The libraries will not become digital libraries, but will rather acquire access to ever growing digital collections on behalf of their users. Majority of these collections are being made available by external sources like commercial publishers, collections mounted by scholarly societies, resources offered by other institutions, electronic journal sites, etc. The electronic journals have become the largest and fastest growing segment of digital collections for most libraries. There are more than 40,000 electronic journals that are now available in electronic format through the Internet. The Internet has long been a favourite media for experimenting with electronic publishing and delivery. The technology is now available that allow creation of fully digitized multimedia products and make them accessible through the Internet. Technological changes, especially the Internet and web technology, continue to attract more and more traditional players to adopt it as a global way to offer their publications to the international community of scientists and technologists. Most of the important publishers now have their web-based interfaces to offer full-texts of their journals.
The libraries or the institutions implementing digital libraries may have datasets that are originally created in digital format. It is important that an institution deals with the increasing flood of materials created and delivered solely in digital format. Doctoral dissertations submitted to universities and research institutions are undisputedly highly valuable documents that qualify to be an important component of any digital library implementation. Moreover, institutions may have in-house journal(s), annual reports, technical reports, or other datasets, that may be included in digital collection. Items listed above are invariably composed in one of the word processing programme or in a desk-top publishing package.
The documents composed on word processing packages or desktop publishing packages can be converted into HTML, PostScript and PDF using tools like Acrobat 7.0 or Acrobat Exchange. Online converters are also available through Adobe’s site. HTML, as a de facto language of the web and PDF as a de facto standard for online distribution of electronic information, can be deployed to facilitate transition from computer processible files to a format accessible on the web.
Publishers are increasingly adopting XML to provide structure and functionality to their publications and to ripe the benefit that XML format offers. XML documents provide benefit of a database management system without being one. Publishers code the accepted submissions in XML in a semi-automated process using assortment of software packages available to them or using custom-made software specially designed for this purpose. The database of XML documents are used for providing search by authors, keywords, etc. and browse the content pages of journals. Behind the web interface lies a relational database like Oracle that store XML documents. Search and browse operation on highly structured XML datasets provides dynamically generated web pages (HTML-on-fly). These HTML files provides link to full-text of documents in HTML / PDF / PostScript, most formats are generally generated dynamically from the same XML datasets using pre-defined DTDs.
Research institutions and univerities may set-up and maintain their OAI-compliant “institutional repositories” to host theses and dissertations submitted to their institutions / universities and research articles published by their researchers and faculty. These institutions and university may also mandate submission of electronic version of theses, dissertations and research articles. Several OAI-compliant digital library software such as Dspace, e-prints, FEDORA, CDSWare, etc. are available as open source software.
5.4. Conversion of Existing Print Media into Digital Format
Several digital library projects are concerned with providing digital access to materials that already exists with traditional libraries in printed media. Scanned page images are practically the only reasonable solution for institutions such as libraries for converting existing paper collection (legacy documents) without having access to the original data in computer processible formats convertible into HTML / XML or in any other structured or unstructured text. Scanned page images are natural choice for large-scale conversions for major digital library initiatives. Printed text, pictures and figures are transformed into computer-accessible formats using a digital scanner or a digital camera in a process called document imaging or scanning. The digitally scanned images are stored in a file as a bit-mapped page image, irrespective of the fact that a scanned page contains a photograph, a line drawing or text. A bit-mapped page image is a type of computer graphic, literally an electronic picture of the page which can most easily be equated to a facsimile image of the page and as such they can be read by humans, but not by the computers, understably “text” in a page image is not searchable on a computer using the present-day technology. An image-based implementation require a large space for data storage and transmission. There are several large projects using page images as their primary storage format, including project JSTOR (www.jstor.org) at Princeton University funded by the Melon Foundation. The project Jstor has a complete set of more than 800 journals scanned and hosted on web servers that resides at the University of Michigan and is mirrored at Princeton University. Using technology developed at Michigan, high resolution (600 dpi) bit-mapped images of each page are linked to a text file generated with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. Linking a searchable text file to the page images of the entire published record of a journal along with newly constructed table of contents, indexes, permits high level of access, search and retrieval of the journal material previously unimaginable.
