The research library community has reached a level of maturity in its development of digital library initiatives. We have moved from projects and testbeds to environments that sustain library services in a coherent fashion. All of the library services in the analog world of selection, acquisition, organization and description, access and preservation apply to the digital present. The digital repository provides these services but have the additional possibility of displacing and reinventing functions that have not been the traditional remit of library services.
This presentation explores the development and evolution of the digital repository, explores how digital preservation or archiving in the repository environment fundamentally differs from the purposes of preservation services in the past attempts to refine definitions.
R. David Lankes, PhD, is Executive Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse (IIS) and an Assistant Professor at Syracuse University's School of Information Studies. The IIS houses the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information & Technology, the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM), AskERIC and the Virtual Reference Desk (VRD). Lankes received his BFA (Multimedia Design), MS in Telecommunications and Ph.D. from Syracuse University.
Lankes co-founded the award winning AskERIC project in 1992. AskERIC is an Internet service for educators that offers resources and personal assistant for thousands of teachers a week. Lankes founded the Virtual Reference Desk project that is building a national network of expertise for education. Lankes is also one of the architects of GEM. GEM is a standards-based system for describing and finding educational materials on the Internet.
Lankes research is in education information and digital reference services. He has authored, co-authored or edited eight books, and written numerous book chapters and journal articles on the Internet and digital reference. He was a visiting scholar to Harvard's Graduate School of Education and is currently a visiting fellow at the National Library of Canada. He speaks and consults nationally on Internet issues in education, libraries and business. He has worked closely with the National Library of Education, Library of Congress, Microsoft, the American Library Association, AT&T, OCLC, NEA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, MCI WorldCom and more.
Lankes serves on the boards of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education. He is the chair of the ERIC Executive Committee and is a founding member and member of the executive committee of the National Education Network. He is also a member of the board for the Onondaga County Public Library.
Participating in the Panel from the Library of Congress:
Participating in the Panel from the San Jose State University, San Jose, CA: