Commentary by Ed Walker on Littlejohn, A. (2003) Reusing Online Resources, Chapter 11: Digital Libraries and Repositories, by Charles Duncan and Cuna Ekmekioglu

Abstract: Duncan and Ekmekcioglu begin their chapter with the ritual observation that learning resources (i.e., library assets) are becoming ever easier to reproduce and distribute... After making only brief comments about better infrastructure for databases and inter-repository communication and the persistent value of custodianship, cataloguing and retrievability, they conclude succinctly that there will always be big, little, and personal repositories of mixed types of assets, as well as a need to federate them. They then move on to the more valuable and provocative discussion of how users of libraries and librarians themselves are better enabling their time honored symbiosis by exploiting computer and networking technology ...the mutual services that comprise the dialogs between librarians and their customers can now be performed quickly and cheaply at a distance. As a result, this performance can now involve more intricate, more frequent, and more direct interaction between provider and user. Some parts of it can even be automated, and some roles can be shared or transferred from provider to user and vice-versa. The resulting changes are more in the delivery of service than in the nature of the service, and in the style of user-provider interaction than in the intent or substance of that interaction. Following this theme, Duncan and Ekmekcioglu rightly organize the body of their chapter around the roles of librarians and users, the interface that library systems provide to other systems, and the integration of those roles and interfaces. Editors: Allison Littlejohn and Simon Buckingham Shum