Capturing page image format is comparatively easy and inexpensive, it is a faithful reproduction of its original document maintaining page integrity and originality. The scanned textual images, however, are not searchable unless it is OCRed, which, in itself, is highly error prone process specially when it involves scientific texts. Options and technology for converting print to digital and the process of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) are elaborated in section on “digitisation”.
5.5. Creating Vitual Library, Library Portal or Subject Gateways
The web, being a hypermedia-based system, allow linking amongst electronic resources stored on servers dispersed geographically on distant locations. The portal sites or gateways redirect a user to the holders of the original digital material. It may provide its own indexing and search services and it may combine original resources from a number of different providers. The portal sites or the gateways restrict their operation to providing linkages to independent third-party sources. Home pages of all the major education and research institutions, specially in developed world, provide an organized and structured guide to electronic resources available on the Internet as well as those available to library hosting the portal site. Librarians can proactively develop subject portals on their library’s web site.
6. Pricing Model
One of the major issue that the publishers are concerned with is to save their economic interest in the process of providing electronic access to their printed publications. The publishers make a significant investment in the process of production of a journal which involves activities like peer-review, administration, editing, layout design, production, subscription management and distribution. Most activities that are performed for publishing a journal are common to both electronic and paper media, except for production and distribution where the cost involved is relatively low. Moreover, electronic version of journals generally provides additional features like link to corrections, link to additional materials, e-mail link to author(s), etc. which require additional work on part of the publisher. Tenopir and King (1997) in a study concluded that the cost of electronic journals can not be substantially lower than their printed versions.
Journals are made available by the publishers through the web at varying price models. In a survey of 8001 peer reviewed electronic journals conducted by EBSCO, it was found that 50% of journals are free with their print journals, 34% require additional payment over their print subscription and 16% are available online only without their print counter-part. Overall, 84% of journals require a print subscription to journals as a prerequisite for online access to their electronic version. (Boteler, 2001). The prevalent pricing models are (Sathyanarayana, 2004) described below:
i) Print + E Model
Print + electronic model was evolved by the publishers as a natural extension of their print subscription model. The publisher provides electronic access to all subscribed as well as un-subscribed titles or part of un-subscribed titles of a given subject collection on additional payment of certain % on their current print spending. The additional percentage payment may vary from publishers to publisher in the range of 5% and 30%. Libraries are expected to retain their print subscription that existed at the time of signing-up the deal with the publisher. It is obligatory on the part of the libraries to maintain their current level of subscription for the print journals. In a library consortium, a member library in the consortium may have liberty to drop subscription to the journal but should replace it by another journal of same or higher value. Managing this model may pose significant operational problems to both consortia and the publishers. The print + electronic model also provide access to back-files in addition to the current year access. Moreover, depending on the deal, the publisher may also allow cross sharing of subscribed titles across members of the consortium. Archiving rights in such cases are generally limited to titles that are subscribed in print.
ii) Electronic Only
The e-only models offer electronic access to journals irrespective of their print subscription. Under such offers, publishers offer a pre-defined set of journals of pre-determined cost to libraries. In case of consortium, publishers develop consortium-specific offers taking into account current print spending by the member institutions to ensure that they do not lose of revenue from print cancellations. The proposal is made more attractive by offering discount to those members of consortium who wish to maintain print subscription.
