Studying English Literature

ACCESS Entering the Zone (The full material is available at www.rupkatha.com >> ) The concept of access to information has evolved, as Borgman (2000, 79) shows, from the varied areas such as library system, telecommunication system and so on. According to her (Borgman 2000, 57), access to information is a process, through which the user is able to retrieve the information s/he seeks from the internetwork of computers provided that, i. The user has the basic technical knowledge and skills, ii. The technology is viable, iii. The information is relevant and usable. The whole process of access to digital libraries is dependent on these three factors: the knowledgeable user, technology and nature and quality of data. In other words, the user should have a minimum level of technical knowledge for better access in terms of quality of the retrieved data. Now, since I recognise teachers and students of English literat...

Free Digital Libraries (The full material is available at www.rupkatha.com >> ) What is Digital Library Generally speaking, the term “digital library” can be considered an umbrella term, which is used to designate a digital collection of texts, images, videos, softwares, which can be managed and accessed and used online by creators and users. But in the ‘Libraries’ page of the Florida State University, the definition of digital library is expanded to include “a series of activities that brings together collections, services, and people in support of the full life cycle of creation, dissemination, use, and preservation of data, information, and knowledge. The challenges and opportunities that motivate an advanced digital library research initiative are associated with this broad view of digital library environment” (Florida State University/Libraries). Another striking feature that we come across is, what Daniel Atkins has called, digital coherence. As Mary E. Brown exp...

Overview of Selected Free Digital Libraries (The full material is available at www.rupkatha.com >> ) Project Gutenberg Main Website Address: http://www.gutenberg.org Project Gutenberg originally started 1971 as a personal project by Michael Hart, who as a student in the University of Illinois, was allowed unlimited access to Xerox Sigma V, mainframe computer. Hart planned to "give back" the favour by doing something great in the service of mankind. So he decided to digitize and make available 10,000 most read books to the public by the end of the 20th century. That he was conscious of his project as an epoch-making event is evident from the title of the project, which seeks to relate itself with another epochal event that started with the introduction of movable printing machine by the fifteenth century German printer, Johannes Gutenberg. The first text that was to be digitized by Hart was United States’ Declaration of Independence . With the rapid techno...