Experiences of the library in the digital age.
ANN E. BLANDFORD, Jon Rimmer, Claire Warwick · Durham Research Online (Durham University) · 2006
Libraries as physical structures embody the cultures within which they are situated and provide access to archive materials that represent the evolution of culture over time. Digital libraries serve similar roles to traditional ones in capturing and making available the written cultural heritage. However, the experience of interacting with materials in the digital library is very different to that in the traditional one. Access is democratised, but may be impoverished in other ways. In this paper, we compare and contrast the experiences of working in digital and physical libraries. While physical libraries provide better support for a sense of ‘place’ and people’s need for haptic interactions with artefacts, digital technologies enable access to a wider range of materials, create new possibilities for interacting with peers, and provoke a sense of pleasure in interacting with materials in new ways and from new places. With this understanding, future technologies giving access to new ideas and cultural artefacts can be designed to promote positive user experiences in interacting with, assimilating and appreciating them. The new interaction paradigms should not seek to mimic those of the past, but to augment human and technical capabilities, valuing both the physical and the digital elements of people’s experience of books and other embodiments of our written culture.