Comparative Study Between Digital Archives And Digital Libraries In China

Digital archives (DA) construct a great part of our national information resource system. With the modern technology advancing in information, our country pays more and more attention to the construction and development of the information resources, strengthen and quicken the construction of digital archives is the demand of new era. As our national digital archives developed on the basis of digital libraries (DL), and share many similarities and differences with DL, what could be absorbed and used for reference by DA.Basing on this, this paper aims at the comparative study between DA and DL in our country. The comparison includes two parts: macro comparison and microcosmic comparison. The macro comparison between DA and DL relates to their background, development stages, functions, organization pattern and important constructive projects. The microcosmic comparison between DA and DL relates to their information recourses, information services, standardization and intellectual property right.DL of our country originated from the contradiction between the information demands and its existent forms. Besides, DL were influenced by foreign DL. Nevertheless, DA in our country originated from DL, which provides the basic of cooperation and communication between DA and DL.After generation, DA and DL experienced nearly similar development stages. But through the achievements in their each stage, DA began to fall behind DL, which is the motivation of DA should absorb and use the useful experiences and technological achievements of DL for reference. In addition, from information management perspective, DA and DL share five fundamental functions together, which is the foundation of DA use digital library for reference. Now, DA and DL adopt distributed organization pattern, but based on this, DL utilize the frame construction of hierarchical structure and radiation pattern to organize individual digital library as a whole, which is recommendable to DA.Moreover, from the comparison of DA and DL's important constructive projects, both of them displayed their own features.As DA and DL severally store different information resources, with different essential attributes, source, openness, and database, which is the main reason that DA in our country should paddle its own canoe, but not combine with DL. On services, DA and DL share almost the same service notions, but because of their different information essential attributes and developing level, their service objects, service manners, service platform are diversities. Besides, DA and DL's standardization, intellectual property right problems and solutions are all different.Through the macro comparison and microcosmic comparison between DA and DL in China, this paper confirms the aspects that DA could absorb and use DL for reference, the problems in DA itself. Some ideas are put forward by author for DA construction. Such as establishment of new conceptions: systemic, cooperative, opening up and essential attributes of archives' conceptions. Next, the author puts forward the assumptions about DA' construction, which include organizing preparation, integrated planning, operational procedures, and the project acceptance. On the basic of using DL's advanced achievements for reference, other practical parts of the construction of DA in our country are also discussed in details. Finally, this paper discusses that DA should persist in its social property, and on the guide of cost-benefit principle, take the road of self-independence.