Imagine having a collection of six
million books at home. The National Digital Library (NDL) is aiming at making
this a reality. With the new NDL app for Android, users can read over 7.2
million books in 70 different languages. The National Digital Library of India,
hosted by IIT Kharagpur and sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource
Development, is a single window portal to integrate the digital repositories of
India. The subjects range from computer science, philosophy, and religion to
literature, agriculture and fine arts.
Humble beginnings
“NDL started as a pilot project in
April 2015 by MHRD. From a humble beginning on a PC to demonstrate the proof of
concept, it is now a full blown project; making educational content available
to the entire nation at their fingertips. NDL is “open” and “inclusive.”
Anybody can register and start using NDL,” said Prof. Partha Pratim Das,
professor in-charge and overall coordinator of the project at IIT Kharagpur.
Some of the content available on the
repository includes NCERT textbooks, textbooks of 8 state education boards,
JEE, GATE and UPSC question papers, papers/theses from Indian Institute of
Science, Indian Statistical Institute, IITs, IIMs, IISERs. Publications from
the laboratories of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and
Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) can also be accessed online.
“There are over 2.5 lakh entries on
cancer. The convenient filtering system allows you to choose the subject area,
language and file type. Though there are many books, the number of research
articles is limited — only open access journals and research articles are
available. It would be helpful if we can get access to paid journals too,” says
Alekhya T. Kilambi, Research Scholar at Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.
Though scholars are a bit
disappointed, students seem to be on the optimistic side. “Children these days
don’t like going to the library. So we brought the library to them. They can
read over three lakh pieces under literature section. Kids are more inclined
towards audio-visuals for stimuli as opposed to the written word. So we also
have some of the best-loved tales and short stories in the form of digital
resources such as audio-books,” says a representative of IIT Kharagpur.
“We have also started a social media
campaign called #NightTimeRead which is live fiction at night,” she adds. The
campaign was launched on June 3 on the NDL India Facebook and Twitter pages.
Each post carries a synopsis of a short-story along with the link to the
content.
“We all love a good read before we go
to sleep. #NightTimeRead is an endeavour to bring a little bit of fiction and
folklore back into the lives of our users this summer vacation. It promises to
present some bone-chilling, heart-pumping, tear-jerking, laughter-loving
indigenous and foreign literature just as the stars come out! We are also
hoping the short audio-book format will intrigue more people to experience
these incredible stories,” said an official from NDL India.
The app has a few bugs like
unexpected crashing and inability to download PDFs. If properly organised and
updated frequently, NDL has immense potential to help the student community and
bring the reading culture back to the younger generation.
