This book examines various views and perspectives on digitisation. As Simon Tanner, Director Digital Consultancy, King’s College London says in the Foreword: “Digitisation has become a cultural, scholastic, economic and political imperative and raises many issues for our consideration.” Furthermore, that the book: “. . . seeks to address and answer some of the big questions of digitisation. . . It succeeds on many levels. . .” There are 22 contributors in the book, all experts in their fields. The book is divided into six parts: Background and Overview to Digitisation and Digital Libraries; Digitisation and Higher Education; Digitisation and Inequalities; Digital Libraries, Reference Services and Citation Indexing; Digitisation of Rare, Valued and Scholarly Works; and Futuristic Developments of Digitisation.
Topics covered include electronic theses, search engine technology, digitisation in Africa, citation indexing, reference services, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, new media and scholarly publishing. The final chapter explores virtual libraries, and poses some interesting questions for possible futures. Ruth Rikowski concludes by indicating that: “. . . hopefully, the book will provide a source of inspiration for further research, leading to some more effective ways to proceed with the digitisation process. Also, that it will be possible to do this within a framework that can be used for good rather than ill, and for the benefit of many.”