After summarizing emerging functions of the digital library - definitions of the digital library are possibly premature and will anyway under-represent the extent to which its activities are shaped by local institutional, legal, and business imperatives - the presentation will review six key challenges offering some thoughts about how they may be confronted in future. Particular emphasis is given to strategies for mobilizing appropriate research and development effort in a manner that suggests that the key challenges confronted by the digital library have less to do with technical and methodological issues than they do with the organization and culture of professional library practice. Challenges to be reviewed include:

• developing and applying appropriate architectures, technologies, systems, and tools;
• developing sustainable, scaleable, and useful digital collections and services;
• developing support and other services that enable the digital library to respond to its users' information requirements;
• gaining experience preserving digital information; and
• identifying and promoting those standards and practices that enable the digital library cost effectively to develop and maintain its collections and services;
• overcoming institutional obstacles to digital library development

The presentation summarizes key findings of an intensive investigation of digital library challenges and opportunities. The summary is preliminary and intended to provoke discussion rather than as a final word on the subject. Accordingly, participants are invited in advance of the seminar to think carefully about some of the following issues, and to be willing to contribute their thoughts in the discussion that will be invited during and after the presentation:

1. What does your institution hope to achieve through its online collections and services? How will such collections and services support and enhance its mission?
2. What needs do its real/intended collections and services fulfill? What communities will benefit from them and how will they benefit? How do you know the needs exist? How will you assess the effectiveness of collections and services in meeting needs?
3. What realistic strategies exist for initiating online collections and services?
4. What realistic strategies exist for maintaining such collections and services after any initial start-pup investment is exhausted?
5. What are the principal obstacles that your institution confronts in achieving its goals with respect to online collections and services?
6. What strategies exist for overcoming those obstacles either from within the institution or through some strategic alignment with other bodies?

SOURCES: Additional Readings

• D Greenstein, Digital Libraries and their Challenges, Library Trends (forthcoming). The unedited draft is available from http://www.clir.org/diglib/ltrends.htm
• N Beagrie and D Greenstein, with N Beagrie, A Strategic Framework for Creating and Preserving Digital Collections (London, The British Library, 1998 and from http://ahds.ac.uk/manage/manintro.html)
• L Dempsey, "Scientific, Industrial, and Cultural Heritage: a shared approach. A research framework for digital libraries, museums and archives" Ariadne, 22(December 1999) (from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue22/dempsey/)

Recognizing that participants will have very different interests, I have recommended as starting points for individually directed investigations the following sources of high-quality digital library information:

• Preserving Access to Digital Information (PADI) "a subject gateway to digital preservation resources at http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/ q
• DLib Magazine. "A monthly magazine about innovation and research in digital libraries" from http://www.dlib.org/
• The Arts and Humanities Data Service. The Arts and Humanities Data Service maintains a number of publication series including Managing Digital Collections (a publication series which deals with strategic topics of interest to those who create, manage, or distribute digital scholarly and heritage collections and including a compendium of AHDS-wide standards and practices) and Guides to Good Practice (providing instruction in the creation and use of humanities data resources). See http://ahds.ac.uk/public/pub.html
• The Digital Library Federation. With the Council on Library and Information Resources, the DLF seeks through its publications and reports to raise awareness about and share experience in current digital library practices, trends, and innovations. See http://www.clir.org/diglib/publications.htm

Greenstein is Director of the Digital Library Federation, a consortium of leading research libraries seeking to set a lead for themselves and the broader professional community through collaborative digital library research and development activities. Prior to joining the DLF in December 1999, was located in the United Kingdom where his career trajectory evolved from academic practice (BA, MA, Upenn; DPhil Oxon; Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Glasgow University) into information service provision. He was the founding director of two geographically distributed information services working on behalf of the nation's universities and colleges. The Resource Discovery Network (http:/www.rdn.ac.uk/) was established in 1998 to enrich learning, research, and cultural engagement by facilitating access to high-quality Internet resources through subject-based gateway or portal services. The Arts and Humanities Data Service (http://www.ahds.ac.uk/), established in 1996 collects, manages, and encourages effective use of digital information resources which result from or support research and teaching in the arts and humanities. It also facilitates the creation of and access to high-quality data resources. Greenstein was also founding director of Glasgow University's arts faculty computing service. Greenstein has published on various aspects of themes associated with the development, maintenance, and use of online educational and cultural information services and information resources. He has also published (and retains a currently unfulfilled interest) in American political culture, urban history, and the history and sociology of the modern university.