Borgman, C.L., Bates, M.J., Cloonan, M.V., Efthimiadis, E.N., Gilliland-Swetland, A.J., Kafai, Y.B., Leazer, G.H., Maddox, A.B. Social Aspects Of Digital Libraries: Final Report to the National Science Foundation. Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, November, 1996. http://www-lis.gseis.ucla.edu/DL/UCLA_DL_Report.html [Research report]

This workshop brought together scholars, researchers, and practitioners from the emerging community of scholars concerned with social aspects of digital libraries. Our goals were to assess existing knowledge that might inform research and to propose a research agenda that would pose new questions.

We propose a definition of digital libraries that encompasses two complementary ideas, one emphasizing that they extend and enhance existing information storage and retrieval systems, incorporating digital data and metadata in any form; the other emphasizing that design, policy, and practice should reflect the social context in which they exist. We propose an information life cycle model to illustrate the flow of human activities in creating, searching, and using information and the stages through which information artifacts may pass: activity, inactivity, and disposal.

Research issues raised in the workshop were organized into three foci: human-centered, artifact-centered, and systems-centered. We recommend that research be conducted on these themes, that scholars from multiple disciplines be encouraged to develop joint projects, that scholars and practitioners work together, and that digital libraries be developed and evaluated in operational, as well as experimental, work environments. Only in this way can we build digital libraries to support diverse communities of users in their professional, educational, and recreational activities.