CEO'S LETTER
On the 10th Anniversary of ACM's Digital Library
When ACM launched its pioneering Digital Library a decade ago,
it was one of the first professional societies to offer its
members—and the broader computing community—a digital
repository of its publications. At launch, the ACM Digital
Library contained the full text of all articles published by ACM
from 1991 forward, and the metadata for articles published back
to 1985.
ACM's Digital Library proved a success from the outset. The
decision to make the metadata for ACM's digital collection freely
available (with subscriptions only required for downloading full
text) allowed the computing community worldwide to use and
benefit from the Digital Library regardless of their relationship
with ACM. That decision, combined with extremely affordable
pricing for individuals and institutions to access the full text
of ACM articles, set the stage for early, enthusiastic engagement
of the Digital Library.
Since its launch, ACM has maintained an ongoing commitment in
time, talent, and investment to ensure the Digital Library
continues to flourish and fulfill the needs of the community.
Within a year of its debut (and earlier than other professional
societies), ACM resolved to capture and host everything the
organization had ever published. We also decided to raise the
visibility and importance of The Guide to Computing
Literature, ACM's bibliographic database of the computing
citations from a vast array of global publishers. And we elected
to extract references from all publications (electronic and
scanned) and treat them as first-class metadata. These decisions
were at the core of a major reimplementation of the Digital
Library released in 2001. That release included reference linking
across all ACM publications, citation counts for ACM articles,
and a significantly enhanced Guide.
The Digital Library, and the role it plays within the
computing community, are top priorities for ACM. Throughout the
last decade we have made significant investments in its content,
features, performance, and worldwide reach. As a result, the
Digital Library is now available at over 2,500 institutions
around the globe; 26,000 professional members and 14,000 student
members hold individual subscriptions. There are over 2.5 million
unique visits per month, one million articles downloaded each
month, and 75,000 Digital Library searches conducted each
day.
ACM will continue investing in the Digital Library. New search
technology recently integrated has dramatically enhanced Digital
Library searches and will enable a much richer, guided navigation
experience of ACM (and other publishers') content. A major effort
has been completed to normalize author and institution names so
the community can easily and accurately find the published work
of specific authors and institutions. New bibliometrics are now
associated with each article and aggregated for authors (and soon
institutions). The new ACM Author Page shows the collected works
of an author, institutional affiliations, as well as individual
and aggregate citation and download counts. With these new
features, users can easily see not only who is publishing, but
which articles are actually being downloaded (and presumably
read).
The Digital Library has become ACM's most significant product
and service. More than anything else, the Digital Library
reflects the dimensions, the brand, the quality—the
essence—of ACM. The success of the Digital Library,
however, doesn't stop here. ACM will continue to invest resources
and talent to ensure its Digital Library stays at the leading
edge, is accessible and affordable to everyone, and remains the
premier digital repository for the computing community.
John R. White, Chief Executive Officer, ACM
