Digital Library; a Conceptual Framework 5.1
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CHAPTER - V DIGITAL LIBRARY; A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 5.1. Introduction: The digital library is a recent term used to refer to information systems and services that provide electronic documents from dynamic or archival repositories. Within the past decade the number and types of digital information sources have been arrived to traditional libraries. There is a continues advancement in computer systems and communication technology. The computer and communication technology has resulted in a remarkable expansion in the ability to generate, process and disseminate digital information. These new developments have made new forms of knowledge repositories and information delivery channels. These channels are named as - electronic library - multimedia library - library without walls - hybrid library - information super-highway - digital library - virtual library Though these terms are synonymously used, there is a subtle difference in each category. It is very difficult to grasp and understand the term 'digital library' in isolation. So a brief description on traditional library, electronic library, hybrid library and virtual library is necessary to understand the digital library. The original vision of the library as propounded by nineteenth century pioneers like Melvil Dewey and Charles Cutter [1] was more than simply a set of pragmatic devices such as catalogue, classification system and reference desk procedures. It began in reality with a strong view of the cohesive and interrelated nature of knowledge itself. Other limitations 181 arose from the technology they had at their disposal and inadequate ideas about the user's habit of seeking information. Libraries constitute a physical space that holds collections. Libraries are also a space for learning and reflection - a public space that brings together diverse populations into one community to learn, gather information and reflect. Traditionally, libraries have been a collection of items stored in a site - specific facility. Access is limited to those who can travel to the library site or can an-ange a loan. Thus time and space define the nature of a library as a physical space. The electronic library is a term, which has had a longer usage in the literature than 'digital library', and is associated with old fashioned approach. It generally indicates a rather limited approach to the digital library, simply indicating the provision of range of material in digitized form, witfiin the framework of traditional library provision. Berkeley Digital Library SunSite[ 2 ] defines it as, " An electronic library is a library consisting of electronic materials and services. Electronic materials can include all digital materials, as well as a variety of analogue formats that require electricity to use for example, video tapes are an analogue format that requires electronic equipment to view. Thus the term 'electronic library' encompasses all the material that can be held by a 'digital library', and is therefore more inclusive'. The essence of the electronic library is that documents are stored and can be used in electronic form rather than on paper and localized media. The hybrid library is generally taken as lying somewhere on a continuum from the traditional to the digital library, with electronic and paper based sources used alongside one another. The challenge of the hybrid library is to integrate access to sources in a variety of formats and forms both local and remote resources. A hybrid library provides an environment and services that are partly physical and partly virtual. This model represents the typical 'real world' situation, with pragmatic access to information from 182 a range of media and formats, within an ideal of ever-closer integration and interoperability; " It follows that most users will continue to be offered a mix of formats via a mix of delivery systems. The challenge for library managers is to create integrated services, which provide a 'seamless' service to the user". The hybrid library has an element of physical provision and a physical location of material. The hybrid library should be designed to bring a range of technologies from different sources together in the context of a working library, and also to explore integrated systems and services in both the electronic and print environments. The concept of the ' gateway library' seems to be a ' hybrid library'. Richard De Gannaro [3] of Harvard university explains that a gateway library does not replace the book collection with technology. Rather, the gateway like, Janus, looks to the documentary sources of the past, even as it looks in the direction of the electronic sources that will be increasingly available in the future. In these terms, the gateway library and the hybrid library are same. They describe the 'real world' situation where libraries provide access to a range of difficult media but also express the ideal of greater integration. A digital library is a library consisting of digital materials and services. Digital materials are items that are stored, processed and transferred via digital (library) devices and networks. Digital services are services (such as reference assistance) that are delivered digitally over computer networks. Digital Library Federation [4] framed a broad definition of digital library, which reads as; "Digital libraries are organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized staff, to select, sfructure offer intellectual access to interpret, distribute, preserve 183 the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by a defined community or set of communities". Joint Information Systems Committee [5] describes the digital library as "catalogues on-line, many through a standard v^eb-browser, university libraries also have increasing number of subscriptions to electronic journals and other on-line information sources. The library thus becomes the entry point to the collections, both physical and virtual available to the institution." Both digital and electronic libraries can be virtual libraries only if they exist virtually - that is the library does not exist 'in real sense' for example, a virtual library can consist of material from a variety of separate libraries that are organized in a virtual space using computers and computer network. It is better to consider a digital library to be a library/information service, located either in a physical or virtual space or a combination of both, in which a significant proportion of the resources available to users of that services exist only in digital form. The term virtual library has been used at times, though with little consistency in meaning; it is often used to describe collections of web resources. Library of the future seems to be a catch-all terms, while library without walls has sometimes been used to refer, not only to digital collections, but also to outreach programs with physical materials. These separate general models may be combined into one overall general model using Crawford's concept of the complex library. The figure 5.1 summarizes the relationship between traditional, electronic, hybrid and digital libraries in a two- dimensional space, which emphasizes relative degrees of distributed access and digital content. 184 Locally held collection Distributed collection Analogue Figure 5.1 locating the digital library' concept Digital S.2. Evolution of Digital Libraries In 1938, H. G. Wells dreamed of a world encyclopedia in which all-human knowledge would be available everywhere. This idea has been appeared in his famous novel 'the brain'. He narrated his dream very lucidly, stating that in future all human knowledge will be available in one book and it will be available at any corner of the world. In 1945 Vannevar Bush, [6] then director of the U.S. office of scientific research and development has written an article 'As we may think". This article is an elegantly written exposition of the potential that technology offers the scientists to gather, 185 store, find and retrieve information He was of the opinion that in future scholars will be consulting any book by tapping its code on a keyboard. The root of digital library can be found in Vannevar Bush's article, which is published in the July 1945 issue of the Atlantic nnonthly. Bush comnnented that, "our methods of translating and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purposes. He discussed recent technological advances and how they might be used at some distant time in the future. He provided an outline of one possible technical approach, which he called 'Memex'. The interesting historical footnote is that the memex design is used in photography to store information. Bush had advocated the idea of networking. Licklider [7] in 1965 has described the idea of digital library. He had coined the phrase the 'library of the future' to refer to his vision of a fully computer based library. He emphasized that the research and development is in need of building a true useable digital library. The roots of present day digital libraries may be traced to the information retrieval systems of the 1960 and the hypertext systems of the 1980. Digital libraries have evolved based on the techniques and principles developed by early information researchers like Mooers, Perry and Taube, The era of automatic indexing and search systems was pioneered by Salton. Digital libraries are built on the solid foundations of more than three decades of research in information retrieval. In 1998, Vice-President of USA Mr. Al Gore [8] stated that 'a new wave of technological innovation is allowing us to capture, store, process and display an unprecedented amount of information about our planet and a wide variety environmental and cultural phenomena ... I believe we need a "Digital Earth". A multi resolution, three-dimensional representation of the planet, into which we can embed vast quantities of geo-referenced data.' He then called on scientists to create a digital map of the earth as a resolution of one meter.