Abstract
This chapter highlights the concept of open access to knowledge and its benefits and the challenges of digital libraries through the information technologies in e-print repositories for use in academics and research institutions to enhance and promote open access to knowledge in the digital libraries. The chapter points out the roles and responsibilities of information managers, primarily within academic and research institutions, assisting users for open access to e-resources for the benefit of their own organizations and the global scientific community. Open access to information and knowledge is a key contributor in facilitating universal access to knowledge. Similarly, the chapter provides an overview of continuous evolutions of open access to knowledge and the challenges of digital libraries as a result of internet revolution in Nigeria.
TopLiterature Review
Open Access Initiative
The Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2001 brought a new era in scholarly communication promising free access to scholarly information (Cullen and Chawner, 2011). Open access in this context means free access to research output permitting any user to make lawful access to, and use of, research content and data with appropriate acknowledgement.
However, open access to content comes with some economic challenges. The Budapest Open Access Initiative realized that “achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian” (Budapest Open Access, 2002).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Research: A search for knowledge, it is also as a scientific and systematic search for information on a specific problem that contribute to new or existing knowledge.
Electronic Resources: Information materials that are in electronic form which include electronic books (e-books; e-newspapers; e-journal) as well as internet resources, it also consists of databases, magazines, archives, theses, conference papers, government papers, scripts and monographs in an electronic form.
Open Access: Access to digital content free at the point of use.
Online Searching: The state of being in direct immediate communication with the computer on which the data base is loaded. It is a means whereby a searcher at a remote terminal can access and interrogate databases which contain bibliographical to other data.
Databases: The computer system in digital format and are created using an appropriate authoring tool stored in the memory system of the computer and subsequently displayed using suitable audio and visual display, the document containing this above properties.
Knowledge: When information has been utilized to achieve a specific purpose by individual or an organization then it becomes knowledge.
Information: Considered as a fourth resource, which facilitates effective utilization of other essential resources.
Digital Libraries: Electronic information collections containing large and diverse repositories of digital objects, which can be accessed by a large number of geographically distributed users.
Challenges: Some of the major problems and issues that DLs face are in the areas of organizational, economic and legal issues, apart from other basic issues like manpower, increasing technological changes.