronic community of students, teachers, andresearchers. Using tools such as Mosaic, FTP, and Stel-la, teachers and students in schools in North Americaaccess data sets at different levels of representation,analyze the data, simulate scenarios, collaborate withscientists and students at remote sites, and publishreports. This project, funded as part of the NASA digi-tal library initiative, illustrates how electronic technolo-gy can support collaboration among scientists andstudents and how digital libraries of data, messages, andstudent reports are grown and managed. The ESS com-munity is thus manifested as an organic, evolving digi-tal library that includes primary data sets, conversationsabout them, and the results of using them.

Other Data SetsTextual databases of classic works (out of copyright)and image collections for important artistic exhibitsor museums have been assembled by scholars andmade available through the Internet. (See [13] for acollection of arts and humanities electronic resourcesand projects.) As more schools and individualsacquire access tools and funds, it is likely that privatedigital libraries will move out of specialized marketsto provide access to primary information for a fee.For-profit companies such as publishers of print,music, and film products and radio and televisionbroadcasters own enormous volumes of information,and international information infrastructures willcreate new markets for that information. Teachersand learners will likely not be heavy on-demand usersfor this information but rather want to use it as theraw material for study and for integration intoinstructional presentations. How these materials willbe made available and what “fair use” policies willevolve remain to be determined.

Electronic JournalsAlthough electronic journals are becoming morecommon, they have not achieved as much penetra-

tion as many expected [23, 24]. As electronic journalsdevelop, they will certainly improve informal and pro-fessional learning and will likely become usefulresources in the K-12 arena, which has traditionallymaintained only modest journal collections inschools. Two common approaches to electronic jour-nals are (1) to store files in LaTeX, PostScript orASCII form in a fileserver and email the files or allowFTP access to them (the “generic approach”); and(2) to store documents in hypertext/hypermedia sys-tems and allow on-line browsing and perusal (the“hypertext approach”). The first sidebar gives a sam-ple of electronic journals that use the genericapproach; the second sidebar gives a sample of thoseusing the hypertext approach.

The main problems that these publications solveto different degrees are related to informationretrieval support, display of complex graphics andformulas, and distribution speed and reliability. Arecent journal using the “hypertext approach” isJ.UCS, the Journal of Universal Computer Science(see http://www.iicm.tu-graz.ac.at/Cjucs_root orsend an email for general information [email protected] with subject [info]). Itaddresses these three problems by using a range ofsearching techniques, including scoped searches;using HFT, RTF, and particularly LaTeX and Post-Script as file formats to provide high-quality display;and using a worldwide network of what started as 65“foundation servers’’ to remove many of the access-time problems associated with earlier attempts.

Newsgroups, Listservs, and Mail ArchivesPerhaps the first examples of digital libraries in net-worked environments were the archives producedby the many USENET newsgroups and listservs avail-able through global networks. News reading and fil-tering programs [21, 25] and search tools such asArchie and Veronica [7] provide rudimentary aidsfor locating information in these electronic discus-sions. Listservs are used for specialized projects (theESS project previously mentioned and the Perseusproject both have listservs) and for distance educa-tion courses. In a cable television course taught byMarchionini, a listserv was used by students to pre-sent “one-minute papers” at the conclusion of eachsession. This provided continuity between sessionsand personalized the interactions between theinstructor and students, who would otherwise haveonly remote telephone access during live sessions.In another semester, students in graduate seminars


Although electronic journals are becoming more common,they have not achieved as much penetration

as many expected.

in human-computer interaction taught by Mar-chionini at the University of Maryland and Borgmanat UCLA collaborated on term projects throughemail and FTP services. Students gained broaderperspectives by virtue of the diversity in back-grounds that students from the different schoolsbrought to the courses, and both positive collabora-tions and “techno-bullying” were observed. See [15]for a set of experiences inthe virtual classroom.

