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Abstract:

As we build the digital library, we need to be careful not to carelessly obliterate some of the important features of current libraries. Many proposals for digital libraries
remove social exchange and interaction, focusing narrowly
on the technical mechanisms of information access. This
is not only unwise, it is unnecessary since we could
provide mechanisms for social exchange and interaction
within our systems. Simply put, we do not need to remove
the social world from our systems. This paper discusses
why such interaction is important, and then presents a
toolkit, called the Cafe ConstructionKit, that can provide
computer-mediated communication support at low cost.