Best Practices for Building an Online eLibrary

Best Practices for Building an
Online eLibrary
By Andrea Simmons
A White Paper from Integration New Media
Integration New Media, Inc.1600 Rene-Levesque Blvd W, Suite 900Montreal, QC H3H 1P9CanadaTel.: +1 514 871 1333Fax: +1 514 871 9251www.INM.comBest Practices for Building an Online eLibrary Best Practices for Building an Online eLibrary
Introduction
The face of the library is evolving. Technology is seeping in and causing great changes in the way organizations procure, organize, disseminate and preserve information.
Years ago, if you wanted to find information about your company or industry, you would have contacted your in-house librarian, explained what you were looking for, and asked him or her to conduct a search. After a few calls, you could submit a request to borrow the selected documents and they would be shipped to your office.
Today, this process has been streamlined significantly. Users now often have direct access to a variety of documents and have the skills and knowledge to conduct their own searches. Content is also increasingly being purchased electronically or is being converted for broader access by remote users.
This wealth of new digital content creates challenges for librarians in terms of how to organize, present and deliver information. Libraries have taken many paths to resolve these issues, varying from homegrown web portals, through to elaborate end-to-end platforms that automate the library's complete operations.
In looking at options for an eLibrary solution, many librarians start first with technology options and build their process around what's available. This paper will look at the elements that go into planning an eLibrary project, with a strong focus on defining needs, audience and purpose first, and letting the technology follow suit. It will also focus on the concept of leveraging technology building blocks to speed up implementation and reduce costs.
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What is an eLibrary?
An electronic library, also referred to as an eLibrary, refers to a portal, intranet, extranet or internet site that replicates the resources of a physical library in an electronic format, while improving access and search capabilities. An eLibrary can provide resources and documentation, or can combine internal documents with external resources to provide a full collection of pertinent information for distribution to retailers, partners, students, association members, patients, and more.
Figure 1: Example of an eLibrary application for medical journal articles
Some examples of eLibraries include:. A customer or partner resource center for products and services where users can access product specs, support documents, data sheets, presentations and other materials. . A collection of back-issues of an organization's journals or magazines that are packaged and made searchable. . A company-wide resource library with a variety of corporate materials such as annual reports, standard operating procedures, guidelines, style guides, etc.. A collection of industry or topic-specific reference materials, including analyst reports, studies, articles, journals, and other reference works. . A collection of music, video or image files in a searchable catalog format.
In the library or resource center context, eLibrary content can include: . electronically acquired documents such as journals, magazines and eBooks. digitized content (originally in print format but has been converted to digital format). digital content that's available on the web (in content repositories). links to free and open content that exists in web page format. electronically published original works
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This mix of original documents, digitized content and third-party resources creates a challenge in how to package information efficiently for a wide span of users with different needs, often in different locations.
How does an eLibrary differ from the Internet?One important distinction to make is that an eLibrary is not the same as the Internet. While both of these ch... [download for more]