In another setting,Maurer used Hyper-G[17] as both electroniclibrary and discussionforum. In a 200-studentclass on “Societal Aspectsof Computer Science,”some 50 high-qualitypapers from specialistswere made available tostudents via Hyper-G asthe basis of a wide-rang-ing electronic discussion.Students were able tocomment on papers andearlier comments, thestructure of the discus-sion being visualizedusing the XWindowsclient Harmony [11].The experiment createda network of over 4,000hyperlinked documents.Students remained“semi-anonymous’’ toencourage free discus-sion: that is, studentswere allowed to choosearbitrary pen namesknown only to each indi-vidual and to the instruc-tor (the latter becausestudent evaluation wasbased on the quality ofcontributions). Theexperiment exemplifiesblurring of the border-lines between electroniclibraries and (CSCW)[8]—the semistructuredthreads of conversationthat make up newsarchives and lists provideanother type of digitallibrary product that willfind increasing use inboth formal and infor-mal learning.

Specialized Hypermedia CorporaA variety of hypermedia materials are becoming avail-able, and these collections are often served from alibrary rather than through dedicated machines inclassrooms. The Perseus hypermedia corpus (2.0)includes about 200 plays, books, poems, and text frag-ments in Greek and in English translation; almost25,000 24-bit color images of vases, sculpture, coins,

and sites; maps; site plans;and a variety of search,navigation, and displaytools [6, 20]. Hundreds ofcolleges and scores ofhigh schools are currentlyusing Perseus to supportinstruction in Greek lan-guage, ancient history,Greek literature, religion,archaeology, and art his-tory. At many sites,Perseus is deliveredthrough a campus net-work. In some sites,Perseus is provided on astandalone machine in alibrary. The many CD-ROM corpora now avail-able for specialized topicschallenge schools andindividuals to be judiciousin acquisition and use ofthese materials, thusincreasing the need forresource-sharing func-tions of libraries.

Another instance of anemerging corpus of mate-rial entering digitallibraries is the PC library[19], a product developedby a publishing consor-tium. Originally designedfor standalone PC appli-cations, it has now migrat-ed to client/serverarchitecture. At the timeof writing, some 40 sub-stantial reference vol-umes, including a10-volume encyclopedia(“Meyer A—Z”), dictio-naries for most Europeanlanguages (“Langenschei-dt dictionaries”), thefamous German-English“Oxford Duden,” andstandard scientific refer-ence books on medicine,

Digital Libraries


Selected electronicjournals providinggeneric accessNumerische Mathematik Electronic Edition

Sponsor: Journal of the same name

Topic: Mathematics

Format: TeX and LaTeX

Features: Every electronic issue some two weeks

before the printed issue

Access: [email protected].

Electronic Publication

Sponsor: MIT

Topic: Theoretical computer science

Format: LaTeX or PostScript

Features: Subscribers receive a notice each time an

article is published; available for FTP


EJournal

Sponsor: University of Albany

Topics: Theory and practice surrounding electronic

“text”; social psychological, literary, economic, and

pedagogical implications of computer-mediated

networks

Format: Plain Ascii

Features: Listserved


Asia-Pacific Journal (APEX-J)

Sponsor: University of Hawaii

Topic: Education in multicultural, international

campuses

Format: Plain Ascii

Features: Quarterly


Digest of Physics News Items

Sponsor: American Institute of Physics,

by Phillip F. Schewe

Topics: Physics

Format: Plain Ascii

Features: Posted in the Internet newsgroup

sci.research; back issues can be downloaded by FTP

from NIC.HEP.NET.

Access: [email protected]

computer science, and CAD are either available or inpreparation. Some of them contain high-quality dia-grams and pictures. Two aspects of the PC library areparticularly worth mentioning. First, an arbitrary sub-set of the books in the library can be “activated” atany time, and all searches (including fuzzy full text)

are carried out only within the books activated. Sec-ond, the PC library is not just a set of static books butcan be used in a variety of modes other than read-only: users can leave comments (for themselves or forothers); searches can be activated from other appli-cations and the results used in those other applica-tions; books can be augmented by additional(personal) entries, including multimedia material(e.g., personal pictures or video clips); and materialis automatically hyperlinked using a keyword-basedtechnique.

As vendors develop new products and as these spe-cialized corpora become available through globalnetworks, libraries should take responsibility for

ensuring secure and legal usage by students andteachers. One example of how libraries and comput-ing centers cooperate today is negotiation of sitelicenses for these products and maintaining firewall(access authorization) services to ensure that licens-ing agreements are met. These collaborations can

only grow as acquisition, organization, and dis-semination of specialized software and hyper-media corpora increase.

