Sunday, May 22, 2016

Exploiting Synergies Among Digital Repositories, Special Collections, and Online Community

Reyna, Lisa

IL - Media Literacy


Huwe, T. (2009). Exploiting synergies: among digital repositories, special collections, and online
community. Online, 33(2), 14-19.

Summary/Evaluation


Huwe elaborates on how only just a few years prior to the writing of this particular article, there were only a couple of leading research facilities (E.g. Library of Congress) capable of developing an online presence of high-quality digital library collections. Further discussion into the article depicts that today in current times, this ideal is no longer the case. Huwe speaks of the rise in development of digital collections not only emerging among research libraries, but also other organizations as well as various museums. Research libraries and librarians are evolving with the constant change of advancement in digital media technologies and are becoming familiar with open-source web development tools specialized in digitization, although most collections are of a smaller scale. 

Emphasis is expressed when referencing the importance of historical collections and how an online presence will not only benefit libraries and librarians, but also have the capacity to reach new scholars and experts trying to obtain rare materials within a searchable online environment. Huwe also ventures into the realm of social networking, blogs, and community websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo, which are currently responsible for enabling managers of digital repositories to merge technologies utilizing web 2.0 applications, therefore symbolizing the effect of creating new synergies. I found this article to be quite interesting as Archivists and scholars now have the ability to be involved in newly developed trends surrounding the accessibility of historically valuable collections through the opportunity to take on leadership roles in scholarly communities.

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