This paper presents an analysis of the problem of the “digital library”, taking in consideration the perspective and requirements of the “traditional library”. The purpose is to help the approach between two extremes of the problem: the well-established communities of the traditional library and the communities working in new involving technological and business models. In that sense, it is proposed and described a model for the digital library based in the generic use cases of: publication; licensing; acquisition; registration; dissemination; searching; access; and preservation. These cases are also related with new emerging issues: genres; actors; identifiers and metadata.