The digital city's public library: Support for community building and knowledge sharing

Libraries are hubs for social and intellectual interactions in communities and organizations. Virtual libraries should serve the same purpose. In this paper an online library is described that places knowledge sharing and community building at the core of its design. The library system supports personal web sites that are visible to the entire community. Personal topic profiles for library research services, information services choices, and collaborative research requests provide people with views of each others' activities and interests. Collaboration and interest-matching tools help people to share knowledge and to form special interest communities. The paper also discusses design features necessary for building community in virtual situations: semantically-rich places, perspective and identity, interaction opportunities, and facilitators.