The book lends some organization and context to a field that is, to many, bewilderingly complex and multilayered. Its audience is not techies, who will find its brief summaries simplistic. Its value is for the majority of librarians who, like this reviewer, are on the fringes of digital library development and who can use a framework to synthesize the high volume of news reports from the field. The book could also serve as a text in courses on digital libraries, and as a primer for library and academic administrators who oversee digital library development but don't want to be overwhelmed by technical detail. Without taking sides, Arms lays out the approaches and agendas of the technical, library, and business communities who are working, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes antagonistically, in the digital library field.
Arms emphasizes the speed and inevitablity of change.
Far from being finished products, today's digital libraries are simply the precursors of tomorrow's digital libraries. The progress of technology can be generally predicted, but what organizations and institutions do with that technology is another matter entirely. This is not to say that the technology is mature, but it still outpaces content providers, particularly publishers, who have not yet figured out how to deal with this new medium. Arms' bemused description of the scientific publishing paradox serves as an apt case study of a system that has broken down completely but which is kept alive by all concerned out of sheer inertia. The book is peppered with sidebars that highlight specific examples of current and past digital library projects and protocols, many of which will be familiar to the reader.