This document analyzes the status of digital libraries in India through a survey of 25 digital libraries. It finds that while digital libraries are growing in India, there is still room for improvement. The development of digital libraries is hindered by a lack of standardized policies and guidelines, insufficient funding, and limited collaboration between libraries. However, digital libraries have the potential to provide cost-effective services at a large scale if properly organized and funded according to national standards and policies. The study aims to assess the current state of digital libraries and identify ways to promote their further growth and better serve users.

1. DIGITAL LIBRARIES IN INDIA:
AN ANALYTICAL STUDY
By
Dr. Amjad Ali
Deputy Librarian
Aligarh Muslim University
Aligarh- 202 002 (UP)

2. Statement of the Problem and Its
Significance
 There lies an urgent need to formulate policies and define standards
for the development of digital collections for every social
organization without any further delay.
 The formulation of standards and policies cannot be done without
knowing the ground reality of the contemporary digital libraries and
on-going digital library projects.
 No comprehensive survey has been made so far on the Digital
Libraries in India, hence, the significance of the present study
“Digital Libraries in India: An Analytical Study” .

3. Aims and Objectives of the Study

 To survey the existing Digital Libraries available in the different
organizations in India;
 To ascertain the current status of the existing digital libraries in India;
 To assess the growth and development of digital libraries in India;
 To critically examine the existing policies/guidelines, standards available
on digital libraries in various organizations of the country;
 To examine the impact of these guidelines on the growth and
development of digital libraries;
 To identify the special needs of digital libraries in India;
 To identify the specific area(s) that predominant digitization among the
existing digital libraries in the country;
 To frame appropriate guidelines for the development of digital libraries;
 To identify major Problems and Prospects of Digital Libraries;
 To ascertain the different ongoing projects on Digital Libraries;
 To uncover the key forces or impediments that prevent the real growth and
development of Digital Libraries; and
 To suggest possible solutions to eradicate the problems of Digital
Libraries.

4. Literature Review
 Survey of literature published since 1995 has been conducted on the topic of
research and reviews from national and international publications have been
collected and presented.
 Several conferences and workshops have been organized on development of
digital libraries during the last two decades within the country and abroad.
 A comprehensive look at the reviews shows that, there is an urgent need to
examine the present status of digital libraries in India and to suggest measures
for their better design and development in the country.
 Some of the libraries have already been developed and a large number of them
are still in the process of development at the national level. They include: the
Digital Library of Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Art’s Library, Nalanda
Digital Library, Vidyanidhi, etc.
 None of the studies as seen from the reviews, seem to have dealt
comprehensively with the status of the existing Digital Libraries in India, thereby
making the present study exigent.

5. Size of the Sample
 The digital libraries of importance have been studied which have
already been developed and/or are being developed in India in the
various sectors.
 According to an estimate, there are large number of digital libraries
in India in which the digitization process is in pipeline.
 Questionnaires were sent to 50 selected libraries for obtaining
information on various aspects of the digital libraries.
 Only 25 Digital Libraries which responded have been finally
selected for the purpose of present study.

6. Scope and Limitations of the Study
 The study aims to investigate the overall status of the Digital Libraries
only, but not concerned about any traditional or any other library
system (i.e. limitation by type or category of library system being
investigated); and
 The study includes in its’ scope those Digital Libraries which are
exclusively functioning in India, but not overseas (i.e. limitation by
geography or area being covered).
 The study includes those digital libraries which are enlisted and
available in India according to various standard sources providing
listing of the digital libraries for general purpose including the sectoral
digital libraries in India, but do not concern about those digital libraries
of which, the functioning existence, web-visibility, and status are totally
hidden and conspicuous (i.e. limitation by their visibility only.

7. Hypotheses of the Study
 The current strength and status of digital libraries in India are not so
encouraging as the progress of their establishment is made at a low pace;
 Absence of scientific and standardized policy for balanced growth and
qualitative service lack of competent manpower and professional will, coupled
with paucity of funds perhaps are the key forces that prevent the real growth
and development of digital libraries in India;
 The current digital library services and the on-going projects on digital libraries
are perhaps the monopolies of a few large scientific and special libraries in
India;
 The digital libraries are more helpful and economically viable in future for the
masses;
 The services and activities of most of the existing digital libraries in India are
currently limited to a few specific service domains;
 The systematically created and organized digital libraries can provide cost-
effective and qualitative services to the clientele so as to facilitate resource
sharing and contribute to the scientific growth and development of the society.