Indexes and DirectoriesA host of bibliographic and catalog databasesmay be included in digital libraries. Theserange from the more than 20-million-recorddatabase of bibliographic citations in OCLC tothe millions of citations in on-line databases forspecialized literatures such as medicine (e.g.,MEDLINE) and engineering (e.g., NTIS). Ter-tiary databases such as citation indexes anddatabases of directories make information-seeking more effective but require specific skilland effort on the part of information-seekers.Many of the thesauri for specialized literaturesare available in electronic form (e.g., MedicalSubject Headings, ACM Computing ReviewsClassification System), and techniques formerging and filtering these languages to allowusers to search across multiple databases areemerging. Although most indexes to imageand sound collections currently use wordsfrom captions or titles, new pattern-matchingtechniques are emerging to categorize andclassify multimedia objects [10]. In the past,bibliographic instruction has been provided bylibrarians as a supplement to “regular” courses,but widespread availability of digital librarieswill require remote instruction and supportrelated to information-seeking skills andknowledge.

Electronic Search and Display ToolsIt has often been said that the Internet is start-ing to provide the largest library humankindhas ever had. As true as this may be, the Inter-

net is also the messiest library that ever has existed.Navigation and display tools such as Mosaic allowusers to browse the World-Wide Web and display textand multimedia objects. Search tools such as theWide-Area Information Server (WAIS), Archie, andVeronica allow people to search specific directoriesor list archives (see [22] for an overview of tools).However, in addition to index and directory servicesor navigation tools, it has become apparent that such“a posteriori” tools to organize the unstructuredInternet universe are not sufficient. Rather, some “apriori” structuring is necessary. This was done quitesuccessfully first with Gopher [3] and later withWWW [5]. However, “first-generation hypermedia


Selected electronic journalsproviding hypertext access

MUSE

Sponsors: Johns Hopkins University Library and Homewood

Academic Computing

Topic: JHU Press journals

Access: telnet://jhuniverse.hcf.jhu.edu:20001/

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC)

Sponsor: Annenberg School of Communication, Univ. of

Southern California

Topic: Interpersonal and social aspects in communication

networks

Access: http://www.huji.ac.il/www<hr>jcmc/jcmc.html

Electronic Journal of Combinatorics

Sponsors: Georgia Institute of Technology and the American

Mathematical Society.

Topics: Combinatorics, graph theory, and discrete algorithms

Access: http://ejc.math.gatech.edu:8080/Journal/journalhome.html

Newsletter of the National Research Center on Student

Learning (NRCSL)

Sponsor: Learning Research and Development Center

Topic: Education

Access: gopher://gopher.pitt.edu/11/news/lrdc

Journal of Universal Computer Science (JUCS)

Sponsors: Springer Publishing Co. and Graz Univ. of Technology

Topics: All areas of computer science

Access: http://www.iicm.tu-graz.ac.at/Cjucs<hr>root

techniques” do not seem to be sufficient for largeamounts of data; “second-generation techniques”[4], involving distributed database mechanisms,scope definition facilities for searches, bidirectionallink databases [14] for automatic link maintenance,and other advanced techniques, are emerging. Forexample, Harmony [11], the XWindows client forHyper-G, WWW, Gopher, and WAIS, providessophisticated navigational facilities when used inconjunction with a Hyper-G database: The facilitiesinclude visual “local maps” of all in- and outgoinghyperlinks, a 3D landscape generator, a history andhierarchy browser, Boolean searches on attributes,and full text searches including approximate match-es in user-defined scopes that may arbitrarily crosseven the physical boundaries of servers. Such fea-tures will make working with large electroniclibraries less frustrating than it sometimes is now,and will certainly ensure the use of electroniclibraries is more efficient than using large amountsof printed material. As these tools evolve, better inte-gration of search and display will be necessary. Oneapproach is dynamic queries [2] that provide graph-ical representations for database elements and slid-ers for adjusting parameters on those elements. Asparameters are changed, the graphical display isimmediately updated, providing immediate visualanswer sets.

