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What Is E-Library?

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats (as opposed to print, microform, or other media) and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. A digital library is a type of information retrieval system.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
2K views

What Is E-Library?

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats (as opposed to print, microform, or other media) and accessible by computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. A digital library is a type of information retrieval system.

Uploaded by

Mehedi Hasan
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is E-Library?

E-Library refers to all the library resources that are available online through computers
and databases. These are different than the open internet, as they have restricted access.
The University of Manitoba Libraries is either given special access, or pays money so that
students and faculty can access the articles, databases, books, services, and resources
through E-Library for free.

You need your ID and password to access many of the online library resources. If you are
signing in from off campus, you will need to use your ID and password to sign into our
proxy server.

Digital library

A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital formats (as opposed
to print, microform, or other media) and accessible by computers.The digital content may
be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. A digital library is a type of
information retrieval system.

The DELOS Digital Library Reference Model defines a digital library as:

An organization, which might be virtual, that comprehensively collects, manages and


preserves for the long term rich digital content, and offers to its user communities
specialized functionality on that content, of measurable quality and according to codified
policies.

The first use of the term digital library in print may have been in a 1988 report to the
Corporation for National Research Initiatives.The term digital libraries was first
popularized by the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative in 1994.These draw
heavily on As We May Think by Vannevar Bush in 1945, which set out a vision not in terms
of technology, but user experience. The term virtual library was initially used
interchangeably with digital library, but is now primarily used for libraries that are virtual
in other senses (such as libraries which aggregate distributed content).

A distinction is often made between content that was created in a digital format, known as
born-digital, and information that has been converted from a physical medium, e.g., paper,
by digitizing. The term hybrid library is sometimes used for libraries that have both
physical collections and digital collections. For example, American Memory is a digital
library within the Library of Congress. Some important digital libraries also serve as long
term archives, for example, the ePrint arXiv, and the Internet Archive.
Academic repositories

Many academic libraries are actively involved in building institutional repositories of the
institution's books, papers, theses, and other works which can be digitized or were 'born
digital'. Many of these repositories are made available to the general public with few
restrictions, in accordance with the goals of open access, in contrast to the publication of
research in commercial journals, where the publishers often limit access rights.
Institutional, truly free, and corporate repositories are sometimes referred to as digital
libraries.

Digital archives

Physical archives differ from physical libraries in several ways. Traditionally, archives were
defined as:

1. Containing primary sources of information (typically letters and papers directly


produced by an individual or organization) rather than the secondary sources found
in a library (books, periodicals, etc);
2. Having their contents organized in groups rather than individual items.
3. Having unique contents.

The technology used to create digital libraries has been even more revolutionary for
archives since it breaks down the second and third of these general rules. In other words,
"digital archives" or "online archives" will still generally contain primary sources, but they
are likely to be described individually rather than (or in addition to) in groups or
collections, and because they are digital their contents are easily reproducible and may
indeed have been reproduced from elsewhere. The Oxford Text Archive is generally
considered to be the oldest digital archive of academic physical primary source materials.

The future

Large scale digitization projects are underway at Google, the Million Book Project, and
Internet Archive. With continued improvements in book handling and presentation
technologies such as optical character recognition and ebooks, and development of
alternative depositories and business models, digital libraries are rapidly growing in
popularity as demonstrated by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN's efforts. Just as libraries have
ventured into audio and video collections, so have digital libraries such as the Internet
Archive.

According to Larry Lannom, Director of Information Management Technology at the


nonprofit Corporation for National Research Initiatives, “all the problems associated with
digital libraries are wrapped up in archiving.” He goes on to state, “If in 100 years people
can still read your article, we’ll have solved the problem.” Daniel Akst, author of The
Webster Chronicle, proposes that “the future of libraries—and of information—is digital.”
Peter Lyman and Hal Varian, information scientists at the University of California, Berkeley,
estimate that “the world’s total yearly production of print, film, optical, and magnetic
content would require roughly 1.5 billion gigabytes of storage.” Therefore, they believe that
“soon it will be technologically possible for an average person to access virtually all
recorded information.”

