ABSTRACT
This paper draws on user-based research to provide examples of economic considerations for digital libraries from the users’ and nonusers’ point of view. I use “digital library” here very broadly, to mean any collection of information accessible over a computer network. I will first present examples from national surveys that address the current income differential between users and nonusers of the National Information Infrastructure. Then, examples of new market niches and opportunities, as well as the ways that digital libraries add value and introduce new costs for their users, will be culled from the following sources:
The research that we are conducting as part of the NSF/ARPA/ NASA Digital Library Initiative (DLI) project currently underway at the University of Illinois, in which we are creating a networked collection of SGML-formatted journal articles for the academic engineering community. For more information on our DLI project, see the project homepage: <URL:https://www.grainger. uiuc.edu>. 1
A study of how artists, curators, and viewers use online galleries that I conducted this spring with Joseph Squier. 2
My involvement with Prairienet, a FreeNet that provides free, community-based, public access computing in Champaign, Illinois.
