National Digital Library announces second phase expansion

The National Digital Library of India (NDLI), a consolidated digital library hosting millions of academic works, announced its second phase expansion here on Wednesday.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry funded digital library which has been live for already one year and hosts content from 148 institutes and organisations (about 40 of them foreign), is still said to be in its pilot phase and currently hosts 12 million contents in more than 100 languages.

"The portal (https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/) went live about a year back and currently hosts more than 12

million contents in more than 100 languages, sourced from about 150 institutes /publishers. The mobile application has been well received with close to seven lakh download," said a statement from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, which has built the entire platform for the digital library.

The announcement was made on the first of the three-day workshop organised with cooperation of Unesco here.

Apart from attracting more international content contributors, the workshop was held to "deliberate on the state-of-the-art technology, practices, and policies as internationally accepted and available for digital library design."

Addressing those present, K.K. Sharma, the Secretary at the HRD Ministry, said that the "combination of digital technology with the educational resources can benefit (the users) in a great way."

"As the digital technology has evolved, our academics have captured and capitalised on its movement really well," he said.

The official also said that by 2030 the union ministry is targeting to increase the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education to 30 per cent from about 24 per cent at present.

GER is calculated for the 18-23 years age group. It is total enrolment as a percentage of the eligible population.

Among the foreign contributors in the digital library are national libraries of Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, and South Africa.

--IANS

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