Digital Libraries In Education: Promises, Chal-lenges, and IssuesThe examples above illustrate that digital librarieshave obvious roles to play in formal learning settingsby providing teachers and learners with knowledgebases in a variety of media. In addition to expandingthe formats of information (e.g., multimedia, simula-tions), digital libraries offer more information than

most individuals or schools have been able to acquireand maintain. Digital libraries are accessible in class-rooms and from homes as well as in central libraryfacilities where specialized access, display, and usetools may be shared. Remote access allows possibili-ties for vicarious field trips, virtual guest speakers,and access to rare and unique materials in classroomsand at home. The promise is one of better learningthrough broader, faster, and better information andcommunication services. These physical advantages

promise several advantages to teachers and learnersby extending the classroom; however, as with all tech-nologies, there are costs and tradeoffs associated withthese advantages.

One clear difference between traditional librariesand digital libraries is that digital libraries offergreater opportunity for users to deposit as well asuse information. Thus, students and teachers caneasily be publishers as well as readers in digitallibraries. The number of student-produced “homepages” continues to grow as teachers and studentsnot only bring digital library information into theclassroom but move the products of the classroomout into the digital libraries. Just as distinctionsbetween publishers and readers are becoming lessclear in networked environments, Internet access inclassrooms blurs distinctions between teaching andlearning. Students bring interesting and importantinformation to class discussions and in many caseslead teachers and classmates to new electronicresources and tools. Teachers increasingly will findthemselves in the important roles of moderatorsand critics, modeling for students ways to examineand compare points of view and look critically atinformation. Teachers who have begun using net-worked materials in their classes are early adoptersof new ideas and technologies and are comfortablesharing power with students. Just as “authority ofinformation” has become an issue in professionalcommunities that leverage networks, the authorityof information in classrooms, which has traditional-ly rested solely with teachers, will increasingly bechallenged by students locally and remotely.

Digital libraries will support communities of inter-est and allow more specialized courses to be offered.For example, students at different high schools in theCoVis project collaborated by sharing a digital library

of weather data [12], and students in the ESS Com-munity Project described earlier share a variety ofNASA data in classes in Washington, D.C., St. Louis,Los Angeles, and New Mexico. Telecourses havealready allowed rural schools to offer advanced place-ment courses to a few students by sharing teachersacross geographical distances. As network accessimproves in schools, highly specialized coursesoffered on a distributed basis will become common,and it is likely that some of these will be offered by

Digital Libraries


The most important changes digitallibraries bring may be in advancing

informal learning. The same advantages that accrueto classroom learning also accrue to individuals pursuing

their own learning.

students. Internet-based courses have already beenoffered successfully, although mainly on the topic ofthe Internet itself, and network-based electronic con-ferences have proven effective (e.g., University ofMaryland Professor Thomas O’Haver recently ran achemistry conference that involved 450 participantsfrom 33 countries).

The most important changes digital librariesbring may be in advancing informal learning. Thesame advantages that accrue to classroom learningalso accrue to individuals pursuing their own learn-ing. In many ways, Freenets are extensions of thepublic library system. Digital libraries are digitalschools that offer formal packaging for specific skillsand topics as well as general browsing for creativediscovery and self-guided, informal learning. Thedesign community has already begun to considerways to support learning on demand in electronicenvironments [9] to address problems of coverage(since no learning system can cover all things learn-ers may need) and obsolescence (systems and knowl-edge changes).

For the promises to be fulfilled, issuesof access and intellectual propertymust be addressed. Although the U.S.Library of Congress has committed tobecoming a digital library, it can makeavailable only documents or findingaids created within the library or gov-

ernment agencies, items out of copyright, and rep-resentations from exhibits or events sponsored bythe library. Although these represent enormousquantities of information, the core holdings of thelibrary—the books, films, and recordings—cannotbe made available electronically under current copy-right law. Whether the copyright law will change toallow materials to be accessed electronically undersome educational fair-use arrangements remains tobe settled. Curators, theater owners, and publishersare loath to give up restricted access, due to under-standable self-preservation concerns. Some of thesefears may be unfounded. For example, in the 1930s,owners of professional baseball clubs allowed onlyWorld Series games to be broadcast on the radio,because they feared that attendance at regulargames would go down if all games were broadcast.When Lawrence MacPhail in Cincinnati began tobroadcast the Reds’ games in 1938, entire new mar-kets opened up beyond the traditional male atten-dees—women and men who previously did notknow much about baseball became interested andattendance went up (Ken Burns’ PBS series Base-ball). Additionally, entire new revenue streams fromadvertising became available, which today eclipseattendance profits. However, historical examplesare not likely to be enough to convince publishersand other information industry entities to make

their “property” available electronically withoutsecure mechanisms for profit.

