Understanding Digital Libraries

Michael Lesk joined the computer science research group at Bell Laboratories after receiving his Ph.D. degree in Chemical Physics in 1969. He went on to manage the computer science research group at Bellcore, where he is now a chief research scientist. He is best known for his work in electronic libraries, but has worked in document production and retrieval software, computer networks, computer languages, and human-computer interfaces as well. Past chair of the Association for Computing Machinery’s special interest groups on Language Analysis and Information Retrieval, Lesk was Senior Visiting Fellow of the British Library in 1987 and is currently Visiting Professor of Computer Science at University College London. Lesk has been recently elected to the US National Academy of Engineering, in recognition of his contributions to UNIX applications, information systems, and digital libraries.

"Lesk is the senior and most knowledgeable author in the field. His dry humor and clear explanations, combined with his uncanny ability to uncover and address key ideas and problems, make this a "must read." --Edward A. Fox, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science, Virginia Tech"Michael Lesk does for digital libraries what David Macaulay does for every day objects: he lucidly depicts how things work. In the digital world the ways things work is necessarily always in flux. In this second edition, Michael Lesk has done a masterful job of making us feel more at home with this flux." --Michèle Valerie Cloonan, Dean and Professor, Graduate School of Library & Information Science, Simmons College"Lesk's insights are distilled from a lifetime of pioneering activities in information retrieval, text processing and digital libraries, culminating in a most creative period at the National Science Foundation. He has written a book that brings these insights alive with well-chosen examples: facts and figures, tables and graphs. Digital libraries have not replaced books. This book illustrates why." --William Y. Arms, Professor of Computer Science and Co-Director of Information Science, Cornell University

• 1. Evolution of Libraries2. Text Documents3. Images of Pages4. Multimedia Storage and Retrieval5. Knowledge Representation Schemes6. Distribution7. Usability and Retrieval Evaluation9. Collections And Preservations10. Economics11. Intellectual Property Rights12. A World Tour of Digital Libraries13. Scope of Digital Libraries14. Future: Ubiquity, Diversity, Creativity, and Public Policy