Digital Library of India

What is the Digital Library of India?

The Digital Library of India (DLI) is an initiative through the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and a number of partners, to digitize all literature, art and science work of 'mankind' to make it freely available across the globe for the first time in history in hopes to offer insight, education and knowledge for everyone. The Digital Library of India hopes to preserve materials, history and indigenous knowledge digitally whereas it was housed and shared before in worn and often fragile states. With digital preservation methods, information can be stored, archived, and shared with libraries, museums and educators world wide. It also works to eradicate the opportunity for loss, damaged items and theft of rare and priceless documents.

Vision Statement:

"For the first time in history, all the significant literary, artistic, and scientific works of mankind can be digitally preserved and made freely available, in every corner of the world, for our education, study, and appreciation and that of all our future generations."- (http://dli.iiit.ac.in/)


The site also claims in it's Vision, "The technological advances today make it possible to think in terms of storing all the knowledge of the human race in digital form by the year 2008."

Although technology has far exceeded anyone's expectations and numbers surpass those which were hypothesized, a independent storage site that has managed to gather and store "all the knowledge of the human race in digital form" still fails to exist. Even in 2010.


The NEW DLI

The "new" Digital Library site is located at: http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/

I did a few searches for materials on both sites. The original site came back with no hits or hits unrelated to my search. The "new" cite was able to locate the books I searched for.
For ex: "The Catcher in the Rye" returned information about the book, author, copy write date and allowed the book to be read in 2 parts. For my computer, it opened the digital text in Quick Time....though I am sure if the proper setup's were installed the book would open in a "reader-friendly" format.

Both sites also contain information about digital rights management and copy write privileges. I intend to look into this more because it is baffling to me that a site like this exists!

India- Information Technology

The past:
I looked into statistics and predictions of India's IT industry this last week. The Embassy of India (indianembassy.org) listed projections of the IT industry based on stats and percentages from 1991-2000. This site claims as of 2001, Indians software exports had a growth rate of 50 % consistently from 91-2001. The site contains predictions of the 2008 rates, but I have yet to find the actual statistics regarding the IT industry in 08 to compare. This is something I plan to look into further. (The article below discusses the rise and outcomes of India's IT success in software exports)

The future:
The outsourced IT services market in India is forecast to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.4% over the period 2009 to 2013.
The outsourced IT services market in India was dominated by IBM, followed by HP and TCS in 2009. - Information from www.companiesandmarkets.com


Articles:
Information Technology in India: The shift in Paradigm
PDF: http://www.emergence.nu/events/budapest/ahuja.pdf
- Amazing resource for IT and global inter-connectivity for India. Will update with notes from article

India- Communication demographics

Communication efforts in India (taken directly from the CIA World Factbook- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html):

Telephones - main lines in use:
36.76 million (2010) country comparison to the world: 7
Telephones - mobile cellular:
545 million (2010) country comparison to the world: 2
Telephone system:
general assessment: supported by recent deregulation and liberalization of telecommunications laws and policies, India has emerged as one of the fastest growing telecom markets in the world; total telephone subscribership base is approaching 600 million, an overall teledensity of 50%, and subscribership is currently growing nearly 20 million per month; urban teledensity has reached 100% and rural teledensity is about 20% and steadily growing domestic: mobile cellular service introduced in 1994 and organized nationwide into four metropolitan areas and 19 telecom circles each with multiple private service providers and one or more state-owned service providers; in recent years significant trunk capacity added in the form of fiber-optic cable and one of the world's largest domestic satellite systems, the Indian National Satellite system (INSAT), with 6 satellites supporting 33,000 very small aperture terminals (VSAT) international: country code - 91; a number of major international submarine cable systems, including Sea-Me-We-3 with landing sites at Cochin and Mumbai (Bombay), Sea-Me-We-4 with a landing site at Chennai, Fiber-Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) with a landing site at Mumbai (Bombay), South Africa - Far East (SAFE) with a landing site at Cochin, the i2i cable network linking to Singapore with landing sites at Mumbai (Bombay) and Chennai (Madras), and Tata Indicom linking Singapore and Chennai (Madras), provide a significant increase in the bandwidth available for both voice and data traffic; satellite earth stations - 8 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) and 1 Inmarsat (Indian Ocean region); 9 gateway exchanges operating from Mumbai (Bombay), New Delhi, Kolkata (Calcutta), Chennai (Madras), Jalandhar, Kanpur, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, and Ernakulam (2010)
Broadcast media:
Doordarshan, India's public TV network, operates about 20 national, regional, and local services; large number of privately-owned TV stations are distributed by cable and satellite service providers; government controls AM radio with All India Radio operating domestic and external networks; news broadcasts via radio are limited to the All India Radio Network; since 2000, privately-owned FM stations are permitted but limited to broadcasting entertainment and educational content (2007)
Internet country code:
.in
Internet hosts:
3.611 million (2009) country comparison to the world: 22
Internet users:
81 million (2008) country comparison to the world: 4

A little History...

India, or officially "The Republic of India", is the second most populous country in the world. It resides in South Asia and is rich in cultural history. With well over a billion residents in it's 28 states and seven union territories in addition to holding the place for one of largest and expansive economies, information plays an essential role in preserving and maintaining the country's global influence. Still, 1/4 of India's population falls below the poverty line (CIA World Factbook- https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html). With reforms and changes in control with foreign trade and investment, India is quickly developing economically as well as socially. The country is a valuable and knowledgeable connection and opening lines of communication will prove beneficial to supporting the initiatives of a global information infrastructure.