With the advent of the information age, the status of the library has become more and more important, but at the same time, under the new socio-economic and technological environment and the great wave of knowledge economy, the library is also facing new challenges.
In traditional libraries, the dissemination of information recorded in books depends entirely on its material carrier: one book at a time, the knowledge in one book cannot be shared by multiple readers at the same time, readers must borrow it in person and need to queue up. And they will encounter the trouble that "this book has been lent out". Library retrieval tools are not perfect, and sometimes finding a book is like looking for a needle in a haystack, which is time-consuming and laborious. What a pleasant thing it would be if you could directly read and download the books, articles or data you need on your computer through network transmission! Today, all this is no longer a dream. Making full use of modern information technology to solve the disadvantages of the existing library mechanism, digital library came into being.
Digital library is a library built on the Internet, also known as "virtual library".
Digital library is the inevitable product of the development of traditional libraries in the information age. It not only has the functions of traditional library, but also integrates some functions of other information resources (such as museums and archives). It breaks the limitation of national boundaries and time and space, and will become the public information center and hub of the future society.
At present, there is no unified and accepted definition of digital library. Some institutions and researchers put forward their own views from their own perspectives. For example, the American Information Infrastructure Technology and Application Working Group proposed in 1993 that the digital library is such a system that users can continuously access various information and knowledge bases to obtain materials. 1994 the electronic library project team of the university of California, Berkeley thinks that the digital library is a virtual library, that is, thousands of electronic libraries are connected together through the network, which is opaque to users, and users only see an all-inclusive library. The resource services provided by traditional libraries mainly include books, periodicals, newspapers, bibliographies, audio-visual materials and data retrieval. Online digital library also provides the same information service, and realizes the function of traditional library to a higher degree.
The services provided by online digital library mainly include the following contents:
E-book cabinet. The so-called "e-book cabinet" is equivalent to the "books on the shelf" in the traditional library. You can browse the Internet and choose any book you need according to your reading interest.
Electronic journals, magazines and electronic publications. Its data is updated quickly, so you can use the Internet to check the latest related information at any time.
Electronic newspapers and instant news. Electronic newspaper is a very important news source. You can see many electronic newspapers and instant news in the online library.
Database query system. You can choose a specific database, enter keywords or subject words, and you can find the specific information or data you need.
Compared with traditional libraries, digital libraries have more outstanding advantages.
Digital library can complete the task of searching information resources. There are many forms of materials in digital library, such as text, image, sound, animation and so on. , distributed all over the country and even all over the world. This is a distributed multimedia information resource library. Digital library can complete the organization and arrangement of materials. Through effective sorting and organization, we can better adapt to the rapid changes of information today.
Digital library can provide users with more convenient, fast and accurate information query tools. This tool can be used not only for full-text retrieval, but also for searching by a certain keyword (such as book title, author, publishing house and publication time), and also for content-based sound and image search. The query results can be displayed in multimedia, text, sound, images and other ways.
The library has realized real information sharing, which greatly facilitates users.
Since 1990s, libraries in many developed countries and regions have carried out research and construction of digital libraries with the strong support of the government and capital investment, and achieved fruitful results.
From 65438 to 0993, the National Science Foundation, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Ministry of National Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration jointly invested 1 100 million dollars to start the digital library project. It covers large-scale document library, image library, geographic image library and audio-visual resource library. This project lasted for four years and has now been completed. On this basis, 1998 started the second phase of the project with huge investment.
Japan invested 400 million US dollars, led by the Library of Congress of Japan and the Broadband ISDN Network Association supported by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications of Japan, and completed the Kansai Pavilion project of the Library of Congress of Japan in 2002, becoming the largest digital library in Japan and the document center in Asia.
In recent years, China has also actively prepared and started the work of digital library. From 65438 to 0995, the Ministry of Culture took "China Experimental Digital Library" as a national key science and technology project, which was jointly developed by National Library (formerly Beijing Library), Shanghai Library, Nanjing Library, Shenzhen Library, Zhongshan Library and Liaoning Library.
1In May 1997, the Ministry of Education formally established the "21/project" CALIS project leading group and project management center. The overall goal of the system is: "During the Ninth Five-Year Plan period, an online information resource sharing system based on' China Education and Scientific Research Computer Network' will be built, so that the information resource network-communication network will develop in a coordinated way, and an information network environment that conforms to international standards will be truly created for teaching and scientific research personnel in colleges and universities, and rich literature information will be provided for' 21kloc-0/engineering' colleges and other institutions. CALIS plans to build a three-level network environment of "national center-regional center-university library", that is, to build a CALIS national management center, four national document information centers, seven regional document information centers and a number of modern university libraries with "2 1 1 project" as the main body. CALIS National Management Center is located in Peking University.
