7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

Digital Collection Development
Dhanasegaran G.
Abstract
Explains the components of digital library - Discusses the contents of a digital library
collection – Describes the digital collection infrastructure - States the criteria for
collection development of digital information resources – Elucidates E-Journals, E-
Books, E-Reference books-Talks about net library – Enumerates the steps in building
digital collections- Discusses Digital Information Collection in India.
1. Introduction
Libraries have a number of machine-readable publications and databases that facilitates
remote access. Their aim is to provide instant access to digitized information. In digital
libraries, the information is stored in electronic or digital medium such as digital books,
scanned images, graphics, textual, numeric data, films, audio and video clippings etc. The
basic concept of digital library is to exploit the facilities of Information Technology.
Further, it has to provide the opportunity of accessibility to every piece of information in
any desired format from any remote location.
2. Components of digital Library
In a digital environment, only digital information is disseminated. Retrieval Software is
produced locally and most of the information is obtained by remote accesses. The three
major components of digital libraries are
1. Documents (Print, audio, video)
2. Technology
3. Operations (Research, education and others)
3. Digital Library collection
A digital library collection contains fixed and permanent documents available in the
digital format. A digital library contains different types of materials that include
multimedia objects representing different subject fields. A Hybrid library is a combination
of both the traditional as well as the Digital Library resources range from printed resources
and documents available on CD-ROM to online databases and internet sources. Some
digital library collections may be already in digital form while others are digitized from
their analogue versions.
3.1 Collection infrastructure (acquire, create convert and access)
The term acquire is to hold all kinds of digital material such as discovery, searching,
selection, ordering and receiving each of the five important ingredients which constitute
books, journals, films, newspapers, pamphlets or microforms.
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Dr.T.P.M.Library, Madurai Kamaraj University, Mdurai-21
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