“We’re all doing pretty much the same things, so we must be moving the right way,” Ute Schwens, deputy director of Germany’s Deutsche Bibliothek, summed up at the conclusion of the June 3–4 Second International Virtual Libraries Conference in New York City. Held at the New York Public Library, the conference was cohosted by NYPL President Paul LeClerc and Bibliothèque Nationale de France President Jean-Pierre Angremy.
Schwens’s remark encapsulated the focus on digital archiving and preservation. While conferees drew some distinctions between information that libraries acquire or access in digital form and computerized materials their institutions create, the challenges in keeping virtual libraries accessible to the future formed the heart of the discussion. Among the more than 50 invitation-only attendees were representatives from large university libraries in North America and national libraries of Western Europe, as well as publishers and vendors.
A full report on the conference by GraceAnne DeCandido will appear in the August 1999 issue of American Libraries.
Posted June 14, 1999.