IT TRENDS
Smooth passage from books to bytes
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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Extending the reach of libraries through e-books
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VIRTUOSO VIRTUALITY: Banner in the foyer of Singapore National Library headquarters proclaims its push from physical to virtual resources.
A FIVE-MINUTE walk away from the Bugis station of Singapore's Mass Rail Transit system, a spanking new sixteen-storey tower block is testimony to the fact that the era of digital libraries is already here. While e-books or electronic versions of books have been available for at least two decades, the island state is arguably the first to translate the technology into a virtual reality for its citizens.
And not just for readers in Singapore. From Bangalore, I could register within minutes to become a user of Singapore's National Library at its portal, www.nlb.gov.sg and access an awesome range of resources — including its newly created digital library.
Tamil works repository
This includes e-books, e-zines and dozens of special databases. A link took me to the National Library Board — World e-book library, where I could locate the archives of Project Madurai — a repository of rare Tamil works. In seconds, I located Kalki's classic novel `Sivakamiyin Sabadam' and could download the first 47 chapters in PDF format.
The library's registered readers in Singapore have the option of downloading and reading at home up to four books at a time — the same number that they were able to hitherto borrow.
The collection includes many recent publications for which the library has obtained the rights to electronically distribute; the titles tend to be popular works of both fiction and non-fiction.
From India, I could also access the digital collection of the British Library in Singapore, which is linked by the National Library. This contains many rare books and pictures, which are part of Singapore's history.
Indeed the total number of e-book resources is already over 500,000. Dozens of periodicals in English, Chinese and Tamil — the island's official languages — are also available for online reference, although some are restricted to within the system's 24 libraries.
Doubling resources
The physical collection housed in the National Library Board headquarters is just over 600,000 items — so one can see how quickly the e-library option can help a library scale up and almost double its searchable resources.
Having become the first in the world to harness the technology of RFID — Radio Frequency Identification — to tag every book in its collection, even two years ago, Singapore's National Library, has once more gone where few libraries have ventured — into an e-nabled digital future.
Indian niche
Interestingly, the mechanics of e-publishing — converting printed texts into-machine-readable electronically distributable versions — is something of an Indian niche.
Indeed, Pune might well be the world's capital for the publishing end of the outsourcing industry. Tech Books, Versaware, First BPO... these are just three in a long list of names of e-publishing specialists which have an operation in the Maharashtrian city, that involves dozens of subject experts who help fuel the electronic versions of leading international technical journals and books. Tech Books, in fact is a Singapore-based corporate.
Coming explosion
Recent happenings in the Internet search arena, led by Google, already point to the coming explosion in digital knowledge resources (see `Towards an all-digital book world,' IT Trends, The Hindu Science and Technology, December 8, 2005).
The initiatives of the Singapore Library system and of the India-based e-publishing specialists are testimony that both nations are early movers down this road.
Maybe the time has come to encash the obvious synergy... to build on Indian skills in creating electronic publishing resources and Singapore's experience in reaching them to the people... so that together they might well set the standards for a tomorrow where technology is truly for the people.
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