So, what is a “digital library”?
Harter (1997) considers that a digital library contains digital representations of the objects found in it. Most understandings of “digital library” assume that it will be accessible via the Internet, though not necessarily to everyone. The idea of digitization is perhaps the only characteristic of a digital library on which there is universal agreement. Waters (1998, cited in Cleveland, 1998) points out: “Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities.” The Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science (Reitz, 2005) provides an additional perspective on digital libraries by focusing on the uses of machine-readable resources. A digital library is: “a library
