Environmental Scan: Digital Libraries

Running Head: ENVIRONMENTAL SCAN
0
Digital Libraries
Environmental Scan Assignment
(Student details :)
4/26/2019

Environmental Scan
1
Contents
Environmental Scan: Digital Libraries.......................................................................................2
Part A.....................................................................................................................................2
Part B......................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................7

Environmental Scan
2
Environmental Scan: Digital Libraries
Part A
In this era, there is several digital library development initiatives have been taken in
the direction of environmental scan. Recent studies revealed that developing digital libraries
along with digital collections has become essential while overcoming copyright issues of the
management of digital libraries. In this context, contemporary issues like digital rights
management, security as well as digital library policies will be discussed (Higgins, Xiao, &
Katsipataki, 2012).
As we know that with the progress of info and communication technology, rate of
info explosion has also increased exponentially. In this context, a library digitization is the
conversion of physical material of the library includes academic and non-academic books,
periodicals, articles into digital format of 0 and 1 bit (Mahesh & Mittal, 2009). Here, such
bits are the fundamental units of info within a computer system of this modern era. Moreover,
converting this physical information into a digital one provides greater flexibility, which is
one of the main requirements of knowledge management. On the other hand, physical
libraries have been continuously fronting the issues like lack of space, escalations into the
cost of books, budget shrinkage, academic journals, inability to offer multi-copies and
retrieval efficiency of the info. As per the American Digital Library Federation (ADLF),
digital libraries are those organizations which provide the required resources for selecting,
structuring, offering intellectual access in order to, distribute, interpret, preserve the integrity
of the information and knowledge (Trivedi, 2010). Besides, digital libraries can be defined as
a collection of services, assisting users with info objects, gathering of info objects,
management and preservation of such objects for the directly or indirectly availability of the
information (Beetham & Sharpe, 2013).
In this way, main objective of digital library can be refers as improving the access of
the information whenever required so as to enhance its availability and reliability for the
whole community. Digital libraries enables cost saving, keeping pace with technology,
preservation, as well as information sharing. On the other hand, one more profit of digital
library is to reserve fragile and rare objects through improving their accessibility for multiple
users instantaneously (Voogt, Erstad, Dede, & Mishra, 2013). In this way, the digitization of