This chapter aims to discuss the potential of digital libraries to offer unparalleled resources for supporting open distance e-learning (ODeL). This chapter addresses and discusses such features as what is meant by ODeL and how it can be supported by the library and the functionality of the digital library, and how ODeL resources are included and organised in the digital library environment. The chapter explores the advantages of digital libraries for ODeL and the types of learning that can be supported by digital libraries. There is surely an interest in the usage of electronic resources for teaching, learning, and research, but this appears to be matched by a lack of awareness of how best to assimilate these resources into ODeL. The chapter provides valuable insight into the role and influence of digital libraries and e-resources on ODeL.
TopAim And Objectives
This study aims to investigate the role and perspective of the use of digital libraries in supporting the ODeL environment. The objectives were to:
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examine how digital libraries are responding to the challenges of delivering core services to ODeL learners.
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examine library practices and technologies being applied in the construction of digital libraries.
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determine challenges and opportunities which digital libraries bring to the support of ODeL learners,
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determine the significance of providing support within a collaborative environment, which stresses human factors such as communication and interaction.
TopDigital Library
There are fewer deliberations in the literature about what constitutes a digital library. One may assert on a comparatively narrow definition, based clearly on the properties of the traditional print library, or reflect a much broader continuum of possibilities. The most comprehensive opinion takes a digital library to be, as its starting point, essentially what the internet is these days. But from this extreme perspective, the metaphor of the traditional library fails in several respects.
Saracevic (2000) defined the digital library as an “electronic information access system that offers the user a intelligible view of an organised, designated, and managed body of information”. On the other hand, Brahaj, Razum, and Hoxha (2013) defined digital libraries as organisations that provide the resources, including the specialised staff to select, maintain, distribute and preserve the integrity of, and ensure the persistence over time of collections of digital works so that they are readily and economically available for use by the defined community or set of communities.
Based on these definitions, a digital library is not equal to a digitised collection with information management tools. It is also a series of events that bring together collections, services, and people in support of the full life cycle of creation, dissemination, use, and preservation of data, information, and knowledge (Sharifabadi,2006).