activities, although they do share may of the same sorts of activities. The publication of compelling electronic catalogs, advertisements, and product information requires the same set of electronic publishing tools, as the author of an electronic document or digital object for a digital library.
In the information age, a large percent of the commerce will never be embodied physically.
Information products are enabled by information technology and not just distributed more effi- ciently by it. These products can consist not just of electronic publications, catalogs, videos and the like, but can include interactive video games, software programs, electronic keys and tokens, customized design specifications, even electronic keys that can open to hotel rooms, cars, storage compartments, and airport boarding gates.
Furthermore, these information products are not just created entirely by the service provider, but can be designed or customized by the cus- tomer, adding a customer driven activity call
“design” to the purchase cycle. Indeed, infor- mation products can be continuously added to modified, and morphed, as they pass along a chain of users. It is also likely that for these products ordering, billing, payment, and distribution would likely all happen simultaneously. Some micro payment schemes for use over the internet have been proposed that are significantly weaker than those being proposed for the more traditional payment schemes.
There are however, a number of standardized services that are needed to fully realize their complete potential. Most of these services are common to many different applications, includ- ing electronic commerce and digital libraries.
Most of the current solutions being prototyped over the Internet, all vary in their approach to security and privacy, their ability to handle micro- payments, and their applicability to various types of transactions. They also differ in their business models- for example, in their pricing strategy and in their assumptions as to who bears the risk in case of insufficient funds or disputes.
A truly interoperable common infrastructure, for applications such as electronic commerce and digital libraries, would allow parties to conduct their transactions in private, without paying any fees to intermediaries unless they provide some real added values, such as credit or search services.
This infrastructure would make it easier for any and all interested persons to become services providers as well as consumers. The infrastructure must be based on a common set of services and standards that ensure interoperability. Prefer- ably, these services and standards can be used as standard building blocks that service providers and application designers can combine, enhance, and customize.
CONCLUSION
Current information needs are being provided in electronic form with varying success in public, college and research libraries around the world.
Research libraries have only begun to take on the provision, organization and preservation of information with the same long-term commit- ment they have made for print materials. It is an expensive, uncharted and difficult task. But until the long-term commitments are undertaken, many currently proposed solutions will have only temporary effects. The ability of the scholarly community to give serious weight to electronic information depends upon their trust in such information being dependably available, with authenticity and integrity maintained. Changes in scholarly publishing to help alleviate the seri- als crisis, for example, are usually thought to be bound up with the prestige of electronic journals in the academic tenure process. The ability of the academy to count on long-term, secure existence of electronic scholarly work will be an important determinant of the success of academic electronic publishing. Libraries and universities have a stake in helping electronic publishing to succeed, and therefore have an interest in establishing secure
digital research libraries. Users’ needs will con- tinue to be what they long have been.
The locus of information may be called the electronic storage repository. Over time, we will learn how collection development plays out in an access environment as well as in an ownership environment. It is sometimes loosely proposed that libraries need not acquire electronic information, for it will be available somewhere on the network.
Such proposals ignore the obvious truth that some institution must still, in the end, take responsibil- ity for the information. That has always been a definition of the library responsibility.
There will be many electronic storage reposi- tories, responding both to requirements of redun- dancy and to the individual needs of institutions.
In contrast to print collections, it is unlikely that there will be a high degree of content duplication across many electronic repositories, since for most purposes existence in a single place allows world-wide access.
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Chapter 3
Digitisation:
Methods, Tools and Technology
Jagdish Arora
INFLIBNET, Ahmedabad, India
INTRODUCTION
All recorded information in a traditional library is analogue in nature. The analogue information can include printed books, periodical articles, manuscripts, cards, photographs, vinyl disks, video and audio tapes. However, when analogue information is fed into a computer, it is broken down into 0s and 1s changing its characteristics from analogue to digital. These bits of data can be re-combined for manipulation and compressed for storage. Voluminous encyclopaedias that take-up yards of shelf-space in analogue form can fit into a small space on a computer drive or stored on to a CD ROM disc, which can be searched, retrieved, manipulated and sent over the network. One of the
most important traits of digital information is that it is not fixed in the way that texts printed on a paper are. Digital texts are neither final nor finite, and are not fixed either in essence or in form except, when it is printed out as a hard copy.
Flexibility is one of the chief assets of digital information. An endless number of identical cop- ies can be created from a digital file, because a digital file does not decay by copying. Moreover, digital information can be made accessible from remote location simultaneously by a large number of users.
Digitisation is the process of converting the content of physical media (e.g., periodical articles, books, manuscripts, cards, photographs, vinyl disks, etc.) into digital format. In most library applications, digitisation normally results in documents that are accessible from the web site of a library and thus, on
ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a practical approach to digital libraries. The authors present a comprehensive picture of digitization and explains the process of digitization in a step-by-step approach. The chapter DOVRGHVFULEHVGLIIHUHQW¿OHIRUPDWVDQGDOWHUQDWLYHVWRGLJLWL]DWLRQ
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-767-1.ch003
the Internet. Optical scanners and digital cameras are used to digitise images by translating them into bit maps. It is also possible to digitise sound, video, graphics, animations, etc.
Digitisation is not an end in itself. It is the pro- cess that creates a digital image from an analogue image. Selection criteria, particularly those which reflect user needs are of paramount importance.
Therefore, the principles that are applicable in traditional collections development are applicable when materials are being selected for digitisation.
However, there are several other considerations related to technical, legal, policy, and resources that become important in a digitisation project.
Digitisation is one of the three important methods of building digitised collections. The other two methods include providing access to electronic resources (whether free or licensed) and creating library portals for important Internet resources.