TERI, in partnership with Department of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and Culture, Government of India is organizing the International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL 2004) on knowledge creation, preservation, access, and management.

Revolution in information and communication technology in the last couple of decades has drastic and far-reaching impacts on all aspects of human life. Internet has added a new dimension to information technology giving birth to concepts like DLs (digital libraries), knowledge management, and archiving of indigenous culture and heritage. DLs are emerging as a crucial component of global information infrastructure, adopting the latest information and communication technology to promote an organizational structure that encourages communication between scholars, cross-national communities, and helps skirting disciplinary boundaries.

DLs are networked collections of digital texts, documents, images, sounds, data, software, and many more that are the core of today's Internet and tomorrow's universally accessible digital repositories of all human knowledge. DLs can help move the nation towards realizing the enormously powerful vision of ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to the best and the latest of human thought and culture, so that no classroom or individual is isolated from knowledge resources. Digital library brings the library to the user, overcoming all geographical barriers. However, to realize the full potential of digital libraries, professionals, academics, and all those who have a stake in digitization need to exercise strong leadership and a steady commitment of resources to tackle the existing technical and policy barriers.

Libraries, museums, and other similar service institutions are involved in preserving information related to culture and heritage. These institutions collect literature and artifacts, and preserve them to facilitate future access and dissemination of knowledge and understanding of different times and cultures. Multimedia digital libraries allow such information to be integrated, recorded, browsed, and searched—all within a uniform user interface.

The areas of digital library and knowledge management are still nascent in the developing countries and have great potential to become the key technology in knowledge creation and its management. They can assist in the ongoing process of economic, scientific, technological, and social development by providing and distributing effective and value-added information, contributing to the universe of knowledge. Perhaps even more important than disseminating information originating in the developed world is the need to foster the ability of people in developing countries to build information bases locally. That is how developing countries can make effective use of technology transfer and diffuse any new technology coming from the developed world to push forward the ongoing development process.

In February 2003, the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India launched a national mission for the preservation of valuable manuscripts that are available in abundance in the country. The National Mission for Manuscripts proposes to make elaborate surveys, launch awareness programmes and impart training in conservation and preservation techniques.

In this context, ICDL intends to bring together a galaxy of experts, researchers, academics, and others from all over the world to exchange ideas focusing on digital libraries, knowledge management, digital archiving of manuscripts and cultural heritages, and related technologies and issues. ICDL would offer a common discussion forum to put-forth innovative ideas, discuss the classical concepts, contemporary issues and promote a closer cooperation and development in these fields.

Objectives

ICDL is expected to facilitate interaction between experts and not-so-experts, bridge the knowledge gap between developing and developed countries, and educate novices in these areas. However, the focus will be on deliberations of renowned national and foreign experts, and subsequent discussions on digitization policy that would facilitate to develop a roadmap for digitization of archives, manuscripts and other library programmes of different category of libraries in India.

Who should participate?

This major event will witness participation by information scientists from all over the world, professionals from a wide range of disciplines, and professionals involved in digital library research and practice. Some of the broad categories of participants are as follows.

Policy makers
Library and information science professionals
Information technology professionals
Archivists
Content and knowledge managers
IT service providers
Information providers and vendors
Museologists
Electronic publishing and virtual electronic communities
Stakeholders in the digitization and knowledge business

Official language

The official language of the conference is English

Conference venue

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India