Digital Mathematics Libraries: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

• Published in: Mathematics in Computer Science
• Main Author: Bouche, Thierry
• Other Authors: Institut Fourier (IF ), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Grenoble Alpes 2016-2019 (UGA 2016-2019 ), Cellule de coordination documentaire nationale pour les mathématiques (CCDNM), Université Joseph Fourier - Grenoble 1 (UJF)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), NUMDAM, DML
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2010
• Subjects: Digital mathematics library; Electronic publishing of mathematics; [INFO.INFO-DL]Computer Science [cs]/Digital Libraries [cs.DL]; [MATH.MATH-GM]Mathematics [math]/General Mathematics [math.GM]; DML
• Online Access: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00449504; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00449504/document; https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00449504/file/bouche-gbu.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11786-010-0029-2

International audience The idea of a World digital mathematics library (DML) has been around since the turn of the 21th century. We feel that it is time to make it a reality, starting in a modest way from successful bricks that have already been built, but with an ambitious goal in mind. After a brief historical overview of publishing mathematics, an estimate of the size and a characterisation of the bulk of documents to be included in the DML, we turn to proposing a model for a Reference Digital Mathematics Library---a network of institutions where the digital documents would be physically archived. This pattern based rather on the bottom-up strategy seems to be more practicable and consistent with the digital nature of the DML. After describing the model we summarise what can and should be done in order to accomplish the vision. The current state of some of the local libraries that could contribute to the global views are described with more details.