A collaborative framework for a digital library

The expansion that digital libraries are having nowadays through the Web suggests that their usefulness could be increased by converting them into meeting places for specialists, where they can share opinions and information. With new functionalities, digital libraries will really become collaborative frameworks for specialized workgroups. An advantage of this framework is that the researchers will feel more comfortable using a system with “human presence” than using a system where they are isolated, and their research will usually be more productive. The article presents a virtual library that stores data, transcribed texts and digitized pages of historic Spanish documents from the 16th-18th centuries. The main Web page is the unique entry point for this digital library that offers, besides the classical features of searching and browsing documents, added services like a bulletin board, chat, information about other members, and mail boxes