PADLs : supporting digital scholarship in digital libraries

Abstract

This paper introduces digital scholarship, a process in which individuals perform all scholarly

work electronically, working entirely with digital media. A proposal is made for patronaugmented digital libraries (PADLs), a class of digital libraries designed to support the digital scholarship of its patrons. PADLs not only provide facilities for search and retrieval of library artifacts, but also allow patrons to augment the library’s collection with new artifacts such as annotations, original compositions and organizational structures. Finally, a prototype PADL (called Synchrony) providing access to digitized video segments and associated textual transcripts is described. Synchrony allows patrons to search its collection for artifacts, create annotations/original compositions, integrate these artifacts to form synchronized mixed text and video presentations and, after suitable review, publish these presentations into the digital library if desired.