Information-communication technologies (ICT)
give society new opportunities for social and economic development as well as
cultural and personal development, especially for developing countries like
Kyrgyzstan. New technologies provide access to information and knowledge, and
can act as an effective tool for the empowerment of various social groups of
society. Digital libraries can be
created for different purposes and cover different information needs of the
society. So, there are different goals and subjects for creation of digital
library: (1) educational and academic content, (2) practical and professional
content, and (3), cultural and historic heritage materials.
Digital libraries are one of the best
solutions to provide access for educational resources and knowledge for young
generation as well as for all society members. For example, creation of
educational digital library can provide access to the books for schoolboys and
girls in remote areas through mobile internet, and it can partially solve the
problem of lack or limited number of books. Students from the different regions
can get access and use academic digital libraries to get their bachelor’s or
master degrees. Or, farmers can get access to new knowledge and use innovative
agriculture solutions.
Development of human resources should be
the main priority for every country.
Therefore, it is important to adopt the specific actions to design ICT
policy and implement digital literacy increasing activity and provide access to
knowledge. If we go back to the history, the US Government started to support
this kind of digitalization initiatives in early 1990s, and gain much and valuable
experience in this field.
According to Lebert (2005) first initiatives
on digital libraries called Project Gutenberg started in 1971 when student of
Illinois University wished to digitize US Declaration of Independence. But,
importance of digital libraries came in mid 1990s, when US Government announced
and distributed more than 20 mln funds among universities for research on
digital libraries. So, first digitalization projects were based on six
universities, as Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, UC Santa Barbara
and Stanford (Besser, 2003).
In his book “Creating the Digital Library”,
Oleck (2012) describes modern initiatives on mass digitization and role of
universities on creating of digital libraries. He focused on the following
digital libraries initiatives: Hathi Trust Digital Library – shared by
partnership of more 60 research institutions and libraries; California Digital
Library – created by libraries in the University of California system, and
Orbis Cascade Alliaince – with member universities in the Pacific Northwest. These
digital library consortiums cooperate with Google Books and Internet Archive,
who are the main players in digitalization of books, so they can select what to
digitize and to avoid “reinvent the wheel”. Some university based digital
libraries focused on newspaper digitization, others working to preserve
cultural heritage, historic photographs, videos
and museum collections.
There are big advantages of digital
libraries what kind of opportunities it can provide for community members. Mass
digitization is conducting by the academic research institutions and their
libraries, as well as business companies as Google Ink (Google Books) and
Internet Archive (Open Library). Digital libraries promote preservation of
cultural and intellectual heritage and provide access to the knowledge for
scholars, students and all other stakeholders. Public libraries play a role of
community members and digital libraries, helping them search and find necessary
information resources. Main challenges for mass digitalization is issues of
intellectual property and copyright. There are many cases of copyright violations.
My further research papers will focus on copyright issues and its impact for
development of digital libraries.