The age of technology has greatly transformed the ways we store and access information. In the past, it was somewhat difficult to find all of the information available on a particular topic, digital libraries and repositories have made it simple for anyone with access to a computer to find a wealth of information with a few simple clicks. These resources store a variety of different types of documents in digital formats and include everything from audio and video files to academic texts and vital documents. In the US, there are thousands of digital libraries and repositories, many of which offer free access to users, making information widely available to anyone with an interest.

Searching for Information

The majority of digital libraries and repositories offer a user interface that allows for general or detailed searches. In addition, it is possible to search multiple servers within a federation through either distributed searching or by searching harvested metadata. In distributed searching, duplicate results are grouped or eliminated from the final results while the other results are properly sorted. This makes it much faster and easier to find needed information, but can be limited by the capabilities of the included databases.

In searches for previously gathered metadata, no connections to the digital libraries are needed. Instead, results will dome from indexed representations of the information. This approach has the benefit of offering more consistent results, but the resources needed for such searches are much more expensive to maintain.

Advantages

There are many advantages to using digital libraries and repositories over their traditional counterparts. While traditional resources have limits on available storage space, digital versions have nearly unlimited storage capabilities, making the maintenance costs much lower. This cost is further reduced by the fact that there is no need to pay for book maintenance, staff members, new books, and building rent. In addition, both types of libraries must have a method of cataloging materials, but digital libraries are more likely to take steps to constantly improve these methods and to make the collections more easily accessible for users. Finally, physicla storage methods are not equally available to members of all geographic areas, while the digital versions can be accessed by anyone from any location with no periods of unavailability.

Digital Libraries and Repositories in the US

Below is a list of some of the most popular digital libraries and repositories in the US:

• Hathi Trust – The Hathi Trust is a collaboration of research libraries with the purpose of creating a repository for digitally storing members’ content. This endeavor currently includes millions of publications including books, government documents, journals, and public domain content.

• LOCKSS –Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe is an archiving system developed by the Stanford University system for keeping copies of distributed e-journals.

• ProQuest UMI Dissertation Publishing – This service is the largest repository of U.S. And Canadian university dissertations and theses.
• Associated Press – This service hosts global news in text, photo, audio, and video formats.
•  The Internet Archive – This organization gathers digital content from the Internet that is then maintained and stored in an open access repository.

By Angela Moore, chief writer of bestessays.com (http://bestessays.com/)

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