Digital Library Initiatives in India for Open Access: An Overview

Abstract

The emergence of Internet has added a new dimension to information technology which gave birth to the new concepts of Digital Libraries (DLs), Knowledge Management (KM), and archiving of indigenous culture and heritage materials. The Digital Libraries have emerged as a crucial component of global information infrastructure, adopting the latest Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to promote an organisational structure that encourages communication and resource sharing between the academician and scholars across the nations. The present paper gives an overview of the latest developments, which have been taken place in the areas of digital library and an attempt is also made to give a brief account of Indian initiatives for establishing digital libraries and also effort taken by university/ institutional libraries to transform themselves from the traditional libraries to computerised and ultimately digital or hybrid libraries. In addition to that some initiatives taken by North Eastern States for the digitisation of manuscripts and rare materials, preservation of digital content etc have also been described in brief.