Date:
December 12, 2007

Location:
Residencia de Estudiantes

Directors:
Miguel Jiménez and José Antonio Millán

Organize:
Residencia de Estudiantes
Amigos de la Residencia de Estudiantes
Ministry of Culture
Fundación Francisco Giner de los Rios [Institución Libre de Enseñanza]

If the 90's witnessed computerized catalogs and processes in Spanish libraries, and the first half of this decade saw the unstoppable entry of commercial electronic publications in libraries and on the computers of scholars,  in the second half  the interest is focused on the digitization of document collections and the scientific archives of  institutions.
 
Whether we call them digital libraries, digital collections, virtual libraries, or repositories, technological innovation in libraries goes now hand in hand with the massive digitization of content. And, as usual in these situations, technological changes have highlighted the possibilities, but have also the problems of libraries.
 
What is the use for the digitized materials? Which collections should to be digitized first? What are the legal problems posed by digitization? Can one get corporate funding for these projects? What is the role of these collections in the digital repositories of scientific or institutional archives? Do scientific journals freely available compete with the commercial ones?
 
But we have to pay attention not only to the content, but also to key technical issues to resolve: how to avoid duplicating the digitization of a document, how to ensure that metadata are syndicated and accessible, or how to preserve digital objects, in some ways more fragile than the originals.
 
In this seminar library experts and information managers will express their views and focus their attention on those who will use this information in the future and will exercise the final saying by using or ignoring it : the readers.