Digital Library Policy Report: Digital Library Development Plan

This report presents a comprehensive policy framework for a digital library, addressing key aspects such as content acquisition, management, and access. The report begins with an executive summary and introduction, emphasizing the importance of digital libraries and the need for robust policies to ensure compliance with regulations and protect intellectual property. The core of the report details accessioning and deaccessioning policies, outlining procedures for acquiring and removing digital content while safeguarding content creators' rights. The report also covers library management, collection organization, and access policies, including provisions for academic scholars and the general public. Anticipated challenges, such as copyright issues and resource constraints, are also discussed. The report concludes with a list of references. The digital library's content includes e-books, digital media, and academic journals, with plans to expand to include software and educational materials. The report suggests a hierarchical organization for the collection, utilizing a relational database model to facilitate efficient search operations and providing world-class content for research-oriented individuals. The report emphasizes the importance of adapting to challenges and reinventing marketing strategies to achieve a competitive advantage.

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 1
Digital Libraries
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]
Author Note
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Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 2
Executive summary
Digital libraries have proliferated in the last five years due to the increasing number of e-
books and other digital contents that have. Digital libraries houses digital contents that are
accessible through electronic means by the use of electronic gadgets such as computers and
mobile. Such contents are always cataloged and accessed via the web through online libraries.
Example of content housed by this innovation includes e-books and other contents transformed
by digital means. To ensure the library is compliant with regulation, it is vital that policies and
procedure be adopted to ensure the library operates efficiently and effectively.
This policy report focus on building a policy around the digital content that can be used
to safeguard the intellectual property of the content creators and contributors. Key contents
covered by the digital library shall include e-books, digital media such as digital audiobooks,
video, academic journal and articles
It is envisioned that the library will grow in the coming five years and therefore has put in
a provision for media such as computer software, cyptocurrency, and inclusion of lessons and
tutorials by tutors. This shall be done securely via the secure online portal that provides the
gateway to the library.
To aid in the operation of the digital library, several policies and procedures have been
proposed so as to ensure the library complies to legal and intellectual property regulations. The
accessioning and deaccessioning policies have been admitted to ensure the library.

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 3
Introduction
In order for the library to ensure it meets its mandates and general public expectation, the
digital library shall house digital content that includes but not limited to e-books, books, digital
magazines, digital academic journals, and academic articles, newspapers, songs, and video. This
content has proved to be high in the demand based on their traffic generation. The digital library,
however, has left room for inclusion of other more appealing contents such as software which is
envisioned to be more in demand due to the high growth rate of cloud computing which seeks to
increase software as a service contents available. Educational content creators such as tutors are
strategically allocated space in the library due to the forecast increase in demand in their services
(Choi & Rasmussen, 2006).
Despite the promising future, there is a need to address the access policies and publish
them to avoid legal pursuits. This report has compiled several policies that surround the digital
library. The policies include,
Accessioning policy
The policy statement in this regards include,
1. The library should negotiate the terms of remuneration between the content owner and
the before the content is allowed into the digital library.
2. All the content agreed by the two parties must be sent to the library storage system via
the secure file transfer protocol to ensure the chain of custody is maintained.
3. The library shall accept the contents as received but must convert the content to a
standard file format for hassle-free usage in the digital realm.
4. The received file must undergo a validation step in the library’s secure environment to
ensure the validity and credibility of content received before it is made public.

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 4
5. Virus scanning must be done to the received content before users are allowed access to
the content
6. The accessioned file is must be subjected to proper asset inventory catalogs by being
issues with a unique identifier for purposes of storage and access.
Deaccessioning policy
Deaccessioning of digital collections from the library can occur due to several scenarios
such as where the authenticity of the content is deemed to be false, the purported owner of the
content stole the copied the item from another source hence posing intellectual property theft
(Maness, Miaskiewicz, & Sumner, 2008). The policy statement includes,
1. The director of the library shall be key personnel involved in the deaccessioning
following a recommendation report by a staff member
2. The director of the library must write to the committee of the board of the proposed
deaccessioning for approval purposes
3. All the digital footprints of the digital content will be permanently removed from the
library
Library management
The library shall be managed by the staff of the library diviso. The will be responsible for
monitoring the collection and adding new collections to the library. All the projects for the
library will be initiated by the library division for approval by the board (Jaeger, Bertot,
Thompson, Katz, & DeCoster, 2012)

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 5
Collection organization
The library collection shall be organized in a hierarchical means that involve having the
genre, author, format, and title being logically linked in some relational database. This approach
to having them hierarchical helps speed up search operations
Access and usage
The library shall be used by the academic scholar and interested general members of the
public. The goal of the digital library provides world-class content for research-oriented
individuals. This is made possible by having the various collections indexed and catalogs in
some coherent manner using the relational database model to organize the contents for better
search (Reeves, Apedoe, & Woo, n.d.). The collection shall be curated by adopting the usage of
advanced filters that shall give the community better ways to access the content they deemed
important by weeding out the irrelevant collection in their search operations
The library shall be purely an online venture with no physical premised to store the
physical equivalents of the collections. This will make the library reduce the paper that is a threat
to the environment. Those who shall acquire the items from the library are only given the right to
access and use it within the policy guidelines. Making illegal copies and duplicates without prior
permission will be a violation of the copyright policy.
Anticipated challenges
Despite the digital library promising to be a good venture, it does come with some risks
and challenges which includes,
Information is digital formats tends to easily permeable hence the copyright policy will
be a challenge to implement fully. Having more people access the resources will put a strain on
the meager resources currently available to support the network infrastructure

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 6
Some collection such as video and audiobooks require metadata information added to
them for more pro identification. This will pose a challenge to the library division as they will
have to manually add the metadata (Fabunmi, Paris, & Fabunmi, 2009).
With the increasing proliferation of more digital libraries, the marketing strategies must
be reinvented to differentiate the library from the competitors hence achieving competitive
advantage (Coleman & Sumner, 2004)

Running head: DIGITAL LIBRARY 7
References
Choi, Y., & Rasmussen, E. (2006). What do digital librarians do. Proceedings of the 6th
ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 187–188. ACM.
Coleman, A., & Sumner, T. (2004). Digital libraries and user needs: negotiating the future.
Journal of Digital Information, 5(3).
Fabunmi, B. A., Paris, M., & Fabunmi, M. (2009). Digitization of library resources: Challenges
and implications for policy and planning. International Journal of African & African-
American Studies, 5(2).
Jaeger, P. T., Bertot, J. C., Thompson, K. M., Katz, S. M., & DeCoster, E. J. (2012). The
intersection of public policy and public access: Digital divides, digital literacy, digital
inclusion, and public libraries. Public Library Quarterly, 31(1), 1–20.
Maness, J. M., Miaskiewicz, T., & Sumner, T. (2008). Using personas to understand the needs
and goals of institutional repository users. D-Lib Magazine, 14(9/10), 1082–9873.
Reeves, T., Apedoe, X., & Woo, Y. H. (n.d.). Evaluating Digital Libraries: a User-friendly
Guide (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, 2003).