I servizi offerti da una digital library

Abstract

Digital libraries are increasingly trying to characterize themselves as organized systems of services directed to end users, not only like a various and extensive collection of cultural resources. The end users are felt not only like digital content customers, but also like active content producers. Facebook and Youtube prove that users are attracted by such platforms and help them with their own content partly because they are easy to use, partly because there are interests involved. Therefore users involvement and the interactions increase. From this perspective, the following analysis aims to demonstrate, despite some positive experiments, that the opportunities of Digital Libraries, in terms of evolution, mostly remain to be explored. Starting from nature analysis and from “digital service” definitions; some important international digital libraries – Europeana Collections and the Digital Public Library of America – were examined, they describe features and tools which are available to users, in order to define a proposal for a catalog of those services required for the development of digital libraries dedicated to cultural heritage.