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Foundation of Library and Information Science

Notes Universal Library: Universal Library is proposed to create the Universal Library with a
free-to-read, searchable collection of one million books, primarily in the English language,
available to everyone over the Internet. Within 10 years, it is their expectation that the
collection will grow to 10 Million books. The first major project of Universal Library is the
Million Book Digital Library project. This project is collaboration between different
Institutes and Universities all over the world and Carnegie Mellon University.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

7. Librarian’s Digital Library [LDL] has been developed by DRTC, which contains full text of
papers/articles related to Indian Librarianship.
8. Vidyanidhi Digital Library is the result of the ongoing Digital Library initiative at National
Institute of Technology, Calicut Library.
9. ELPUB Digital Library [EDL] provides access to online resources worldwide.

10.4 Concept of Virtual Library

The term has been defined by many different people in many different ways. It is a library in
which the holdings are found in electronic stacks. It is a library that exists, without any regard to
a physical space or location. It is a technological way to bring together the resources of various
libraries and information services, both internal and external, all in one place, so users can find
what they need quickly and easily. Most of the Libraries today, offer a wide range of online
services to their users. And, now, the internet and web technologies are not the new things to
any academician hence, it is the time for a Library to be virtual and develop its online presence
in order to further facilitate and enrich the educational processes. In this direction, Virtual
Libraries provide a new way of serving the new generation users of the libraries. Virtual
libraries are the new vision of libraries of the future.
Virtual Library is another kind of Digital Library which provides portal to information that is
available electronically elsewhere. This is referred so to emphasize that the Library does not
itself hold content. Librarians have used this term for a decade or more to denote a Library that
provides access to distributed information in electronic format through pointers provided locally.
A Virtual Library has been defined by Gapen (1993) as, “the concept of remote access to the contents
and services of libraries and other information resources, combining an on-site collection of current and
heavily used materials in both print and electronic form, with an electronic network which provides access
to, and delivery from, external worldwide library and commercial information and knowledge sources”. The
speedy and wide access to current information contents makes virtual libraries a global symbol
of the information access paradigm. The Virtual Library has changed the traditional focus of
librarians on the selection, cataloguing and management of information resources such as books
and periodicals. The virtual library is putting emphasis on access without the need to allow for
the time required by these technical processes. Virtual Libraries have induced libraries, scholars,
publishers and document delivery vendors to develop new partnerships that are working for
the good of scholarly communication in both developed and developing countries.

10.4.1 Purpose of the Virtual Library

In general, the purpose of a Virtual Library is to underpin learning and acquisition of knowledge,
to provide a more solid basis for education and to enhance quality of life by drawing on
digitally available (preferably online) books, materials and journals via ICT-based tools. A

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