Advantages

The advantages of digital libraries as a means of easily and rapidly accessing books,
archives and images of various types are now widely recognized by commercial interests
and public bodies alike.[11]

Traditional libraries are limited by storage space; digital libraries have the potential to
store much more information, simply because digital information requires very little
physical space to contain it. As such, the cost of maintaining a digital library is much lower
than that of a traditional library.

A traditional library must spend large sums of money paying for staff, book maintenance,
rent, and additional books. Digital libraries may reduce or, in some instances, do away with
these fees. Both types of library require cataloguing input to allow users to locate and
retrieve material. Digital libraries may be more willing to adopt innovations in technology
providing users with improvements in electronic and audio book technology as well as
presenting new forms of communication such as wikis and blogs; conventional libraries
may consider that providing online access to their OPAC catalogue is sufficient. An
important advantage to digital conversion is increased accessibility to users. They also
increase availability to individuals who may not be traditional patrons of a library, due to
geographic location or organizational affiliation.

 No physical boundary. The user of a digital library need not to go to the library physically;
people from all over the world can gain access to the same information, as long as an
Internet connection is available.
 Round the clock availability A major advantage of digital libraries is that people can gain
access 24/7 to the information.
 Multiple access. The same resources can be used simultaneously by a number of
institutions and patrons. This may not be the case for copyrighted material: a library may
have a license for "lending out" only one copy at a time; this is achieved with a system of
digital rights management where a resource can become inaccessible after expiration of the
lending period or after the lender chooses to make it inaccessible (equivalent to returning
the resource).
 Information retrieval. The user is able to use any search term (word, phrase, title, name,
subject) to search the entire collection. Digital libraries can provide very user-friendly
interfaces, giving clickable access to its resources.
 Preservation and conservation. Digitization is not a long-term preservation solution for
physical collections, but does succeed in providing access copies for materials that would
otherwise fall to degradation from repeated use. Digitized collections and born-digital
objects pose many preservation and conservation concerns that analog materials do not.
Please see the following "Problems" section of this page for examples.
 Space. Whereas traditional libraries are limited by storage space, digital libraries have the
potential to store much more information, simply because digital information requires very
little physical space to contain them and media storage technologies are more affordable
than ever before.
 Added value. Certain characteristics of objects, primarily the quality of images, may be
improved. Digitization can enhance legibility and remove visible flaws such as stains and
discoloration.
 Easily accessible.

Challenges

Digital preservation

Digital preservation aims to ensure that digital media and information systems are still
interpretable into the indefinite future. Each necessary component of the must be migrated,
preserved or emulated. Typically lower levels of systems (floppy disks for example) are
emulated, bit-streams (the actual files stored in the disks) are preserved and operating
systems are emulated as a virtual machine. Only where the meaning and content of digital
media and information systems are well understood is migration possible, as is the case for
office documents.

Copyright and licensing

Some people have criticized that digital libraries are hampered by copyright law, because
works cannot be shared over different periods of time in the manner of a traditional
library. The republication of material on the Web by libraries may require permission from
rights holders, and there is a conflict of interest between them and publishers who may
wish to create online versions of their acquired content for commercial purposes.

Some digital libraries acquire a license to "lend out" their resources. This may involve the
restriction of lending out only one copy at a time for each license, and applying a system of
digital rights management for this purpose.

Metadata creation

In traditional libraries, the ability to find works of interest was directly related to how well
they were catalogued. While cataloguing electronic works digitized from a library's existing
holding may be as simple as copying moving a record for the print to the electronic item,
with complex and born-digital works requiring substantially more effort. To handle the
growing volume of electronic publications, new tools and technologies have to be designed
to allow effective automated semantic classification and searching. While full text search
can be used for some searches, there are many common catalog searches which cannot be
performed using full text, including:

 finding texts which are translations of other texts


 linking texts published under pseudonyms to the real authors (Samuel Clemens and Mark
Twain, for example)
 differentiating non-fiction from parody (The Onion from The New York Times, for example)

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