China Digital Library Project Preparatory Group was established on August 25th, 1998, led by the Ministry of Culture. The project will establish a large-scale Chinese database and its cross-database retrieval information service system to create a good environment for inheriting and carrying forward the excellent culture of the Chinese nation. The development of China's network has strongly challenged the western cultural hegemony.
1in may, 1999, the national 863 plan organized the China digital library development strategy research group to study the technology, management, operation and law of the digital library, and comprehensively grasp and implement the China digital library project. At that year, 165438+ 10/0, 863 project team signed a digital library demonstration project with Beijing Capital Library, which indicated that the project had entered the implementation stage.
At present, the real digital library has not appeared in China. However, libraries in many provinces, cities and universities have established their own websites to provide new services for readers. Among them, the National Library and Shanghai Library have taken a big step towards digital libraries.
The National Library of China is one of the top ten libraries in the world. Its predecessor was Shi Jing Library, which was built in September 1909. July 1928, renamed as National Beijing Library; 1August, 929, merged with Beijing Beihai Library and remained the National Beijing Library; 1March, 950, changed its name to National Beiping Library; 1951June, renamed Beijing Library; 1987, the new Beijing Library was completed; 199865438+February, renamed National Library. After 90 years of vicissitudes, the National Library has entered the information age with us.
The lending of the National Library is now fully computerized. The library has the largest electronic reading room in China, and its databases and electronic publications cover social science and natural science.
The LAN of the National Library uses Gigabit Ethernet, which is the first in China. Therefore, the library has a large amount of data transmission, high speed and convenient access to materials and multimedia information.
The National Library of China has established its own website, www.nlc.gov.cn, on the Internet for a long time, and connected with Zhongnanhai and the General Office of the State Council at the rate of 100M, and also connected with Peking University, Tsinghua University, China Academy of Sciences and other units at the rate of 100M through Beijing Cable TV Network. It has also achieved high-speed interconnection with scientific research network, cstnet, Beijing CATV network and the national CATV network of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, and intercommunicated with other provinces and cities 1000M broadband networks through the network center of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television.
At present, the National Library of China has opened the online reservation lending service for Chinese books. Readers can inquire and borrow books at will without going to the library in person.
The online library of the National Library has also been opened. As early as July 1998, the National Library began to provide online reading function. As long as you are connected to the Internet, you can download a software called "Superstar Book Browser" and then read books in the online library through it. Now the books and materials on the Internet are rich in content and wide in scope. Literature, philosophy, computer, medicine, military, history, new books, etc. 1 1 remote virtual library. By the end of 2000, the online library had provided 30 million pages of 6,543.8+500,000 books for online reading.
At the same time, the National Library accelerated the process of document digitization, and established the "National Library Document Digitization Center" on March 1999. At present, there are three categories: bibliographic database, bibliographic database and full-text database, with a total storage capacity of 600G and online service for readers. Since 1999, the monthly traffic has exceeded 6 million. The National Library has initially become the central hub of online information resources in China.
At present, the National Library has established the experimental environment of digital library, and gained the first-hand practical experience of relevant standards, norms and technologies of digital library, and various projects are under way. Shanghai Library is also trying to provide library online services. In addition to the extension of traditional library services such as information consultation and online reading, it also provides information services such as direct access to the original text and entrusted agency consultation and research.
The digital library project of Shanghai Library is very huge. It is planned to launch nine series, including Shanghai Atlas, Shanghai Literature, Rare Books of Ancient Books, Books of the Republic of China and China Newspapers.
It is particularly worth mentioning that the Shanghai Library, which occupies half of the national rare books of ancient books, owns 17094 1 rare books of ancient books. From 1997, the "China Rare Books Consultation System" was officially launched, which brought the rare books of ancient books hidden in the boudoir for a long time to people. Shanghai Library has put 20 kinds of rare treasures at home and abroad 19794 pages on the Internet. Among them, there are 17 kinds of seal cutting in Song Dynasty, 1 kind of seal cutting in Yuan Dynasty and 2 kinds of manuscripts. The bibliography includes Zhou Kuai suan Jing, Wen Xin Diao Long, Du Gongbu Ji, Zi Tong Zhi Jian and so on. Readers can enter through www.libnet.sh.cn, the website of Shanghai Library, click on "Digital Library above" or browse directly through www.digilib.sh.cn website.