1. Digitization Practices in
India: Issues and
Challenges
V.N. Shukla

2. 2
C-DAC, NOIDA UNITC-DAC, NOIDA UNITC-DAC, NOIDA UNITC-DAC, NOIDA UNIT
MISSIONMISSION
C-DACC-DAC
NATURAL LANGUAGE
PROCESSING AND
INTERFACES
NATURAL LANGUAGE
PROCESSING AND
INTERFACES
HUMAN RESOURCE
DEVELOPMENT IN
HITECH AREAS
HUMAN RESOURCE
DEVELOPMENT IN
HITECH AREAS
INFRASTRUCTURE
AND SUPPORT
SERVICES
INFRASTRUCTURE
AND SUPPORT
SERVICES
SPECIAL
INDUSTRIAL
APPLICATIONS

3. 3
AREAS OFCOMPETENCEAREAS OFCOMPETENCE
Graphical Display
System
Security
Systems
Embedded
System
System Engineering and
Consultancy
NLP
Solar Energy
System
E-Governance
Internet on CATV
& E-Commerce
.
.
.
NOIDANOIDA

4. •Digital Library Projects
•Mega Centre for Digital Library
•Mobile Digital Library : Dware Dware Gyan Sampada
•Digital Library at President’s House
•Digital Library at Nagari Pracharini Sabha Varanasi
•Digital Library at Uttaranchal
•GyanNidhi : Multilingual Parallel Corpus in Indian Languages
•Digital Library at Gujrat Vidyapeeth ,Ahmedabad
•Digitization of Libraries
Digital Library Activities : CDAC Noida

5. Digital Library Mission
Online Content
Billions of web pages
Offline Content
Billions of items still unindexed
To organize the information and make it universally
accessible and useful.

6. DL Initiatives
~85% of books are out of print
and/or out of copyright – these
books are only found in libraries
GOAL: Create a comprehensive virtual card catalog of all
books in all languages, while respecting publishers’ rights
Only ~15% of books are in print
Source: Google

7. Metadata
Search
DL creation &
processes
Users
Traditional Libraries
Digital Libraries
I
N
D
E
X
Index
Hyperlinks

8. 92% of the world's books are neither generating revenue for the
copyright holder nor easily accessible to potential readers.*
The value is in the middle
A Typical Library Collection
In-Print Public DomainUnclear copyright status
• May be in copyright, but not for sale
• Rights may have reverted to author
• May be in the public domain
Less than 20%**~65% or more
15%
*Source: Covey, Denise Troll. "Global Cooperation for Global Access: The Million Book Project“
**OCLC analysis of the Google Books Library Project: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/lavoie/09lavoie.html
~15%

9.  Digital Library (DL) may be seen as
“Collection of intelligent creations by human
beings through their own language and
culture. It also reflects cultural heritage
besides providing archive and generating
many research issues pertaining to Natural
Language Processing”

10. According to other definition Digital libraries are
“Organizations that provide the resources, including the specialized
staff, to select, structure, offer intellectual access to, interpret,
distribute, preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over
time of collections of digital works so that they are readily available for
use by a defined community or set of communities”.
Digital Library ?
Sun Microsystems defines a digital library as the electronic extension of
functions users typically perform and the resources they access in a
traditional library.
These information resources can be translated into digital form, stored
in multimedia repositories, and made available through Web-based
services.

11. What is Digital library ?
 A Service? An Architecture?
 A set of Information Resources?
 A set of tools to locate, search, retrieve
information?
 Possibly the tools to create such resources and
services also fall within the purview of DLs
 Digital face of traditional libraries
 Include both digital collections and traditional
 Backbone and nervous system of libraries.

