A digital library stores magazines, newspapers, books, reference materials, and other library collections in a digital format. These libraries can be accessed from anywhere in the world as long as you have a computer. Here are some of the world's best digital libraries.
- Universal Digital Library - The million book collection.
- Project Gutenberg - More than 20,000 ebooks, audio books, CDs and DVDs.
- Bartleby - Huge collection of reference, verse, fiction and nonfiction books.
- ibiblio - Library and digital archive offering ebooks, academic papers, software, music, and streaming radio.
- Google Books - More than 100,000 books and a fully searchable database.
- Live Search Books - Thousands of books and a fully searchable database.
- World Digital Library - Source for manuscripts, rare books, music, films, maps, prints and more in multilingual format.
- ERIC - World's largest library of digital education literature.
- Bibliovault - Digital files for more than 12,500 books.
- Internet Public Library - Books, magazines, newspapers, reference materials and more.
- Online Books - More than 30,000 books from the University of Pennsylvania.
- The Perseus Digital Library - Tufts University collection of classics and humanities resources.
- Columbia University Libraries Broad range of text, audio and images from Columbia University.
- Yale University Library - Wide range of books, abstracts, films, images and more.
- Brigham Young University Digital Collection - Text, scholarly periodicals, theses and dissertations, audio and images from Brigham Young.
- International Children's Digital Library - Fabulous collection of children's books (historic and modern.)
- The European Library - Audio and printed music, children's literature, academic papers, and much more.
- National Library of Australia - e-journals, subject guides, pictures and other digital collections.
- Library of Congress - Millions of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, and drawings
- Medical Student - Digital library for medical students.
- E-Prints at IISc: The National Center for Science Information in Bangalore hostse-library facilities and provides fullfledged comprehensive set ofe-publishing tools set up as part of the Open Archives InitiativeProtocol for Metadata Harvesting. This is one of the very firstinitiatives to provide online
publishing facilities for researchscholars and academia. Metadata used include a combination ofDublin Core, EAD and VRA to support a variety of mediaformats of information to download and upload. - TIFR Digital Library Initiative: The TIFR online public access catalog provides access to severalstandard international publications and journals such as IEEE and Springer. This resource is also involved in the process ofproviding digital access to materials, e-books. It uses Dublin Core metadata for this purpose.
- Center for Education and Documentation: The Center for Education and Documentation hosts a variety of resources including books, journals and newspaperclippings on contemporary history and video documentaries on social change and development in its premises inBangalore and Mumbai. CED has also come up with online reference facilities such as DocPost and DocEmail, whereone could selectively request photocopies or softcopies of material to be sent via post or email with subsidized charges.
- IGNCA Digital Library: This digital library created in 1999 by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) affords a varieddocumentation of resources such as digital images, audio and video recordings, animations, electronic books and soforth related Indian arts and culture. The main objective behind establishing this online tool is to encourage preservationof art and culture through digital documentation of works.
- CSCS Media and Culture Archive: This component of the CSCS Media Project assembles what could be the definitive media archive of post-IndependenceIndia. Material will include press clippings and reviews; pamphlets, reports and papers by government agencies,independent organisations, and individual work; visual images, advertising and publicity leaflets; market research reports;it will also facilitate video archiving through the Internet.
- INFLIBNET: Information and Library Network Centre: Developed by the UGC in collaboration with NISSAT, this digital library network is probably one of the more full-fledged steps towards digital libraries in
India. Major Activities of this association include Library Automation, Database Creation, Software Development, Human Resources Development, Information Services and Networking. They have created a software SOUL that is based on a relational databasemanagement language, which is used for cataloguing, archiving aswell as online public access of resources. - Digital South Asia Library: The Digital South Asia Library is a global collaborative effort tomake important and rare resources available to the internationalcommunity. DSAL includes resources from many disciplines aswell as a variety of data types. The component parts of the projectinclude maps, statistics, bibliographies, union lists, indexes,photographs, books and journals, as well as a reference collectionthat is strong in pedagogical tools for South Asian languagelearning.
- LDL @ DRTC, Bangalore :
- Vidyanidhi Digital Library : Vidyanidhi is India's premier Digital library initiative to facilitate the creation, archiving and accessing of doctoral theses. Vidyanidhi is an information infrastructure, a digital library, a portal of resources, tools and facilities for doctoral research in India. Vidyanidhi is envisioned to evolve as a national repository and a consortium for e-theses through participation and partnership with universities, academic institutions and other stake holders. Vidyanidhi enhances access to Indian theses and enlarges the reach and audience for Indian doctoral research works.
