The Digital Library is the collection of the document in electronic form. It is available on Internet or CD-ROM.
It is also known as Internet Library, Online Library, or Digital collection. It contains Audio, Video images through the Internet.
The Digital Libraries are maintained by Organizations or Individuals. The main aim of the Digital Library is to access the books and documents by millions of individuals through the Internet.
The Advantages of these libraries are Easy and Rapid accessing to information. Softwares are used to preserve the data. Nowadays institutions are converting the book into electronic forms and distributed on the Internet. It will available in PDF or HTML format.
The types of digital Libraries include institutional repositories, National library collections, and digital Archives.
In this article, you'll get to know about the digital libraries in India.
1. National Digital Library of India (NDLI)
The National Digital Library of India is under the Ministry of Education, Government of India. The objective of this library is to give full data from many international digital libraries.
This library contains audio, videos, lectures; fiction. It is free of cost and available in English and Indian languages with more than twenty lakh users.
This library was released in May 2016. It is available on the Google Play store.
The National Digital Library of India is managed and directed by the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur.
It gives the best support to researchers, life-long learners, and academic learners in all disciplines.
Digital Library link: https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/
2. Universal Digital Library
The Universal Digital Library contains universal collections. It contains all books, all works. It has more than one million books and is free to read.
Within 10 years it grows to 10 million books. The goal of the Universal digital library is to provide full text.
The searching of books in this library is based on Optical Character Recognition (OCR). The benefit of this library is to supplement the education system by making knowledge to anyone.
The secondary benefit of this library is to give relevant information more reliable and much easier.
China, India, and Egypt are the partners of Universal digital library.
Digital Library link: http://ulib.isri.cmu.edu/
3. Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
Directory of Open Access book was established in 2012 by OAPEN Foundation in cooperation with the Directory of Open Access Journal and Semper tool.
The primary aim of the directory of open access books is to increase open access books. It is a service of the DOAB Foundation. This foundation is a nonprofit legal entity under Dutch Law and is based at National Library in The Hague.
Pierre Mounier and Neils Stern are the executive board of this library. The Supervisory board includes Neil Jacob, Bas savenije, Lionel Moaurel; Lucinda Jones, and Fabien Borget. Neils stern is a director of the OAPEN Foundation.
DOAB collaborate with various stakeholders such as BASE, CORE, COPIM, OA Books Network, etc, DOAB got many awards like Best New Product in 2012, Best Free Reference Web Site in 2013, and IFLA/Brill Open Access award in 2015.
Digital Library link: https://directory.doabooks.org/
4. Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a nonprofit digital library. Internet Archive contains 475 billion web pages, 28 million books, and texts, 3.5 million pages, 14 million audio recordings, 6 million recordings, 580000 software programs.
Internet Archive is a member of American Library Association (ALA), Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Califa, Boston Library Consortium (BLC), Digital Library Federation, Council of Library and Information Resources, Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Music Library Association, ReShare and National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA).
The person with a free account can upload data in the Internet Archive. Millions of people serve the Internet Archive every day. It is one of the top 300 websites in the world.
It provides free access to researchers, scholars, and the public. Brewster Kahle was the founder of the Internet Archive.
It was founded in May 1996 in California, United States. It has 168 employees and its headquarters are located in San Francisco, California, and United States.
Digital Library link: https://archive.org/
5. British Council Online Library
It is the largest library in the world. It contains 170- 200 million from many countries. It is a non-departmental public body.
It is sponsored by Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. This library includes 14 million books and manuscripts as far as 2000 BC. Caroline Brazier was the chief librarian from 2013-2018.
Liz Jolly is a chief librarian since September 2018. Roly Keating is the chief executive at present from 2012. Sir Harry Hook way was the chief executive from 1973- 1984, Brian Lang from 1991-2000, and Dame Lynne Brindley from 200-2012.
This library contains British and Irish Newspapers since 1840. The Newspaper section was located in Colindale. This library also includes the Philatelic collection which is located in St Pancras.
The British Library contains more than millions of discs and 185,000 tapes. The collections cover recorded sounds, literature, music's and drama from all over the world back over more than 100 years.
This library also includes millions of sounds and moving image items.
Digital Library link: https://www.britishcouncil.in/library/online-library
6. Delhi University Library System (DULS)
It has more than 37 libraries. Delhi University Library System contains major libraries such as Central Library, FMS library, Arts Library, Central Science Library, East Asian Studies Library, Law Library, Ratan Tata Library, South campus library, and Braille Library.
The vision of this library is to provide the highest quality education to the students and act as a catalyst to improve talent, intellectual growth, and personal development. It serves humanity through the creation of well-rounded, multi-skilled, and socially responsible global citizens.
The mission of this library is to foster the development of the student through education and improve local, national, and global communities. It positioned top in the Centre for World University Ranking (CWUR) and 8th place in National Institutional Ranking Framework.
It is one of the top 10 Indian public educational institutions and first among the Indian Public Universities.
Digital Library link: http://crl.du.ac.in/index.htm
So, these are the Digital libraries in India. In the early days, we have a library in our area which contains books, newspapers, magazines, etc. In some areas, it may not be there.
We cannot get all the books that we need in the library. Bur in digital libraries we can get all the information and books.
The only thing is we need the Internet. This will helpful for researchers, exam preparations.
We can get all the things in the palm by using the internet at any time and anywhere. If we use it properly we can gain more knowledge.
Improvement in technology is helpful to humans in many ways. The only thing we have to use this properly.
Do share your library experiences with us in the comment box.
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