Online Issues Are Global

THE INFORMATION INDUSTRY is international. With major English-language online publishers based in the Netherlands, Germany, and Canada (not to mention Alabama and New York), the information you lease may be generated and designed anywhere in the world. Likewise, the issues and challenges facing libraries as they move to large-scale digital collections are global in nature.

Conferences about digital libraries are also international; in September I attended "Digilib: Towards a User-Centered Approach to Digital Libraries" in Finland. Two hundred attendees from over 20 countries discussed how to gather user information for the purpose of designing more useful digital libraries. Sessions were organized around five main themes: methodology of user studies; usefulness and validity of digital resources in research; evaluation of digital library programs and services; impacts on learning and research; and new developments and future visions.

A highlight was the keynote speech by Lars Bjornshauge, director of libraries, Lund University, Sweden. Bjornshauge focused on the most important challenges that face digital libraries--and for which we lack solutions.

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