Pamela Samuelson

This issue of Communications highlights some of the many projects underway for the creation or enhancement of digital libraries. At the moment, no one seems to think there will be only one gargantuan digital library to sate the public's appetite for information. Rather, the expectation is that there will be many digital libraries, most of which will have specialized collections and will be internetworked together in a way loosely resembling today's Internet. Most digital library project planners are aware there are intellectual property issues that must be resolved in order to successfully deploy their libraries. Some proposals for digital library projects express an intent to resolve intellectual property issues as part of the overall plan for the library, albeit without much specificity about how this would be achieved in their systems [2, 4].