CONCLUSION

The practical implementation of processes to describe and access information can be complex. While the issues concerning description and access of information are not difficult to understand in a strictly intellectual sense, coordinating the creation of cataloging and metadata in a production environment can be. Much of the data necessary to successfully retrieve and present digital information online is inherent in the conversion/creation process of that information. If files are not named properly or essential metadata are not captured at the time of image scanning or record creation, the material can be unusable without highly expensive manual intervention or reprogramming. The process of quality review, worthy of an article in itself, is an activity that is crucial at both ends of the digital content production cycle to verify that the digitally converted information is legible, clear, and properly labeled.

A final conclusion from what was seen in Japan and from what this author knows to be true in the United States is that digital content management on a large scale is a huge question impacting digital libraries in Japan and the United States. Traditional methods of description and access are not practical, affordable, or appropriate for large amounts of digital material. The library community has led admirably in terms of standardizing data formats and standards for description and access that make bibliographic records interoperable. In Rama Chellappa's Chapter 6 concerning image retrieval in Japan, and Bruce Croft's impressions regarding text (Chapter 5), there are some research agendas with the goal of achieving scalable solutions to content conversion and management problems. But until that time, digital information organization must continue to be studied, prototyped through projects such as the DLIB II initiative, and considered carefully by professionals in many disciplines.