Responding to the demands from libraries and library consortia, publishers are moving gradually towards e-only model. E-only models grant consortia-wide archiving and perpetual access rights for the subscribed years’ content. Access and archiving rights for back-file content is offered either as an inclusive value of the offer price or for a one-time additional payment.
iii) Full-Time Equivalent Models
Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) models are offered based on population of total number of potential user per site. Generally entire population of the organization including students, faculty, researchers and employees of an organization are counted for FTE. Publishers like Nature and Science who had several multiple subscriptions across the campuses follow this model considering that online access could lead to extinction of their print version over time.
iv) Concurrent-Users Model
The concurrent user model provides a fix number of concurrent accesses to all the members of consortium treating all members of the consortia as one single entity or site. The database providers such as, web of Science, use this model predominantly. Universities having multiple sites and national consortium can negotiate this kind of model.
v) Perpetual Access V/s Annual Lease
The libraries and library consortium are increasingly demanding perpetual access to the contents based on subscription model followed by the libraries in print environment. However, the cost that is charged for perpetual access, especially by aggregators like Ovid and OCLC is prohibitive. Annual Lease models, on the other hand, offer significant cost advantage.
vi) Back-file Access
Access to back-file of journals is a critical necessity especially for scholarly journals. Several leading publishers have embarked on the project of digitising their complete back-files of journals. Several publishers, like Elsevier Science, Springer, ACS and IOP, have already launched their complete journal archives.
While several publishers, like ACM and IEEE offer access to their entire back-file collection, as part of the current print subscription, a number of publishers, however, offer free online access to only the current year’s content as part of the print subscription and back-file access is charged separately. Some publishers, who have created back-files from volume 1, offer the back-files on “one-time purchase and perpetual access” basis.
vii) Document Delivery and Pay-Per-View Models
Document delivery is an extension of inter-library-lending practice for resource sharing which has been widely practiced world over as exchange of photocopy of articles among libraries. The emerging pay-per-view model, made available by several publishers and third-party aggregators, is likely to replace the old document delivery model.
The pay-per-view model charge US$10-50 per article, but offer the benefit of instant access to full-text and is economic advantageous over subscription models. In this model, the library does not subscribe to the complete journal but pays for what is used. This is an ideal model for the contents of non-subscribed journals. Consortia negotiations can look at the opportunities for using this model for less used journals and engage the publishers for advance purchase of articles for a lower fee per article. Pay-per-view model is driven and promoted by the publishers. It may replace document delivery completely in future.
7.0 Conclusion
Collection development in the digital library environment is a complicated task. The library should make the collection development policy based on the mission and objective of the organisation. While selecting the e-resources, the library should be careful considering the depth of the content, authenticity, pricing model, access mechanism, etc. Some of the publishers provide bundled access, such cases the selection committee should be careful about no of journal included in the bundle and authenticity of the journal. The selection committee ensure that, the publisher has advanced the current technology to provide access to participating institution including compatible for federated access management, adopt international standard to provide usage statistics through SUSI protocol and Z39.50 search and retrieval of information from remote server. The library committee should evaluate the usage of the existing collection and consider them to add remove news e-resources to the collection and remove unused and less used resources. Licencing and pricing model differ from each publisher, selection committee should evaluate the various licencing model & pricing model and formulate the proper policy to access the current e-resources, back volume, concurrent user, print only, print + electronic-model, electronic model, etc.
8.0 References / Readings
1. Tenopir, Carol, and Donald W. King (1997). Trends in scientific scholarly journal publishing in the United States. Ontario: Journal of Scholarly Publishing. 28 (April): 135-70.
3. Arora, J. (2001) Building Digital Libraries: Data Capture. Joint Workshop on Digital Libraries. DRTC, Bangalore (12th–16th March, 2001). Bangalore: DRTC
4. Satyanarayana, N.V., Krishnan, S. and Arora, J. (2004) Library consortia and resource sharing initiatives in India: A White Paper. Bangalore, Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, pp.54.
5.
NISO Framework Advisory Group (2004), A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections. National Information Standards Organization, 2nd ed., available at:
www.niso.org/framework/framework2.html
6. Sharon Johnson, Ole Gunnar Evensen, Julia Gelfand, Glenda Lammers, Lynn Sipe and Nadia Zilper (2012), Key Issues for e-Resource Collection Development: A Guide for Libraries. Netherlands: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
Did you know?
The Digital Library is Organized collection of multimedia and other types of resources.
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Resources are available in computer processable form.
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The function of acquisition, storage, preservation, retrieval is carried out through the use of digital technology.
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Access to the entire collection is globally available directly or indirectly across a network.
