By Bihongoye Erica (42535)

Disadvantages of digital library

Digital library is a special library with a focused collection of digital objects that can include text, visual material, audio material, video material, stored as electronic media formats. Digital library can be accessed any time of a day by any number of individuals. Also all resources can be viewed at any time by multiple users. However, in digital library resources are available upon the demand and there is no limit to the storage space.

The computer viruses, lack of standardization for digitized information, quick degrading properties of digitized material, different display standard of digital product and its associated problem, health hazard nature of the radiation from monitor that makes digital library at times handicap.

Digital library is a social impact because it democratizes the dissemination of information because digital libraries are large, organized collection of information objects.

The following are the disadvantages of digital library;

1.     Copyright; digitization violates the copy right law as the thought content of one author can be freely transfer by other without his acknowledge so one difficulty to overcome for digital libraries is the way to distribute information.

2.     Speed of access; as more and more computer are connected to the internet its speed of access reasonably decreasing. Therefore, if new technology will not evolve to solve the problem then in near future internet will be full of error messages.

3.     Initial cost is high; the infrastructure cost of digital library that is the cost of hardware, software, leasing communication circuit is generally very high.

4.     Band width; digital library will need high band for transfer of multimedia resources but the band width is decreasing day by day due to its over utilization.

5.     Efficiency; with much larger volume of digital information, finding the right material for a specific task becomes increasingly difficult.

6.     Environment; digital library cannot reproduce the environment of a traditional library. Many people also find reading printed material to be easier than reading material on a computer screen.

7.     Preservation; due to technological development a digital library can rapidly become out-of-date and its data may become inaccessible.

Generally, digital library cannot reproduce the same environment as traditional library does. Digital library takes away the personal contact between the user and the librarian as well as the feel of being in a library setting. However, individuals have hard time navigating online resources and reading them because people like the feel of a book in their hands and they find it easier on their eyes to read from a paper book rather than a computer screen.