Digital Library Collaboration: A Service-Oriented Perspective

Collaboration in the digital domain offers an opportunity to provide enhanced digital services and extended reach to the community. This article adopts a service-oriented perspective through which it considers environmental drivers for digital library collaboration; discusses emergent collaborative partnerships across UK educational institutions, social services, health services, private industry, and cultural sectors; considers associated challenges; and identifies best practices. Existing and potential synergistic relationships are explored across the broader cultural sector—in particular, with the respective processes of libraries, museums, archives, arts and broadcasting organizations comprehensively identified and mapped (commonality), and the relationship to service-oriented architecture highlighted. The degree of digital service collaboration is also explored through an indicative review of Scottish public library websites, encompassing thirty-two regional library networks and including the National Library. Collaboration is found to be evident but limited in the digital domain, with strategic and architectural recommendations made.