Digital Collections: Transforming the Work of Libraries

ABSTRACT While recent years have seen an increase in the number of digital collections being produced by academic, public, and special libraries, these endeavors represent a new direction. Libraries engaged in initiating, implementing, and maintaining digital collections are expanding their traditional roles of collecting, organizing, and providing access to resources. Their new roles include creating content and in some ways, also creating the access. Libraries are involved in the “business” of producing digital collections–a task made possible and also easier by the technology developed and available, but a task often begun with scant initial funding and achieved by “converting” staff members already dedicated to other tasks at the institution. This article will look to the bright future and usability of digital collections, while remembering digitization's humble beginnings and the lessons we are learning along the way.