Digital Libraries and the Long Tail

I wanted to reflect on Justin’s article for several reasons. First, what he wrote made a lot of sense to me. Second, I found a lot of similarities between my scholarly article that I chose and the scholarly article that is chosen by him.

In Justin’s article, Dempsey argues that the current library system should adopt new techniques that would help in lowering transaction costs and bridging the gap of supply and demand. Those techniques are basically existed in the network environment. In my article, Mitchell describes the mechanism of the Data Fountain technique that is used in digital libraries. This technique is basically a new service that helps people to find what they seek, by adopting an open-source-software. As Justin says, it is not enough for the content to be present; instead it needs to be findable and available immediately to its consumer. This is what the Data Fountain technique provides to consumers.

Then, Justin describes the three-must-do-thing that comes in Dempsey’s article in order to close the gap of supply and demand and fulfill the premise of Anderson’s The Long Tail. First, digital libraries must offer a tool that searches the whole library and delivers all the resources available. Second, libraries must host their inventory in large facilities that can increase delivery time and save on transaction cost. Third, utilize transaction behavior to help the system evolve and adapt over time. I think Justin did a great job in analyzing Dempsey’s article. Also, he made a great connection between the three-must-do-thing and Anderson’s theory. And since I wrote about digital libraries too, Justin enhanced the Data Fountain theory by illustrating the three-must-do-thing. Dempsey and Anderson both urge libraries to use the new technology to lower the transaction costs and cover the gap between supply and demand.