Digital library resources (DLRs) play a key role in education, research and learning

environment and they also serve as an important gateway to huge collections of scientific
knowledge (Feng et al., 2005).

Most of the developing countries including Pakistan are facing a perilous situation in keeping up with
international standards of higher education.24

The concept of digital library is not so old. First, digital library projects started in 1990s
(Pavani, 2007).

Digital libraries have a short yet turbulent and explosive history. A number of early visionaries, such
as Licklider (1965),had a notion of libraries in the future being highly innovative and different in
structure, processing, and access through heavy applications of technology. But, besides visionary
and futuristic discussions and highly scattered research and developmental experimentation,
nothing much happened in the next two decades. By the end of the 1980s,digital libraries (under
various names) were barely a part of the landscape of librarianship, information science, or
computer science. But just a decade later, by the end of the 199Os, research, practical
developments, and general interest in digital libraries exploded globally.

Licklider,J. C . K. (1965). Libraries of thr future. Cambridge, MA MIT Press.

Borgman (1999) provides a more complex definition (including an extensive discussion) of digital
libraries, a definition that may be considered as a bridge between the research community definition
above and practical community definition below: 1. Digital libraries are a set of electronic resources
and associated technical capabilities for creating, searching, and using information . . . they are an
extension and enhancement of information storage and retrieval systems that manipulate digital
data in any medium . . . . The content of digital libraries includes data, [and] metadata . . . . 2. Digital
libraries are constructed, collected, and organized, by (and for) a community of users, and their
functional capabilities support the information needs and uses of that community. (p. 230)

Borgman, C. L. (1999). What are digital libraries? Competing visions. Information Processing §=
Manugement, 35(3), 227-243.

Most of the developing countries including Pakistan are facing a perilous situation in keeping up with
international standards of higher education.24

To strengthen research in higher education, HEC has launched several programmes to provide
university faculty a chance to improve their qualifications. One such programme is the “indigenous
PhD fellowship programme”, under which 1,000 PhD scholars are to be enrolled each year in
Pakistani universities. To ensure quality of supervision, HEC has selected a pool of more than 170
supervisors who are provided funds to purchase equipment and necessary supplies and have access
to more than 16,000 research journals made available through the digital library programme.40
24. World Bank, Higher Education and Scientific Research for Development in Pakistan, 1990.

Libraries are the lighthouses of information dissemination, an important component of any

educational institution, and hub of learning activities where students, researchers, and teachers can
explore the vast amount of information resources.

The rapid acceleration of information available via the internet makes locating high-quality,
accurate, and truly useful educational resources challenging for teachers and learners. Educators, in
particular, need efficient and reliable methods to discover and use science and math materials that
will help them meet the demands of instruction, assessment, and professional development. [39]

NSDL: About NSDL. http://nsdl.org/about/ (2007) …39