The Digital Library of India project is an essential part of Universal Digital Library project that aims at providing access to million plus books. Universal Digital Library is a global initiative of four nations, namely, the United States of America, India, China and Egypt, for disseminating centuries-old indigenous knowledge of mankind, spreading in the sub-contents of the countries.
Figure 2.2 illustrates the international dimension of UDL project, with an indication of availability of associated UDL portals that disseminate million plus digitized books in different languages. Figure 2.2 also specifies that Digital Library of India initiative is a subset of Universal Digital Library project. Other subsets of the UDL project are (i) China-US Million Book Digital Library Project, hosted by Zhejiang University, China (ii) Digital Assets Repository, hosted by Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt and (iii) The Universal Library, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Each subset of this global project is responsible for digitizing important literature produced in the respective country or sub-continent. A vast amount of oriental literature in different Indian languages produced in Indian sub-continent is thus digitized and hosted in DLI portals. National portals of DLI have country-specific identity, similar to other three member countries.
Figures 2.3 and 2.5 to 2.10 provide glimpse of the seven portals associated with the UDL project. Figure 2.3 provides a screen snapshot of UDL main portal. This Figure also indicates that this portal has three mirror sites in China North, China South and India, although China South was only functional during the study. UDL main portal provides quick and advanced search facilities with a single of metadata or combination of metadata. Searchable metadata available with this portal are: Title, Author, Subject, Language, Year and Country. The collections in this portal can be navigated through title of the books, author's last name, a range of years, subject and language. This portal is hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in USA. This portal is a conglomeration of collections of all affiliated UDL projects. Figure 2.4 indicates the contribution of different countries in the UDL portal in terms of available digitized books. This shows UDL portal has
43 received maximum number of digitized books from Chinese partner (75.48%), whereas Indian partner stands second (22.21%) and Egyptian partner third (2.31%). This pie chart also discloses that Chinese, Indian and Egyptian partners of UDL are solely responsible for content creation through large-scale digitization initiatives at the national level, whereas UDL partner in USA is responsible for strategic planning and hosting of digitized contents.
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) hosts another portal of UDL project, which is nothing but almost mirror site of UDL international portal. Figure 2.5 provides a screen snapshot of the Universal Library portal, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University. On the homepage of this portal, Vision statement of UDL project is given along with the quick and advanced search interfaces.
Founded in 1897, Zhejiang University is one of China's oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher education. Zhejiang University hosts China-US Million Book Digital Library Project, which is the Chinese partner of UDL project. Figure 2.6 provides a screen snapshot of the portal for China-US Million Book Digital Library Project. On the homepage of the portal, quick search interface is given. From this search interface, a user can limit his search to documents pertaining to journals, dissertations, paintings, or videos, and English language documents.
Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the national library of Egypt, is a wonderful reincarnation of the famed ancient library of Alexandria. Bibliotheca Alexandrina is the Egyptian partner of UDL project and hosts Digital Assets Repository (DAR), another partner site of UDL. Homepage of DAR (Figure 2.7) provides quick search facility, quick links to eleven DAR categories and information on latest books.
In India, UDL project partners maintain three associated portals in the name of Digital Library of India sites. Figures 2.8 to 2.10 provide screenshots of DLI portals, which are hosted in three different locations having different sets of collections. Details of these three portals are elaborated in the subsequent sections of this chapter.
44 Fig. 2.2: Mapping of International Partners of UDL Project
UDL Portals
Universal Digital Library – 1 International Portal http://www.ulib.org/
United States – 1 National Portal http://tera-3.ul.cs.cmu.edu/ China – 1 National Portal
http://www.cadal.zju.edu.cn/IndexEng.action Egypt – 1 National Portal
http://dar.bibalex.org/ India – 3 National Portals
http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/ http://dli.iiit.ac.in/ http://www.dli.cdacnoida.in/ Digital Library of India Portals Hosted by: IISc Bangalore; IIIT Hyderabad; CDAC Noida China-US Million Book Digital Library Project Portal Hosted by: Zhejiang University Digital Assets Repository Portal Hosted by: Bibliotheca Alexandrina The Universal Library Portal Hosted by: Carnegie Mellon University
India China Egypt United States The Universal Digital Library /
Million Book Project
45 Fig. 2.3: Homepage of the Universal Digital Library Portal
China 75.48% Egypt
2.31% India
22.21%
Fig. 2.4: Country-wise Contribution of Digitized Books in the UDL Portal
(As on 3 July 2008)
h t t p : / /w w w .u lib .o rg /
46 Fig. 2.5: Homepage of the UDL Portal of CMU
h t t p : / /t era- 3.u l.cs. cm u .ed u /
47 Fig. 2.6: Homepage of the UDL Portal of China-US Project
Fig. 2.7: Homepage of the UDL Portal of Egypt h t t p : //w w w .cad al .z ju .ed u . cn /In d exEn g .act io n
h t t p : / /d ar.b ib alex.o rg /
48 Fig. 2.8: Homepage of the UDL Portal of IISc Bangalore
Fig. 2.9: Homepage of the UDL Portal of IIIT Hyderabad h t t p : / /w w w .n ew .d l i.ern et .in /
h t t p : / /d l i.iii t .ac.in /
49 Fig. 2.10: Homepage of the UDL Portal of CDAC Noida