12. •Efficient & qualitative services by collecting, organizing, storing,
disseminating, retrieving and preserving the information.
•Preservation benefits besides making information retrieval & delivery more
comfortable.
•Online access to historical and cultural documents whose existence is
endangered due to physical decay.
Digital libraries necessarily include a strong focus on the management of
digital content, just as traditional libraries have focused for long on the
management of content in physical forms.
Digital library Vs traditional libraryDigital library Vs traditional library

13. The major areas for great exploitation are:
• Information retrieval,
• multimedia,
• database,
• data mining,
• data warehouse,
• on-line information repositories,
• image processing, hypertext,
• World Wide Web and wide area information services (WAIS).
Most of the digital content that is being managed includes:
• Human Language, in various forms character-coded electronic text, scanned
images, printed or handwritten text or human speech.
• Language technology helps in managing digital content
• Management through learning from past experience also adds to manage
content
Digital Content ManagementDigital Content Management

14. • Access anywhere
• Reducing delays
• Distributed storage – central access
• Better cataloguing
• Cross references to other documents
• Full text search
• Protected information source
• Wide exploration and exploitation of the information
Few advantages of digital libraries
The information explosion, the wide bandwidth data networks and the potentialThe information explosion, the wide bandwidth data networks and the potential
of Internet-based technologies - such as the Web - make digital libraries one ofof Internet-based technologies - such as the Web - make digital libraries one of
the important application areas of computer science.the important application areas of computer science.

15. Process of Digital Preservation
Centralized
Server
Centralized
Server
Book scanning
status
Book scanning
status
XML Meta File
Creation using
Dublin core Std.
XML Meta File
Creation using
Dublin core Std.
Scanned
Image in TIFF
format
Scanned
Image in TIFF
format
S/w to divide
even & odd
pages
S/w to divide
even & odd
pages
Batch
cropping &
Cleaning
Batch
cropping &
Cleaning
OCR
OCR
Conversion to
TXT/RTF/HTML
Conversion to
TXT/RTF/HTML
Yes
No
Uploading
Reject the
Book
Reject the
Book

16. Goals of DL
 Focused on digitization technology, metadata schemes,
data management techniques, and digital preservation.
 Second-generation digital library
 exploring new opportunities and developing new competencies.
 Third-generation digital library
 focusing instead on fully integrating digital material into the
library’s collections through a modular systems architecture.

17. Ingredients for DLs
 Hardware
The minimum machinery to do the job
 Software
The programs for handling data
 Digital Objects
Articles, Conference Papers, Thesis,……
 Basic Skills
Things one has to learn

18. Hardware
 A Server
 You’ll need access to a web server
 A good PC
 Scanners
Flatbed – Auto feed, Back to back
MF
Book Scanner

19. Software
 Open Source Software (OSS)
Dspace, E-Prints, Fedora, GSDL……
 Proprietary software you can’t avoid
Image Editing and Optical Character Recognition Software
have to be purchased

20. Content is King
The information content is
more important than the
systems used for its storage,
management and retrieval
Objects should not be “locked”
in specific DLs or archives

21. Creating DLs …
 Six steps
 Selecting
 Acquiring
 Digitization
 Creation Of Meta Data
 Organizing
 Archiving
 Providing Access

23. Possible Delivery Formats
 Pure image formats: TIFF, JPEG
 Open encoded formats: XML, HTML, ASCII, and
Unicode
 Hybrid formats: PDF, DjVu – can contain both image and
text
 Proprietary formats: Microsoft Word, WordPerfect

24. Digitization: Issues
 Copyright
 Access copy and archive copy
 File size
 Storage media( CD, Hard disc…)
 File format ( TIFF,JPEG…)

25. 25
Challenges in Digitization
 Building digital collections of national importance from
existing texts, documents, images . . .
 Creating new digital documents & linking them
 Subject portals: Selecting and maintaining open source
digital resources
 Developing / adapting management tools for digital
collections
 Providing access to digital collections

26. 26
Challenges..
 Integrating digital & other library collections
 incl. integration of OPACs, subscribed e-resources and
subject portals
 Establishing services for digital libraries
 online access & offline support
 education & training of users and librarians
 Addressing social, legal, policy issues

27. Challenges in Publishing
 Preservation of layout
 Searchability of content and metadata
 Efficient image compression
 Easy browsing of books
 Accommodating low bandwidth user
 Multilingual text support
 Multipaging

28. Digital Library Support in India
Funding
 Ministry of Communication & Information Technology
(MIT)
 Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD)
 Manuscript Mission of India
 Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (DSIR-
TRP)
 All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)
 University Grants Commission (UGC)