8. Research Methodology
 The study is based on the data collected on 25 digital libraries with specific
reference to India.
 The digital libraries developed in various types of organizations including
educational and research institutions, commercial establishments, etc. are
also included in the study.
 A sample survey of such libraries was been conducted.
 The survey is made employing various methods including
questionnaire, personal visits, interviews, etc and the data so obtained
has been analyzed according to the established practices.
 Apart from the conventional methods of data collection, the e-mail facility
has been used to obtain and verify the relevant information from the
institutions located in the far-flung areas of the country and also to cross
check the data collected from the other sources and finally their visibility.

9. Scheme of the Work
 Introduction
 Digital Libraries: An Overview
 Growth and Development of Digital Libraries
 Design and Functions: Problems and Prospects
 Analysis and Interpretation of Data
 Conclusion

10. Response Rate
 106 digital libraries were located from the various sources of
information at the time of study;
 50 digital libraries fulfilled the criteria for survey;
 25 digital libraries responded with libraries of 2 IITs, 2 IIMs, 2
universities and 19 of other institutions;
 Some premier digital libraries did not respond despite repeated
requests and reminders. Therefore, they could not be included for
the study.

11. Interpretation of Data
 Background Information
 Digital Library Users
 Hard/Soft Copy collections
 System/Technical Considerations
 Storage Medium
 Services Provided
 Membership
 Infrastructure
 Budget
 Source of Service
 Restrictions on Library Services
 Internet Service Providers
 Digital Library Projects
 Collaboration in Digital Libraries
 Findings on Model Digital Library
 Improvement of Existing Services

12. Background Information
 Name of the library
 Membership
 Year of establishment
 Year of commencement of digitization
 Postal address
 E-mail
 Website
 Information about respondents

13. Digital Library Users
 Students constitute the major category of user
population 16 libraries;
 Faculty come next to the students (15) libraries;
 Research scholars constitute the third major group
(12); and
 Scientists forms the smallest number (4) libraries.

14. Hard /Soft Copy Collections
 The National Library, Kolkota is at the top with a total collection of
25,17,000 and IBA, Noida is at the least having only 3,540 number of
hardcopy documents.
 IIT, Bombay is right at the top with 1,06,523 periodicals, followed by
Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi (60,000), and IIM Kozikode
(45,200) while, the lowest number of periodicals collection is found in
IBA, Noida and PESIT, Bangalore(200 each).
 Taken as a whole, it is estimated that, most of the digital libraries are
having more than 50.000 hardcopy documents.
 The Times Archives, Delhi records the highest (6,00,000) soft copies
while INMANTAC, Ghaziabad records the lowest number (100) soft
copies at its collection.

15. System/Technical Considerations
The system architecture and technical considerations concern the
followings:
 Hardware: Most of the digital libraries use different types of software;
 Software: Almost all the digital libraries use different software;
 Metadata standard: Dublin Core has been found the mostly used
metadata standard;
 Number of pages: Only 9 libraries provided information on number of
pages which range from 100 to 1,041,323 and:
 Total number of hits: No of hits range from 100 to 1,00,000 a day.

16. Storage Medium
Out of the four major categories of storage mediums employed, the
study clearly unfolds that, optical technology-based mediums seem
to have made a steady friendship with Digital Librarians:
 Use of CD/DVDs (15) constitute 29.4% of the total use;
 Hard discs and WWW constitutes 23.5% each; and
 Tapes which are used only in 13.7% of the Digital Libraries
responded, appears to have remained far from acceptance.

17. Storage Mediums Employed
S. No. Storage No %
Medium
1 Tapes 07 13.7
2 Hard 12 23.5
discs
3 CDs/DV 15 29.4
Ds
4 WWW 12 23.5
5 Other 05 9.8
Medium
Total 51 100

18. Services Provided
 52% (13) digital libraries provide content creation service;
 76% (19) digital libraries provide online service which is found to be the
most preferred and extensively used service;
 68% (17) digital libraries provide OPAC services;
 72% (18) digital libraries provide downloading service;
 68% (17) digital provide printing services; and
 32% (6) digital libraries have the provision of FAQ.

