Promoting the Culture and Development of Regional Communities with Digital Libraries

Libraries and archives have always been major information sources for the history, culture and literature of regional communities. It is quite natural that in an increasingly electronic world, these rich collections are becoming available in digital form. Digital libraries permit local materials to be made available to a wide public, where they become a significant feature in the dissemination of regional culture (Love & Feather, 1998). Locally oriented digital libraries deal with specific communities, regions or states. The relationship is clear in this definition, published by the Washington-based Council on Library and Information Resources: Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret, distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities. (Waters, 1998)