A study of the existing problems of digital libraries and their future environment

현존하는 디지털도서관의 문제점과 미래환경에 관한 연구

Information scientists need not to answer whether future libraries will be a digital library or not, but to answer how they are structured and served effectively to users currently. 'The library with walls' or 'the library as place' need to be existed in the future, but 'digital library without the wall' or 'virtual library' will need to be studied continuously. This study has tried to reveal the existing problems of digital libraries and their future environment after considering the ambiguous concepts of various types of electronic libraries and their efforts for library automation, and the changed information retrieval circumstances during the last 30 to 40 years through a qualitative document study. As a result, the major findings and suggestions are prepared. The library of the future will be a part of local and national cooperative systems, be filled with the intelligent use of old and new technologies, and be able to su n.0, pport both a place with extensive collections and convenient, easy, & free access to remote intellectual resources. Also, the information storage and retrieval (ISAR) to the future library system would easily provide users with any types of data retrieval system by anybody rather than by an expert or a specialist, so called 'A&E retrieval' in the coming 21th century. It will be highly possible that the future society changes to the information marketplace whose data may be recognized as an intangible assets.