Abstract
Throughout history, man has been recording, presenting, and preserving information through various media like palm leaves stores, tablets, leather, clay, etc. The invention of paper and the printing press brought a revolution in this direction. Subsequently, micro documents and audio-video cassettes also arrived on the scene. The 20th century witnessed a revolution in the form of computer for storing and retrieving information. CD-ROM brought a revolution in information storage and retrieval. DVD, with much higher storage capacity, further revolutionized the information delivery mechanism. World Wide Web converted the whole world into an information city. The information going electronic, knowledge storage and retrieval has become dynamic with the help of powerful retrieval engines irrespective of the storage media used, be it CD or Internet. Slowly, the static and paper-based libraries are being replaced by dynamic electronic/digital/virtual mechanisms for producing, organizing, locating, repackaging, and accessing the information. Many libraries have gained experience in developing and building digital resources and their management. Electronic book is a text, analogous to a book that is in digital form to be displayed on a computer screen. E-books are online or in CD-ROMs, which store vast amounts of data in text form, as well as digital images, animation, music, and other sounds to supplement this text.
TopConcept
Electronic information sources are the prime attraction of readers in today’s networked environment. The introduction of e journals has made many libraries to reorient their structure and mechanisms to adapt to the new technology driven medium. Libraries have redefined its traditional services and sources. New electronic information has led to new opportunities to disseminate information quickly, exhaustively and expeditiously. The invention of Internet, optical media and digitization of documents has given new dimensions to the retrieval of relevant information .In the print era, libraries used to buy resources and own it, copyright law allowed for fair use in that advance education, study, and scholarship.
The services of the libraries have been expanding as they contribute significantly to the learning process, particularly the e learning process. The electronic information sources have become an integral part of the library services. The developments in the mass storage, computers and communications fields have made electronic resources very popular. The impact of electronic resources on libraries has been widely reported in the literature. The ever increasing complex needs of the information seekers on one side and the information explosion on the other side, followed by the ever shrinking library budgets, price escalation etc. have become the serious problem in providing adequate and suitable documents information services by the library and information centers. This has led to the collection building with the application of ICT, which helps in accessing the e-resource and sharing the same in our country. Technology has brought about a huge transformation in the education system and experts’ feel rote learning is likely to diminish in the coming years. Due to Internet, everything is available at the click of a finger.
The Internet has grown the fastest in this world. It took 38 years for radio to reach the people, 13 years for television and just 4 years for the Internet. No. of Internet users in the world are 2,267,233,742 (31 Dec. 2011) out of which 44.8% are from Asian countries.
A variety of online as well as offline resources are available in the college libraries. The dependency of Internet and its services is increasing everyday and users of colleges are depending more and more on the Internet for their various educational purposes.
It is equally difficult to know what information exists, what format it is available and where to look for it. Information literate students are more effective users of information resources especially e resources. With the growing popularity of e resources, the traditional libraries are gradually migrating from print documents to e resources where providing access to information is considered more important than owing it. It is now possible to consolidate and repackage desired information of user and give them within a minimal time.
Present day reader is simply interested in specific, exhaustive, pinpointed, and up to date information. Gone are the days of voluminous textbooks. It is pre determined that libraries are not able to hold full stock of information resources or to process all information, which may be demanded by the users. To avoid this problem library cooperation has come into existence. In the digital era, technical and other professional educational institutions have played a significant role in shaping the future of tomorrow’s societies and these resources (electronic) have distinct advantages over the print media.