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Support users in dealing with information objects
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Helps in the organization and presentation of the above objects via electronic/digital means etc.
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The digital library is an electronic or virtual library where information is selected, acquired, processed, organized, stored and retrieved in digital form.
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The users of digital libraries are the universal users who should have facility to access to all created and acquired digital sources of information in the form of electronic text, image, map, sound, video and multimedia.
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Digital Library of India (DLI) is the first major government funded Digital Library project in India in collaboration with other countries. DLI Portal is a project piloted by Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India. The Portal was launched in September 2003 and being maintained by ERNET, India.
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Digital Libraries (DL) are now emerging as a crucial component of global Information Infrastructure, adopting the latest information and communication technology. Digital Libraries are networked collections of digital texts, documents, images, sounds, data, software, and many more that are the core of today's Internet and tomorrow's universally accessible digital repositories of all human knowledge.
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Hybrid Library Provides services in a mixed-mode, electronic and paper, environment, particularly in a co-coordinated way. Derived from a strand of Electronic Library which explored the issues surrounding the retrieval and delivery of information in these types of environment but also investigated the integration of different electronic services so that single search approach could be offered to the End user.
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The term “Hybrid Library “was first coined in 1998 by Chris Rusbridge.
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Virtual Library Provides Access to electronic information in a variety of remote locations through a local online catalogue or other gateway, such as the internet.
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Interesting Facts
The term Digital Libraries was first popularized by the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative in 1994
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“Digital Library Initiatives” funded by the US National Science Foundation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States. In 1994, these agencies granted US$ 24.4 million to six universities in US for digital library research impelled by the sudden explosive growth on the Internet and web technology.
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All the six IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) created as centres of excellence for higher training, research and development in science, engineering and technology, have automated their libraries and now they have access to more than one thousand electronic journals
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Digital Library of India, part of the online services of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and partner in the Million Book Project, provides free access to many books in English and Indian languages. The scanning of Indian language books has created an opportunity for developing Indian language optical character recognition (OCR) software. The publications are mainly in PDF or Quick Time format.
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Digital Library is Collection of electronic resources that provides direct/indirect access to a systematically organized collection of digital objects.
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Digital Libraries can help move the nation towards realizing the enormously powerful vision of ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to the best and the latest of human thought and culture, so that no classroom, individual or a society is isolated from knowledge resources.
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At present most of the university libraries have taken steps to provide web-based reference and information services in digital environment in addition to their traditional library services.
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Points to Ponder
Digital Library is to enhance the digital collection in a substantial way, by strategically sourcing digital materials, conforming to copyright permissions, in all possible standards/formats so that scalability and flexibility is guaranteed for the future and advanced information services are assured to the user community right from beginning.
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The digital library should also be able to integrate and aggregate the existing collections and services mentioned above with an outstanding client interface.
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Digital libraries do enable the creation of local content, strengthen the mechanisms and capacity of the library’s information systems and services. They increase the portability, efficiency of access, flexibility, availability and preservation of content.
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A digital library owns and controls the information, it provides access to information, not just a pointer to it;
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A digital library has a unified organizational structure with consistent points for accessing the data;
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A digital library is not a single entity, it may also provide access to digital material and resources from outside the actual confines of any one digital library;
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Digital libraries support quick and efficient access to a large number of distributed but interlinked information sources that are seamlessly integrated;
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Digital libraries offers access to its content to multiple users simultaneously, these content can be listed in multiple ways by different users simultaneously;
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A digital library owns and controls the information, it provides access to information, not just a pointer to it;
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Web Links
http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/downloads/file/fieldhouse-ch1.pdf
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library
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http://www.www9.org/final-posters/poster17.html
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http://www.asis.org/Bulletin/Oct-99/fox.html
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http://liswiki.org/wiki/Digital_library
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http://deity.gov.in/content/national-digital-library
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http://dspace.iimk.ac.in/bitstream/2259/252/1/05-mgs-ps-paper.pdf
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http://www.librijournal.org/pdf/2008-1pp15-24.pdf
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