Overview of Digital Library /

Virtual Library / e-library

DR NIRMAL KUMAR SWAIN

Associate Professor
Dept of Lib. & Inf. Science
Maharshi Dayanand University
Rohtak 124001
Overview of Digital Library /
Virtual Library / e-library

Lecture delivered At
Training for Teacher Educators of Western Region on
Technique of Using Digital Libraries ,
Feb 17-21, 2017
Regional Institute of Education (RIE), NCERT
Bhopal
Feb 17, 2017
Digital Library (DL)

Meaning vs. meanings

Terminological differences
Towards workable definition
Creation and designing a DL
Transforming a traditional library to
digital library
Meaning vs. meanings

The moment we try to understand

the concept of digital library in a
uniform and singular mode of
understating the problem arises
in conceptualizing the meaning.
Hence scanning the different
definition is required and to have
a consensus over these.
Scanning the definitions

Digital libraries are those whose

collections and services are
offered in digital mode.
Are digital libraries necessarily
paperless or without print
collections.
Possibility of print collections
are there in a digital library also.
Cont

A careful observation on the

definitional problems are to be
observed. And a working solutions
or meaning based on pragmatic
definition need to be pushed
forward.
Pragmatic definition

Digital library is any library with digital

collections , stored , process and
access and retrieve . Here it begins
with collections first, then process and
access.
Terminological differences

At the same time literature also exhibit other

terms often used in place of digital library.
Electronic library or e-library, virtual
library are most cases front runners. Even
electric library was in use also. Digital
library is basically American use of the
term and electronic library is British
format. People use it interchangeably.
Designing Digital Library

Practically speaking digital library can designed

from two stand points. In first case
transforming from the traditional library to
digital library. In this case putting all the
collection into digital form after scanning is a
difficult task but possible. At the same time
new collection may be procured with the digital
version also.
Collection development

In the case of digital library collections are very

important. Collection policy is to be maintained
as vendors rain with digital collections and
difficult to control the quality unlike of its print
counterpart. So a sound policy can ensure the
good collection. Duplicacy, copyright policy and
other related issues are important to remember
and control also.
Processing

After collection development , processing is

needed before it is ready to be use. While
processing, cataloguing is another important
aspect in which a little precaution to be taken
as different from the print collections.
International standard and different common
digital platform and models are to be taken
care of.
Subject tagging

Subject tagging is another aspect to be taken

care of while suitable subject headings in terms
of quality and quantity are need to be tagged
for efficient retrieval. For this standard
controlled vocabularies can be sued if
necessary. At the same time locally indexing
languages can also be created and further it
can transformed into databases also.