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What is a "virtual library"? A "virtual library" can be an Internet site. Like a small bookshelf, this can consist of a few links and documents or of sites from major organizations trying to present comprehensively the information about an area, with links, references, journals, excerpts of books, tables and graphics.
Her are some examples from a search in Alta Vista over "virtual library":
The "virtual library" can be a collection of tools and scripts, i.e.:
Electronic journals on-line or on CD-ROM can be considered a "virtual library". Science Direct for instance, is Elseviers' entrance to over 2000 electronic journals.
A real library has infrastructure functions that go beyond providing books and journal, be it in electronic or in any other form. One needs powerful software like LitLink to mimic a real library.
A library provides:
What we need first is a good catalogue, search engine, or other entrance to the electronic content. This is yet an unsolved problem on the Internet. The search engines are most the time inadequate for research-oriented problems. MDL offers an elegant solution. All of MDL's databases can be searched by the most sophisticated methods that ORACLE provides, plus structure and reaction oriented searches. All the databases are LitLink enabled. This means when you point to a reference you are automatically transferred to the original literature or, if you have no access or have not licensed the on-line literature, you are linked to a document distribution service. Bayer has presented on the 1999 European MDL Users' Group Meeting its copying and fax distribution service that was developed with LitLink Pro. In this way Bayer handles daily thousands of requests for copying documents.
Hopefully, the books never will disappear and we still have to wait some time for the electronic book. However, they are making progress controlling ink on paper like the pixels on an LCD display. (Switchable Reflections Make Electronic Ink,
Augmenting a real library with a "virtual library" is the goal to provide the information needs for tomorrow.
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