Digital libraries as information organizations the re-unfolding of the memory/information paradox

Throughout history, libraries have played a key role in remembering the past continuously adapting to changes in societal communication and its technologies. Digital libraries prove to be the next step of unfolding the memory/information paradox which is the foundation of what makes a library a library. Libraries are again changing in order to remain libraries. The focus has begun to shift from being an archive of knowledge containers - the memory side of the paradox - to being an organizer of information taking the form of information organizations. In this sense, a library does not use an information system but rather is an information system. Contemporary developments in ICT seem to harbour the capability to transform the memory/information paradox into a solvable technical problem making libraries themselves an institution of the past. At a closer look, however, the paradox re-emerges provoking the dynamics behind the discussions of what a library actually is and does in the 21st century. The conceptual elaboration of contemporary libraries as information organizations serves as a sensitizing tool for the social science study of digital libraries but also as a key to introducing digital libraries into the Information Systems community.