Physical objects in the digital library
Richard K. Furuta, Catherine C. Marshall, Frank M. Shipman III, John J. Leggett · 1996
Physicrd objects are the foundation for many of today's areas of scholarship, research, and education.Beeause physical objects are tangible, any digital representation of one is an approximation of the object, Knowing how to approximate requires an understanding of the work practices and needs of the library's constituencies.We consider issues arising from the creation of digital libraries based on physical objects, focusing particularly on the characteristics of botanical herbaria and their users.1 Physical objects Physical objects provide the basis for much of scholarship.In some disciplines, the dependence on physical objects is obvious: for example, 1 botany is defined as "the science or study of pkmts," archaeology the "systematic study of material evidence . . .remaining from past human life and culture;' the study of history is enabled through access to the artifacts of earlier times and people, and many engineering areas focus on the practical issues in the creation and application of physical artifacts.In these areas, scholarship, re-,search, and education could not be carried out without access to physical objects.Even when the primary focus of the discipline is intellectual instead of tangible, physical artifacts remain important.The notations on a composer's original score provide a windclw into a composition's development.The gifts exchanged by world leaders help a political scientist understand the dynamics of their relationships.Inconsistencies in handwriting style between documents may support a historian's claim of a document's authenticity.The relationship between physical objects and traditional libraries is longstanding.Many libraries have carefully-guarded collections of "rare books,"' and some maintain extensive collections of the artifacts belonging to an important person-perhaps a famous entertainer or influential politician.Making such a collection available over the Intemet is often attractive to its guardkm, and a number of well-publicized collections have appeared on the "This material is basedin part on work supported by the Texas Advanced Research ProSram under Omnt Numbers 999903-155 and 999903-230.1Definitions in this paragraph are taken from the American Heritage Dictionary.Permission to make digitel/hrmf copies of all or part of thk material for personal or claasrrwm use is gmnted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or corrunemial advantage, the.copyright notice, the title of the publication and ita data appear, and notrce ia given that copyright ia by permission of the ACM, Inc..To copy otherwise, to repubtish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires specific perrniaaion and/or fee.DL'96, Bethesds MD USA @ 1996 ACM 0-89791-830-4/96/03. .$3.50World-Wide Web.The WWW locations for three representative collections are shown in F@rre 1.2 Yet many issues remain when we consider the exigencies of representing physical objeets in the digital library their characteristics and uses bear deeper examination.The information science scholar Michael Buckland asserts [Buc91, p.