Man’s quest for knowledge has led to the creation and accumulation of tremendous amount of information. This quest for knowledge knows no bounds and limits and is never satisfied. It has continued since the dawn of civilization to the modern age. This hard-earned knowledge and information is valuable for the entire mankind and therefore liable to be preserved. With the invention of paper man has been able to convey this knowledge to others by writing books. Thousands of manuscripts have been written by the wise men of the earlier times but many of them were destroyed due to the lack of proper means of preservation.
Libraries are established for the systematic collection, organization, preservation and dissemination of knowledge and information. It is very important for man to preserve and maintain the valuable knowledge and information contained in the books and documents because we want to preserve our knowledge and wisdom for the coming generations. By preserving the documents in a library this knowledge can be made available to others so that they can benefit from it. Establishment of libraries is not a new concept. The oldest library dates to around 2700 years ago in Sennacherib’s Palace in Nineveh which shows how long ago the concept of leaving a piece of your wisdom behind started being formed into the organized collection to preserve the work.
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INTRODUCTION:
Libraries have long served crucial roles in learning. The first great library, in Alexandria two thousand years ago was really the first university. It consisted of a zoo and various cultural artifacts in addition to much of the ancient world’s written knowledge and attracted scholars from around the Mediterranean who lived and worked in a scholarly community for years at a time. Today, the rhetoric associated with the National/Global Information Infrastructure (N/GII) always includes examples of how the vast quantities of information that global networks provide (i.e., digital libraries) will be used in educational settings. An important aspect of the Library’s educational mission is to promote and develop informational literacy in its users. Information literacy, in general, is the ability to identify, locate, use and interpret information effectively.
Role of Modern Libraries:
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The latest innovations in computer and communication technologies have tremendously changed the ways of collection, storage, processing, preservation and transmission of information. The emergence and development of these modern technologies have resulted in the evolution of the novel concept of digital library. The concept of digital library does not mean only a digitized collection with information management tools but it refers to an environment, which is created to bring together collections, services and people in support of the full life cycle of creation, preservation, utilization and dissemination of information, data and knowledge as a whole. A digital library is not a library in the traditional sense, but it is a network of highly sophisticated multimedia systems connected to high-speed networks through a media server. A digital library may be defined as an electronic version of a traditional library where all the information will exist in digital form, totally free of any matter printed on paper leading to a paperless environment.
Association of Research Libraries has identified the following five elements in various definitions of the digital libraries1: -
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