Electronic Resources: History, Scope, and Challenges: An Overview

Introduction

The term electronic resource is an umbrella term that encompasses such expressions like digital resources and digital collection. While some authorities use the terms interchangeably, others see them as a subset of one another yet others see them as similar with no marked differences between them. In library parlance, Harter (1997) submitted that, terms like electronic library, virtual library, library without walls and bionic library are simply umbrella terms that are coined to refer to digitized libraries.

Also, Reitz (2004) defined digital collection as “materials converted to machine readable format” or “produced in electronic forms” (p.216). In a virtual library and library without walls, the collection is said to exist, not in physical forms like paper and microform but electronically in digital format and accessible via computer networks. Martin (1994) looked at digital library as “information housed electronically, delivered electronically and delivered without regards to location and time” (in Idiegbeyan-Ose & Ukpoghome, 2009, p. 79). Agreeing with this submission, Clifford Lynch stated that, a digital library is an “electronic information access that offers the user a coherent view of an organized, selected and managed body of information” (in Sharifabadi, 2006, p. 40). This therefore gives us an impetus to treat the two concepts of digital and electronic information with an aura of similarity and a consideration of the terms as umbrella terms with a similar connotation.

Remarkable electronic resources of current use in the information world include but not limited to Electronic Journals, Electronic Books, Reference sources in electronic format etc. Their debut in the information society has brought a great boost in the information sector. They have the advantage of speed, transferability, ease of use, capacity to save space, ease of search etc. It is expected that, this chapter will provide an understanding of what electronic resources are, their origin, scope and challenges in provision and management of such resources. This will then lead the reader into a full and better grasp of the content of the book.