Page 6 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 42

Opportunities and challenges faced by digital libraries

in the big data era ①a

SU Xinning ①b *
School of Information Management, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Data Engineering and Knowledge Services, Nanjing
University, Nanjing 210023, China

Abstract
Construction of network-based academic resources is undergoing rapid development in this big data
era, displaying a trend to replace digital libraries. This challenge calls for the construction of digital
libraries to have big data related considerations, i.e., from resource construction aspect, we should
expand the resource scope, aggrandize the breadth of resource integration, and increase the depth of
the resource organization and processing; from technology application aspect, we should attach great
importance to the semantic technology, emphasize the application of clustering technology, widely
adopt data analysis technology, and elevate the retrieval technology level; from service aspect, we
need to enrich services and product categories of digital libraries, and convert the passive, and general
service mode to the proactive and personalized mode. The construction of next generation digital
libraries must differ from the traditional way. Comprehensive service ideas should be established;
comprehensive resource services should be provided; the conventional service mode and transmission
form also need to be expanded; even the librarians of digital libraries are required to become data
analysts.

Keywords
Big data, Digital libraries, Resource development, Service concepts, Service mode

0 Introduction

The debate between Ma Yun and Wang Jianlin about the topic “whether e-commerce can replace
traditional entity based retail industry in the next few years” in Dec. 2012 did not come to a
final conclusion. The fact was that on Nov.11, 2014 alone, the gross sale of Alibaba’s Tmall
taobao reached more than 50 billion yuan, which has motivated us to rethink the topic whether
e-commerce can replace traditional business in the next few years. It has also caused another
anxiety: whether the traditional digital library will be replaced by the construction of emerging
network resources in this big data era. Now the question is neither an alarm nor a lie, but has
become real.
At present, the construction of academic resources is booming. China National Knowledge

①a This article is an outcome of the project “Knowledge Service Oriented Knowledge Organization Model and Application
Research” (No.71273126) supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China.
* Correspondence should be addressed to SU Xinning, Email: xnsu@nju.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0003-1632-8716