Digital Libraries: Definitions Need, Major Issues and Challenges

Digital Libraries: With the introduction of the Internet, most public libraries have started to provide electronic resources such as electronic books, electronic journals and multimedia content. This trend has led to a transformation of them into digital libraries. Library automation systems have helped in the transformation by providing access to available collections through the use of digital catalogues. However, this transformation requires high-cost and complex digitization project. Digitization can be defined as the process of converting traditional library materials to digital formats for electronic use and distribution (Witten and David, 2003). In this way, the traditional library materials can be stored in computers and manipulated easily. Most digital libraries are built in the following order (Cornell University Library/Research Departments, 2000), (Alhaji, 2009). Selecting documents to be added to the digital library collection and digitizing them to an appropriate digital form, assigning the metadata to the documents being added to the collection, Indexing and storing the documents and metadata for efficient search and retrieval, Developing a web-based interface to enable browsing, searching, retrieving, and viewing the contents of the digital library.