19. Membership
Punjabi University, Chandigarh records the highest number of 14,000
student members, while IIT- Mumbai Digital Library has the highest
number (1100) of research scholars on its membership roll.
 Students constitute the largest population in (16)64%) out of 25
libraries surveyed;
 Faculty remain visible in 15 libraries;
 Scholars are members in 12 libraries; and
 Scientists are found to be visible in membership roll only in 6 digital
libraries which is quite disappointing;

20. Infrastructure
 Infrastructure in the Digital Libraries included in the investigation remain
far from satisfaction;
 Almost all the Digital Libraries have PCs which is the basic requirement
for any library to initiate digitization;
 The study reveals that, 76% of Digital Libraries have CD writers; and
 16(64%) Digital Libraries each have Flat Scanners, Servers for
storage, and Back-up Servers respectively which is not so encouraging.

21. Budgetary Provisions
 80% (20) of the libraries surveyed have their own budget, meaning they
meet their Digital Libraries expenses from their own sources;
 24% (6) of the libraries are funded by some external agencies for their
respective Digital Libraries;
 20% (4) of the libraries are having their own budget and also revieve
external funding;
 8% (2) out of 25 libraries surveyed revealed that, they have a budget
earmarked exclusively for Digital Libraries purpose, which seems to be
insignificant; and
 IGNCA, Delhi and IIM-Indore avail the highest amount of Rs.20 crores in
their library budget, while Gulbarga University reported to have the lowest
annual allocated budget worth Rs.1.5 lakhs.

22. Model Source of Service
Model Source of Service
8
0
7
0
6
0
5
0
•Internet is found to be the %4
0
most effective and popular
source of service of Digital 3
Libraries in 80% of the 0
libraries surveyed;
2
0
•Intranet and CD/DVD ROMs
constituting 72% each; and 1
0
•The other sources of 0
service constitute only
Internet Intranet CD/DVDs Others
8%, hence, quite
insignificant.

23. Restrictions on Library Services
 60% (15) of the surveyed libraries impose restrictions on services of
some kind or the other;
 40% (10) of the total libraries surveyed, the restriction on service does
not exist;
 52% (13) libraries restrict their services to the members of their
respective parent institutions; and
 32% (8) libraries restrict their services to the paid members.

24. Internet Service Providers
Categories of ISP Commercial
Volunteer
•52% (13) of the digital Own
libraries have the
provision of commercial
ISPs;
•16% (4) of the total
libraries have their own
ISPs; and
•The volunteer ISP is
noticed with only 1 Digital
Library which is quite 555
insignificant.

25. Digital Library Projects
 20% (5) of the Digital Libraries claim to have complete their Digital
Library projects with them;
 32% (8) libraries have hybrid projects;
 24% (6) Digital Libraries claim to set up their institutional repositories;
 16% (4) anticipate a possible separation of digital libraries in future;
and;
 84% (210 libraries have no plan for separation’

26. Collaboration in Digital Libraries
 60 % (15) of the libraries have their collaboration with other
libraries, out of which 12% (3) libraries each have entered into
financial and technical collaboration they entered with other libraries;
and
 Only 24% (6) of the libraries have entered into digital library
consortia which is quite disappointing

27. Improvement of Existing Services
• 92% of the respondents feel systematic creation and organization of
digital libraries would help to provide cost effective and more
qualitative services;
• 84% respondents have agreed that, digital libraries are more helpful
and economically viable for the masses in the days ahead;
• 76% of the total respondents reveal that, contents are accessed
more compared to their print equipments as collaborated with the
high X2 significance.
• Interestingly, paucity of fund (64%) and absence of any scientific and
standardized policy (56%) are the other factors that hinder the
growth and development of digital ibraries in India.

28. Findings on Model Digital Library
 The findings suggest that, there is no one single model of digital library that
alone can provide better example, but alternate models of digital libraries
could be evolved or adapted to, borrowing from the experiences also;
 It has also been felt that, it is critical to have a national vision or plan that
manifests itself as a sound policy that would direct all initiatives towards
interoperability. This is especially crucial as the world of metadata standards
or software applications is also constantly evolving and is subject to
obsolescence; and
 The role of consortia and collaboration in the country is perceived to be very
influential in terms of converging nation-wide efforts to build interoperable as
well as cost-effective systems.

29. Testing of the Hypotheses
 Hypothesis 1 that “The current strength and status of digital libraries in India
are not so encouraging as the progress of their establishment is made
extremely at a low pace” is proved hollow;
 Hypothesis 2 that, “Absence of scientific and standardized policy for balanced
growth and qualitative service lack of competent manpower and professional
will, coupled with paucity of funds perhaps are the key forces that prevent the
real growth and development of digital libraries in India” comes true;
 Hypothesis 3 that, “The current digital library services and the on-going
projects on digital libraries are perhaps the monopolies of a few large scientific
and special libraries in India” has also come true;
 Hypothesis 4 that, “The digital libraries are more helpful and economically
viable in future for the masses” comes true;
 Hypothesis 5 that, “The services and activities of most of the existing digital
libraries in India are currently limited to a few specific service domains”, is
partially true; and
 Hypothesis 6 that, “The systematically created and organized digital libraries
can provide cost-effective and qualitative services to the clientele so as to
facilitate resource sharing and contribute to the scientific growth and
development of the society” appears true.

