A Study On Future Trends Of Libraries, Museums And Archives Digital Services

With the rapid development of Information Technology, Multimedia processing technology and Network technology, and the wide popularity of Internet, personal computers, a growing number of people are willing to use databases, search engines instead of physical libraries, archives and museums to search information. They prefer smart, digital and even mobile devices to books and papers. Physical libraries, museums and archives from all over the world are subjected to their fixed places and limited technologies. Confronted with difficulties from the rapid growth of digital information and diversified needs of users, they have to change the methods of service to users and conservation of information. In the past decades, they have made great achievements, theoretically and practically. The paper describes, analyzes and concludes these achievements, and then makes some predictions for the future trends. This paper explored the background and status quo of digital libraries, digital museums, digital archives and organizations such as International Library Federation. Focused on the service model, service content, service means and service systems, the paper analyzed these institution’s service policy and functions. By collecting related literatures both at home and abroad, with the use of literature analysis, questionnaire survey, and website content analysis, the paper analyzed some aspects of digital service and made a conclusion of the frame.The paper consists of three parts. Firstly, it studied projects all over the world about digital libraries, archives, museums and other information institutions, focused on the service mode, service content and service policy. Secondly, it studied theories about these institutions, and analyzed their definitions and functions. Thirdly, through the use of questionnaires, it investigated users’satisfactions and expectations to those institutions, based on which predicted the future trends in information service. In the last part of the paper, there are contributions and shortcomings of the paper, and recommendations for farther studies.