Online Library

A digital library is a collection of documents in organized electronic form, available on the Internet or on compact-disk read-only memory disks. Depending on the specific library, a user may be able to access magazine articles, books, papers, images, sound files, and videos.

In recent years, libraries of the universities are faced with two simultaneous problems: their inability to buy enough new educational materials, and their inability to keep enough old materials. Electronics can, in principle, be an answer to both.

There are many reasons why a university might want online libraries. They might make research easier for scholars. They might ease the budget pressures on libraries. They might solve our increasingly urgent preservation problems, or they might help libraries extend collections into new media. But perhaps their most important advantage would be their ability to help society, to make information more available, raise its quality, and increase its diversity.