Introduction
The growth of digital libraries from mere subsets of existing library collections to proportions that rival the largest traditional library print collections has surpassed even the most optimistic predictions. With this swift change, however, comes greater responsibility for librarians to ensure the same levels of veracity, consistency and provenance that were the traditional library’s greatest stock-in-trade. While traditional libraries have nonetheless adapted to print-digital hybrids – and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future – the massively scaled, mass-digitized digital libraries in the vein of Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Gallica, Europeana, and others, promise to push this balance toward an all-digital library model.
While this is not seen as a problem in and of itself, there is a need for exploration of the topic to clearly define potential issues and unanticipated benefits. The term Massive Digital Libraries (MDLs) is proposed to describe this specific class of digital library that has digitized and aggregated millions of titles of print books and to illuminate the issues of scale inherent in these projects. The size of these digital libraries as well as their growing influence increases their importance in the disciplines of library and information science, digital humanities, and computer science.
MDLs’ potential for benefit is equal to their potential for harm; as a result, a clear examination of MDLs becomes necessary. MDLs have raised issues of copyright protection, content access and diversity, collection development, metadata clarity and uniformity, the importance of scanning quality, as well as the question of whether books truly can be separated from their physical containers without impacting their historical values, traditional roles, and contextual meanings.
Objective
This book will examine Massive Digital Libraries, which includes Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, Gallica, Europeana, and the like. The publication will seek the opinions, research projects and case studies of those interested in how MDLs impact libraries, library users and librarianship in general. With the shift to the online paradigm, libraries need to examine whether such tools will be adequate for their users' needs. This book will attempt to examine MDLs from these various angles.
Target Audience
This text will be aimed at information professionals, including academic and public librarians, library school faculty and students, and information science researchers; those working in the digital humanities; and those with a multi-disciplinary interest in digital libraries, information retrieval, metadata, copyright and mass-digitization projects.
Recommended Topics
Recommended Topics include, but are not limited to, the following eight broad areas:
1. Case studies and/or examinations of MDLs and their features, including:
• Google Books
• HathiTrust
• Internet Archive
• Gallica
• Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
• National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD)
2. Societal impact
• Readers and digital books
• Information overload
• Cultural representations
• Identity politics and MDLs
• Ethnic studies, disability studies, gender studies
3. Metadata
• Interoperability
• Accuracy
• Findablity / information retrieval
• Enhanced metadata / Linked data
• Cataloging for e-books
4. Mass Digitization
• Scan accuracy
• Scanning technology
• Non-standard books or materials displayed in MDLs
• Analysis of error (rates and types)
5. Copyright
• Public domain and MDLs
• Notable lawsuits: especially Authors Guild suits
• Mass digitization, digital culture and copyright
6. “Big Data”
• Culturonomics
• Data mining
• Google’s N-Gram viewer
• Privacy (online and offline)
7. The e-book
• E-book platforms / formats
• Digital reading / learning
8. International perspectives
• Non-English language centric MDLs (i.e. Gallica, etc.)
• Multi-national projects
• Multi-cultural and multi-ethnic digital libraries
Submission Procedure
Authors are invited to submit, on or before March 30th, 2016, a chapter proposal of 1,000 – 2,000 words (2 - 4 pages) explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors will be notified by April 20th, 2016 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters, 7,000-9,000 words (14 -18 pages) each, are expected to be submitted by July 30th, 2016. Submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Chapters with multiple authors are welcome. Note: there are no submission or acceptance fees for manuscripts submitted to this book publication, Handbook of Research on Collection Development and Management in Massive Digital Libraries. All manuscripts are accepted based on a double-blind peer review editorial process. All proposals should be submitted through the “Propose a Chapter” link at the bottom of this page.
Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the "Information Science Reference" (formerly Idea Group Reference), "Medical Information Science Reference," "Business Science Reference," and "Engineering Science Reference" imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2017.
Important Dates
Proposal Submission Deadline: March 30, 2016
Full chapter Submission: July 30, 2016
Review Process: July 30 –September 15, 2016
Review Results to Chapter Authors: September 30, 2016
Revised Chapter Submission from Chapter Authors: October 30, 2016
Final Acceptance Notifications to Chapter Authors: November 30, 2016
Inquiries
Andrew Weiss
email: andrew.weiss@csun.edu
