What exactly are Digital Libraries?

I think the term is really not defined as of now .However, I would not coin the term ’library’ to anything (digital or not), if it is not organized. A pile of books is not a library. It requires cataloging, classification and other forms of organization for the books to be called a library. Similarly internet or search engines do not find their place into my definition of a digital library. If the internet were to be cataloged some day in future, may be I would accept it as a digital library, but not until then. Another major factor is the browse interface. A search engines is “all search “and “no browse”. This definitely is not how we imagine a library to be. Since a Yahoo directory has more organization to it, it may be considered a digital library of URLs (though it seems better off as an index), but not a Yahoo search engine. To be more specific, I would expect a digital library to contain the full text as documentary units and not simply pointers or URLs as the documentary units. Another major issue while defining would be the technology. If an organization puts up a library accessible only within the organization, it would still fall under my definition of a digital library. This definition has nothing to do with internet. Internet is simply a way to access the digital library. A digital library which is inaccessible via the internet would still qualify to be called as such as long as the contents are in electronic form; the contents are organized and are accessible via some electronic medium.

I think digital libraries have a bright future. Since print mediums often go out of print and become unavailable easily, digital libraries provide an excellent assurance of their availability. In my opinion, digital libraries do save a lot of space and maintenance is easier. They have a flip side too, in terms of digital space and backups, but with the current trends of information technology, this seems do-able.

Currently digital libraries are in their nascent stage and practically the internet is disorganized. If this were to be organized, then we could end up having the biggest digital library ever at our fingertips .Attempts have already begun with taxonomies and tagging etc, but we need to have standard rules like AACR for the internet. Though that kind of ‘strictness’ may wean off the novelty and zeal off from the internet, but with the advent of newer trends everyday, like web2.0 etc we better get the system organized to avoid future chaos.
Digital libraries have also opened up truly interdisciplinary job functions and here I support the concept that researchers from interdisciplinary areas are required to harness the potential of this untamed resource.