Introduction to the Journal on Digital Libraries special issue on Asian digital libraries

摘要

The rapid economic growth enjoyed by Pacific Asia countries in recent years has led the people in this region to have higher aspirations to excel in their education and work through better access to information and knowledge. Today, governments of the region pay much closer attention to the use of information technologies to enhance their competitiveness in all areas, including education and business, and to preserve their culture and heritage. More importantly, they are willing to invest in such technologies. In this setting, we therefore see a surge of interest in digital library research and development and the birth of several digital-library-related initiatives. For example, China and India have begun scanning hundreds of thousands of books to realize the "The Million Book" project, in which they aim to make a million digital books freely available on the Web by 2007.