CONCLUSIONS

As noted in the introduction to this chapter, distributed digital libraries may well revolutionize education and learning, but this will require resources, resources, and more resources.

Resources are needed to digitize vast amounts of materials. Hoadley and Bell (1996) state that "Education is often held up as a prime beneficiary of digital libraries. However, the obvious benefits, such as distance education or literally global text search, fall short of justifying either the lofty expectations for an educational revolution or the enormous cost of putting everything on-line." Perhaps, a demand-driven model should be used to establish priorities for what is digitized. These priorities could be established by professional educational societies and educational arms of technical societies. Then, educational representatives of higher-level National Academies could meet to prioritize across fields. Using this approach, there is a high likelihood that whatever is digitized would indeed be used by a large number of people, thereby justifying the large costs associated with digitization.

Resources are also needed to solve the myriad of open technical problems that have been discussed in other chapters of this report, but subject to the constraints of education. This, of course, means that the educational constraints are known. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. One must work through the 25 UMDL questions in order to establish all of the constraints. Resources are therefore needed to develop effective ways for teaching and learning using the digital libraries. If such resources are not made available or found, then it is indeed foolhardy to believe that digital libraries will make much of an impact, if any at all, on education.

Without computers available to students, it will not be possible for the digital libraries to make a significant impact on education. Today in the United States only 35% of all college students own a computer, and only 50% of all faculty do (Market View 1998). No doubt, the numbers of K-12 students and their teachers who own a computer are much smaller. Resources must be found to bring these percentages up to much higher values, or else digital libraries will not benefit all students. Instead, they will be an important benefit only to those who can afford to own and maintain a computer.

It seems that more resources are being directed at the myriad of problems associated with digital libraries in the United States than in Japan.

In conclusion, we may indeed be at the very beginning of a "dawning of an age of Aquarius" in education, because of digital libraries. The concept and its ramifications are breathtaking. Time will tell.