Indian Digital Library Initiatives

This study is a survey of digital library initiatives in India. The survey is based on the secondary information of about fifty digital libraries from their respective websites. The findings show that in most cases the actual conception of digital library in India is still in the nascent stage. The online subscriptions and linked to the third-party websites are also considered as a digital library. However, many digital libraries have not any proper search interface in their respective website due to improper arrangement of metadata. In some cases, they do not have their own digitized collection and provide some other’s collections or referred to their users to some third-party website. Moreover, there are many digital libraries which cannot be accessed outside (remote access) the organization. Moreover, the so-called digital libraries in India have not developed their own standards or are not following any global standards. However, the usage statistics for the government digital libraries are far better than the usage statistics of academic or public libraries. That is perhaps a positive sign of ‘digital governance’ and reaching the public. The regular website maintenance, remote access facility and proper training of information professionals are required for digital libraries in India. There are several important observations and policy suggestions that may be helpful for students, scholars, library professionals and the decision makers in the government.