| A library is
an institution, which manages one or more collections
of books in different fields. The unique purpose
of implementing a library is to make many people
benefited simultaneously by providing them with
materials of varied interest under the single
roof.
With this objective, the public libraries were
started in the olden days and they used to have
all kinds of collections. At the start-up the
public effectively used them. But later on the
public libraries transformed into a place where
the fiction lovers started to spend most of their
time. Hence, this habit did not harvest anything
for the goal of setting up a public library.
In order to cater to the needs of the students,
academic and research libraries were started and
they had inherited a successful sense of purpose
from the larger institution within which it was
created. These collections began to suffer as
the cost of journal subscriptions offered by commercial
publishers began to spiral out of control.
In Digital Library, the institutional aspect plays
a minor role, if any. Instead, it is more likely
to focus on the collections themselves - digital
collections and on the enabling technologies through
which these collections are built and searched.
[Levy, 2000] Research and development are done
to put digital materials online so they can be
retrieved and used efficiently. It is carried
out to make these materials broader, quicker and
efficiently accessible.
Analysis:
Impact of Internet on the Library
The Internet has changed the used and importance
of libraries causing them to develop technologically
and thus creating a overwhelming need for new
policies to guide the rules and regulations. Whereas,
once we needed to travel to the library to gain
our research material today it’s only a
mouse click away. Companies, institutes, newspapers
all have databases online allowing people to access
by subscription. This undermines the importance
of libraries causing them to develop radically.
The earning of the publishers can also be designed
in such a way that it grows proportionately with
that of the number of users referring to a particular
journal or book or research materials.
Survival of the present day Library:
Will the system of present day public libraries
get abolished due to the intervention of the digital
libraries? The answer is both yes and no. The
justification for the first choice goes like this.
If digitization constitutes the library of the
future, for many users the Internet is the library
of today. [Harter, 1994] But digital access to
information changes the way we use it, privileging
what is recent, searchable and at hand over what
might be far more valuable or reliable, if less
convenient. Considering the amount of information
available online and the daily growth in terms
of material it is essential that the Internet
be brought within the confines of the library
with the hope that this would once again allow
users to venture within the confine of its walls.
If the permanent existence of the public library
is taken up as an issue, it is inevitable to state
the opinion of the expert Kahle, archive director
and president of Alexa Internet “The idea
is to build a library of everything, and the opportunity
is to build a great library that offers universal
access to all of human knowledge. That may sound
laughable, but I’d suggest that the Internet
is going exactly in that direction.” [Koman,
2002] Libraries could go that way as well, at
least theoretically. Once established the wall
libraries shall continue their service to the
mankind in developing their wisdom and knowledge.
With the advent of the new techniques of the digital
library, the wall libraries can fully equip themselves
in rectifying the defects they had earlier.
The information scientists at the University
of California, Berkeley, have shown that most
of the data of institutes around the world are
being digitally stored and its only a matter of
time before the need for hard copies is made invalid.
Digital media is growing at an exceptional speed
and coupled with rapid advancements in its distribution,
leads to a conclusion not unlike Kahle’s.
Digital libraries can theoretically save everything,
ironic, then, that in the long run they may not
be able to save anything at all.
Use of Internet for research purposes:
There are chances that the books got from the
public library may turn useless after reaching
home. For people doing research and higher studies,
this may cause many problems and huge time consumption.
[Deloughry, 1998]
Hence, it seems to be a better decision to make
use of the Internet for online research. Surveys
show that researchers online can find intricate
data using simple keywords and rather than growing
through catalogs they can simply paste relevant
text into search engines and have the information
they need. About 456,000 hard copy items were
checked out during the 2001-2002 in the University
of Central Florida. About 1.3 million books and
other resources are housed at the campus building.
[Stevens, 2003] The UCF library also subscribes
to about 5,000 online journals and databases.
Yet, the fact is there is nothing like a hard
copy. Imagine a scenario where the Internet connection
breaks down if there is no backup available thousands
of people will be stranded for information. It
is essential that libraries create a balance between
the two where they are Internet friendly yet,
maintain their traditional requirements. Also,
librarians must figure out how to archive older
issues of journals.
By using the Internet access, a wide span of
years can be searched at once and multiple terms
can be combined. The online full text eliminates
the trips to the stacks to find call numbers,
volumes and issues.
Using the Internet to access 'traditional' sources
is certainly popular, and should be, due to the
convenience it offers the researcher. Many materials
do not exist in electronic form, and it will be
years before they do. If everything researchers
needed could be made available online there would
still be a waste of time as researchers would
have to browse through irrelevant information
to gather the correct data. Of the 100,000 journals
published worldwide, only about 10,000 are currently
available on-line. [Stevens, 2003] Because of
this, libraries will have to continue to subscribe
to some periodicals in print.
Challenges faced by Libraries:
Do digital libraries now, or will they eventually,
suffer a problem of purpose? It might seem hard
to imagine such a possibility, especially at a
time of such enormous expansion and optimism in
the digital realm. But it is suggested that the
problem of purpose deserves further attention,
and that attending to it can actually help chart
an expanded and more focused research agenda for
digital libraries.
At first, it might seem that purpose is simply
irrelevant to digital libraries. Especially if
we think of them as enabling technologies with
which to create and manage collections of digital
materials, then digital libraries would seem to
be purpose-neutral. But this “simply shifts
the problem of purpose from the technologies,
per se, to the collections and the institutions,
which manage them. We’re still left needing
to say something about the purpose(s) of these
institutions and their collections. And if we
should choose to argue that digital libraries
could be all things to all people, we ought at
least to pay attention to public libraries, which
tried that route and failed”.[Levy, 2000]
Digitization and Digital Preservation:
“Digitization complements preservation by
protecting the original and providing far superior
access.” [Author Unknown, 2004]
When we try to preserve documents there comes
the question of ownership. Previously the libraries
remained the sole owners of the books and journals
and kept copies of newspapers etc on film that
was open to all. Yet, now we see that when we
preserve digitally people are more liable to rent
the films and this requires subscriptions that
cost the libraries money. [Akst, 2003] This is
called an “access” model—contrasting
with the traditional concept of libraries which
had licensing material under private contract
rather than federal copyright law.
|