Even more challenging, however, is buildingintellectual infrastructures for digital libraries.These include techniques for using electronicinformation in teaching and learning [18]. Teach-ers must learn how to teach with multimediaresources and how to share informational authoritywith students. Designing activities that take advan-tage of digital library resources requires time andeffort to examine what is available and integrateinformation into modules and sequences appropri-ate to the students and curriculum. Furthermore,modeling the research process for students requiresteachers to grapple with problems on the fly, makemistakes, recover, react to dead ends, and demon-strate all the other uncomfortable and frustratingaspects of problem-solving. Like Euclid, who pre-sented the products of geometric research in theform of neat, polished deductive proofs (ratherthan the empirical and intuitive thought that led tothe theorems), teachers are more comfortable pro-viding polished packages/modules rather than themessy details of discovery and problem-solving.Applying digital libraries in classrooms requires dif-ferent attitudes and tolerances for such learningconditions.

Just as teachers must learn new strategies for usingelectronic tools in teaching, students must learn howto learn with multimedia (both actively and passive-ly) and how to take increased responsibility fordirecting their own learning. In our observations ofstudents in classrooms where Perseus was used, stu-dents expressed concerns about taking notes:because a screen of text, a screen of vases, and theinstructor’s verbal comments were concurrentlyavailable, they did not know what to write down!Although better technological tools, such as net-worked laptop computers, may solve the technicalproblem, the issues of what to attend to and howmultiple streams of information should be integrat-ed require new combinations of perceptual, cogni-tive, and physical skills for learning. In short,building intellectual infrastructures requires intel-lectual, emotional, and social breakthroughs forteaching and learning.

At the nexus of physical and intellectual infra-structure is the interface to the digital library. Toolsfor finding, managing, using, and publishing elec-tronic information must be both powerful and easyto use. Digital libraries must provide a mix of soft-ware and people to provide reference assistance andquestion-answering services (e.g., Ackerman’sAnswer Garden system for handling XWindows ques-tions [1]). The people in the digital library will gobeyond reference to serve as teachers on demand.They must be aided by software that shunts “typical”questions toward pathfinders or frequently-asked-


question services. Thus, digital libraries will extendwhat has been the most beneficial feature of elec-tronic networks—communication—to teaching andlearning settings. Good interfaces will allow learnersto take advantage of digital resources equally well inclassrooms, homes, and offices.

Clearly, digital libraries have important roles toplay in teaching and learning. Existing physicalschools and libraries will continue to exist, since theyserve cultural and social as well as informationalroles. There will always be a need for physical objectsand social settings in learning; the vicarious is notenough. Parents will continue to demand child care,assurances of organized and shared culture beyondtelevision, and human direction and guidance inlearning at all levels. These demands will also be aug-mented by digital environments. Digital libraries willallow parents, teachers, and students to share com-mon information resources and to communicate eas-ily as needed. In special cases, work, school, and playmay become one—novice and professional learnerscollaborating with common information resourcesto solve real problems. In many respects, digitallibraries will become digital schools. This representsa return to Alexandria, in which learners of all typeswill come together to share and explore informationand expertise.

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About the Autors:GARY MARCHIONINI is associate professor of information sci-ence at the University of Maryland. Current research interestsinclude human-computer interaction, information seeking in elec-tronic environments, electronic publishing, and educational psy-chology. Author’s present address: College of Library andInformation Services, University of Maryland, College Park, MD20742, [email protected].

HERMANN MAURER is professor and head of the Institute forInformation Processing and Computer Supported New Media atGraz University of Technology in Graz, Austria. Current researchinterests include languages and their applications, data structuresand their efficient use, telematic services, computer networks, com-puter assisted instruction, computersupported new media, hyper-media systems and applications, and social implications ofcomputers. Author’s present address: University of Technology,inGraz, Schieszstattgasse 4a A-8010 Graz, Austria, hmaurer@ iicm.tu-graz.ac.at.

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