NEW DELHI: President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has launched the portal of Digital Library of India. The portal will have about 27,000 books in a digitized form. Speaking on the occasion, the President called upon the people to bridge digital divide. Lauding the project, Dr. Kalam said that efforts should be made to digitize our traditional knowledge. Stressing the need to take knowledge bank to every nook and corner of the country, the President said that one lakh books’ digital library should be available in every college of the country. Highlighting the positive aspects of a digital library, Dr. Kalam said it would be useful to everybody irrespective of economic and social status. They can be in touch with the research in various fields.

Minister for IT, Communications and Disinvestment Arun Shourie said that this project would spur to work on technology leading to economic development. Citing example of the good work done by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in the field of traditional knowledge, he said it would help in patenting and greater use of our traditional knowledge. Shourie also offered his books for digitization for the free references by the readers.

Professor at Carnegie Mellon University and the Director of Universal Digital Library Dr. Raj Reddy suggested that advantages of advancement of communication technology should be availed which has increased the capacity of the bandwidth by 1000 times at 1/10th of the cost. He also wanted that bandwidth connection should be provided free to the potential user. Dr. Reddy also suggested change in patenting and copyright laws to remove barrier for having a good digital library.

This project is a part of the Universal Digital Library Project, which aims at creating a free to read, searchable collection of one million books by 2005 and making available to everyone over the Internet.

(CNS)