Challenges Related to Identifying Sources and Document Collection for Big Data Analyses

The modern information environment is dynamic and characterized by the speed with which multimedia content is created, collected, contributed to and shared. Users have access to documents which are part of large, changing and diverse sets of data, whose effective processing can lead, and frequently does lead, to new knowledge being discovered. However, the overwhelming majority of the resources available today require specialized tools and techniques for identifying, searching, collecting and organizing the large volumes of data. This also applies to data directly related to the activities of institutions dealing in information or the field of information science, especially the theory and practice of accessing, searching and collecting documents. The purpose of this article is to present selected issues and challenges related to exploring the possibilities offered by big data from the perspective of information science, the activities of libraries and the information resources they offer. Based on a critical analysis of the relevant literature and with use of inductive reasoning, experiments and observations, selected aspects of digital document accessibility and classification are presented, in addition to issues related to searching and identifying resources using tools currently offered by libraries (in particular discovery systems).