| dc.description.abstract | International collaboration in digital libraries represents a challenging subject for the
cultural institutions, as everyone brings its own perspective and approach to the
collaborative endeavour. When joining such initiatives, organizations subscribe to a set
of technical and financial requirements to which local participants needs to agree. These
aspects concern the participants as well as funding institutions or stakeholders. They all
contribute to creating a sustainable collaborative initiative that can be easily accessed on
the long-term.
For this research, the lack of assessment concerning the local participant’s contribution
in international collaborative initiatives was identified as a major problem and that
framed the current research questions. Therefore this study aims at analyzing the
challenges faced by the local institutions when joining international collaborative
initiatives and at revealing the benefits of making widely available locally hosted content,
i.e. special collections, in a specific research environment. The case of Manuscriptorium
Digital Library was then chosen for answering the research questions, as it gathers
valuable content - manuscripts, rare books, maps, charts, letters, and so on - from
various European institutions - national, university libraries and research institutes -
and it makes it available as digital representations through a virtual research
environment. Also Manuscriptorium is considered to be one of the most structured,
stable and experienced initiative that was undertaken in the field of digital library of
special collections in Europe.
The main conclusion of this study, as revealed in the findings, consider the act of
international collaboration as beneficial to the local institutions, as it involves the whole
organization – staff, technical resources and financial – into a common environment.
Still, important drawbacks were identified mostly when stakeholders – national and
international - do not see the importance of collaboration and therefore do not ensure
the existence of their institution in a competitive arena. All these aspects need to be
considered in further studies, as the current one only gave an overview situation of
digital library collaboration in an international environment. In a world that calls for
sharing resources in the name of progress and innovation, collaboration brings new and
broad perspectives for the local organizations. | en_US |
