Digital Libraries: The Infrastructure and the Training Needed

Abstract

In many developing countries there has always been a problem in acquiring and storing printed materials because delivery was expensive and storage difficult in a humid climate. In the digital era these problems are solvable and avoidable. However do not imagine that you can throw away all the bibliographical standards that a physical library needs. Digital libraries need a good index and need quality catalogue records and good classification to supplement full text indexing which on its own can make retrieval of relevant materials difficult. Standards like MARC and classification schemes are indispensible as are standards necessary to create the information retrieval structure. Additionally librarians must work together in teams and provide good information literacy training.