Digital Libraries for General Audiences: Usage Patterns and Trends in Wisconsin's BadgerLink

Digital libraries represent a recent advancement for information access. They may meet the needs of specialized audiences or, increasingly, general audiences in the form of state digital libraries. Covi & Kling (1996) broadly defined digital libraries “as a collection of electronic resources and services for the delivery of materials in a variety of formats. Digital libraries include personal, distributed, and centralized collections such as online public access catalogs and bibliographic databases, distributed document databases, scholarly and professional discussion lists and electronic journals, other online databases, forums, and bulletin boards”(p. 672). A growing number of examples of state digital libraries exist including Wisconsin’s BadgerLink, the Colorado Virtual Library, and the Kentucky Commonwealth Virtual Library. Initial evaluations of the Washington (Efthimiadis & Bruce, 2000) and Wisconsin systems (Wolfram & Xie, 2000) show the positive impact of these services to residents of their respective states. BadgerLink has become a vital information resource for residents of Wisconsin since becoming available in 1998. It provides access to a range of regional and national information resources via the Internet and serves as a gateway to other remote resources. Of particular value to both libraries and residents have been the full text database products produced by EBSCO and ProQuest. EBSCO provides access to a wide range of full text resources of both a general and specialized nature.