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Digital Library

By: Priyank K Purohit

Digital Books

A digital library is collection of digitally formatted books which can be accessed by more than one computer! A digital library can be considered one of the information retrieval system. A report for Corporation for National research Initiatives was the first ever to feature a reference to digital library. Some people refer to digital library as electronic library or virtual library.

Definition : An organized collection stored in digital/electronic format and accessible online.

With this achievement, comes significant advantages which are always followed by disadvantages!

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. You can also access any user account simply through a link. An important advantage to digital conversion is increased accessibility to users. There in also availability to individuals who may not be traditional patrons of a library, due to geographic location or organizational affiliation.

  1. No need to go to a library : Since all the books can be accessed by any person through internet; they have no need to go to the library.
  2. Avaibility : This digital library should be available 24/7. This allows the user to read books even in the middle of the night!
  3. Sharing Books : Since this will not be like the traditional library; the books can be shared and read at the same time by more than one user.
  4. Number of books limitation : In the traditional libraries; the number of books available on the limited space available. But, the digital library have almost no restrictions to how many books can be stored! Whenever you want more books; just add more memory blocks and you got more space to store your books. While in the traditional libraries; you cannot just add more space.

Disadvantages

With the ever-expanding digital collections in today's library's and archives we are facing new preservation challenges that seem to have no concrete solutions or universal standards in which to guide us. For centuries we have seen the evolution of paper based materials and have been able to successfully meet many of the challenges that these materials present to the realm of preservation. Our digital world, however, is far too young and mercurial to have any long-term sense of how this new media can be preserved for long-term future access.

  1. Server Load : Although the digital library is online and can let more than one person see one book at the same time; the server still has limitations on how many people it can server at a time. In other words, our knowledge in computers is too limited to actually have fully functional digital library which can replace an actual library.
  2. Technological Advances : As we invent something better than what we already had; we tend to replace the old stuff with the latest. If for example, we ivent another type or way to upload books online and the current way becomes an old technology; all the money and efforts will be useless.
  3. Copyright : Most books that are published today have a copyright protection. For this reason, the libraries cannot just copy a book online! Although, it is possible to do so under FAIR USE ACT. Fair Use Act states that libraries are allowed to digitalize their books if four conditions are satisfied : purpose of the use, nature of the work, market impact and amount used.




References

1.     Wikipedia, Canada Digital Libraries. Retrieved December, 3 2008, from Wikipedia Web site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library

2.     Google, Canada Google definition. Retrieved December 3, 2008, from Google Web site: http://www.google.ca




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