30. Key Suggestions
 The National Library of India at Kolkata should go for a more comprehensive
full proof Digital Library Project to digitize its entire resources and services
including its collection in phased manner with the target to complete the
digitization work in a stipulated time frame, say five years;
 All State Governments should make comprehensive legislations to ensure
appropriate and hurdle-free funding and manpower support sp as to make their
respective public libraries to go digital in the coming five years;
 The domain digitization should not be restricted to one or two service areas, it
should have a wide spectrum of applications, ranging from content creation to
online access.
 The UGC should make stringent rules to compel all the Academic Libraries duly
funded by it to make their libraries fully digitized;
 Allocation of fund for Digitization should be segregated from all other heads and
be made separate exclusively for digital library initiatives;
 The parent institution and/or the funding agencies should ensure that the entire
spectrum of digital library services are made open to their users;
 The BSNL, the key ISP player in the country should improve its internet
service, its bandwidth quality, reduce its cost and should go for hi-end
technology; and
 All the large scientific and R & D Libraries and Libraries of IITs, IIMs, and
Universities should have their institutional repositories.

31. Key Suggestions Continued
 The parent institution and/or the Funding Agencies should insist that the
Digital Libraries should go for more technical collaboration with those
Libraries or Agencies having State of the Art technologies;
 The policy makers should take into account of the standardization
requirements, inter-operability, copyright issues, classification of documents
and selection and use of number of library information systems available with
various organizations in the country in different standards;
 A consortium of digital libraries will help librarians, users, vendors, and
publishers tremendously, saving not only money but also efforts and time.
The audience should work in close collaboration to ensure introduction of
Natural Interfaces to the Digital Libraries world over.
 A Knowledge Management Grid with a Central Digital Library equipped with
the comprehensive Virtual Digital Library and Knowledge Management
System is needed;
 Software in all the Indian languages is needed for language independent
operating system, database servers, search engines, web servers and
messaging servers; and
 Digitization and information flow has to go parallel to get the real advantage
of e-governance workflow in the land records and its management domain.

32. Areas for Further Study
 The future researchers should cover more Digital Libraries which are
technically stable with State-of-the-Art technique not only in India, but also in
other developing countries;
 With the number of Digital Library initiatives increasing very fast, their
organization and accessing information from these digital libraries has given
rise to research issues like indexing and retrieval, multilingual and multimedia
information processing, natural language processing and many others. A better
understanding of these issues, along with an awareness of state-of-the-art tools
and technologies involved in digital libraries has become a compelling need of
the day and a pertinent area of future research;
 The first phase of research on digital libraries is mainly focused on print media
and its transformation into digital form. The knowledge created in the past is
mostly available on palm leaves and metal plates and they use a large number
of alphabets which are no longer in use. The technological needs to decipher
such documents are more complex than that needed for the print media. There
is an urgent need of designing OCRs to decipher the antiquity which is not an
easy job. The future research on digital libraries should address such issues;
and
 India has been culturally a rich country where various forms of fine arts have
been promoted and attained heights. Such heritage has not been preserved for
the posterity due to the lack of resources and their complex nature. Now, with
the availability of recording techniques for music, paintings, dance and drama
etc, one of the main activities should be to digitize these forms.
Therefore, further research on digital libraries should give due emphasis to this
issue.

33. Conclusion
There is an amazing penetration of scholarly digital information through a
variety of forms and formats, standards and platforms, in which documents
are published. It is necessary to have access and uninterrupted services
offered by the information system, no matter what kind of format and platform
in which these information rests, whether sourced from internal repositories
or from outside. The future libraries will consist of books, bytes and buildings.
Whether information comes in the form of print on
paper, microfiche, streaming video, or digital text, the library will continue to
collect mankind's intellectual, scientific and artistic achievements, and the
record of humanity's triumphs and failures. The focus will be on centralization
of resources in digital form and on-line delivery of information to the users’
desktop. In India for growth and survival of the digital libraries, there is a
compelling need to consider the economic, legal and social aspects of
information, its creators and users