29. 29
 Library Consortium in India
 Scholarly Science Journals
 Theses & Dissertations
 Institutional E-Print Archives
 Books (out of copyright)
 Manuscripts
 Newspapers
 Online Courseware
 Open Access at Metadata Level
 Portal and Gateway Services
Digital Library Initiatives in India

30. Government of India
Min. of C&IT Min of Culture
INDEST-AICTE
Consortium
Others
CSIR E-Journals
Consortium
UGC Infonet
Consortium
FORSA
Consortium
National Manuscript
Library
Universal Digital
Library
IIM Libraries
Consortium

31. Digital Library of IndiaDigital Library of IndiaDigital Library of IndiaDigital Library of India
Participating centers of DLI
IISc
IIIT-H
State & City
Central Library
University of Hyderabad
MIDC Pune University
AKCE
SASTRA
ASR Melkote
Sringeri Mutt
Anna University
TTD Tirupati
IIIT-Allahabad
CDAC Noida
Rashtrapathi
Bhavan
Mega Scanning Centres at
IIITH, IIITA
CDAC- Noida and Kolkatta
PTU-1
PTU-2
PTU-3
Goa University
Kanchi MuttIISc, IIAP,
PoornaPragya
CDAC Kolkata
ERNET

32. Digital Library Initiatives in India
Some Examples

33. April 20, 2009 Workshop on Institutional Repositories 33
Digital Library of India
http://www.dli.ernet.in/

35. April 20, 2009 Workshop on Institutional Repositories 35
http://www.ias.ac.in/

36. April 20, 2009 Workshop on Institutional Repositories 36
http://www.insa.ac.in/

37. April 20, 2009 Workshop on Institutional Repositories 37
http://medind.nic.in/

38. April 20, 2009 Workshop on Institutional Repositories 38

39. 39

41. Manuscripts
 India has the largest collection of manuscripts in the world (5 million
Approximately).
 India is the repository of an astounding wealth of ancient knowledge
belonging to different periods of history, going back to thousands of
years. Most of this knowledge belonging to different areas of
intellectual activity such as religion, philosophy, science, arts and
literature is preserved in the form of manuscripts. Composed in
different Indian languages and scripts, they are preserved in materials
such as birch bark, palm leaf, cloth, wood, stone and paper.
 National Manuscript Mission was launched five-year programme in
Feb., 2003 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of
India to get all the manuscripts and conserve them.

42. http://namami.nic.in/

43. 43
Archives of Indian Labour
V.V. Giri National Labour Institute
Heritage of Indian Working Class
Commissions on Labour
Oral History Collections
Trade Union Collections
Regional Collections
Strike Collections
Powered by Green Stone Digital
Library
http://www.indialabourarchives.org/

44. Digital Libraries Benefits : Individual
 Gain access to the holdings of libraries worldwide through
automated catalogs. Locate both physical and digitized versions of
scholarly articles and books.
 Optimize searches, simultaneously search the Internet, commercial
databases, and library collections.
 Save search results and conduct additional processing to narrow or
qualify results.
 From search results, click through to access the digitized content
or locate additional items of interest.
All of these capabilities are available from the desktop or other
Web-enabled device such as a personal digital assistant or
cellular telephone.

45. Conclusion
 Digital Libraries are redefining the role of libraries in
society & the role of librarians & information specialists
 National level mechanism is essential to promote and
coordinate open access and public domain digital library
systems
 Improve awareness of open access
 Regular training – tools, processes, standards
 Support setting up of working models, services
 National Resource Centre for open access publishing
 International agencies like UNESCO, ICSU, ICSTI,
CODATA need to actively promote and support developing
country initiatives

46. References
 Digitization Of Library Forum Survey 2010. IT Act .
Available at www.mit.gov.in/it-bill.htm.
 A digital library for education: the PEN-DOR project. The
Electronic Library, 17(2), 75-82.
 Government of India. 2000. “Background Report on IT
for Masses” itformasses.nic.in/vsitformasses/page1.htm
 Government of India. 2000. IT for the Common Man:
The Millenium IT Policy. Department of Information.

47. Thank You