Digital libraries

Digital libraries

Library and Information Science

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s seminal article [3] that paved the way for fields like information retrieval and hypertext. Bush’s efforts helped raise the level of public support for scientific research at the end of World War II. Today we have a similar opportunity to invest in research and education to bring the world closer together, improve our environment, and fulfill the age-old dream of every human being: gaining ready access to humanity’s store of information. This era and what we are building go by many names, including Cyberspace, Global Information Infrastructure, Infobahn, Information Age, Information (Super)Highway, Interspace, and Paperless Society. They are all L supported by networking (e.g., the Internet). However, their essence is information. Information is what flows over the networks, what is presented to us by our consumer electronics devices, what is manipulated by our computers, and what is stored in our libraries.

Fox, Edward A.

Akscyn, Robert M.

Furuta, Richard K.

Leggett, John J.

ACM Digital Library

01 April, 1995

Digital Libraries

01 April, 1995

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s seminal article [3] that paved the way for fields like information retrieval and hypertext. Bush’s efforts helped raise the level of public support for scientific research at the end of World War II. Today we have a similar opportunity to invest in research and education to bring the world closer together, improve our environment, and fulfill the age-old dream of every human being: gaining ready access to humanity’s store of information. This era and what we are building go by many names, including Cyberspace, Global Information Infrastructure, Infobahn, Information Age, Information (Super)Highway, Interspace, and Paperless Society. They are all L supported by networking (e.g., the Internet). However, their essence is information. Information is what flows over the networks, what is presented to us by our consumer electronics devices, what is manipulated by our computers, and what is stored in our libraries.