Whole Books OnLine
On-line libraries allows students access to the world's texts and literature, bypassing the issues of lack of funds or limited library resources.
Links
The premise of digital libraries is that students may lack access to certain texts or literature either because of lack of funds or limited library resources. And such concerns will multiply as grants are cut. The difficulties are that reading whole books can gobble computer time, cause eyestrain and are hard to bookmark. (Rare books, of course, from remote sites may not be accessible via any media other than telecommunications.)
A good use of such a library would occur in a scenario in which a student encounters a reference to a primary source but has no ready access to it. Literature Classics, such as the Greeks Ovid and Plato, H.G. Wells and Charles Dickens, for example, are now all available on-line. Again, handy original sources if not stocked in the school library.
Google has started a project to digitize whole libraries of books, with full on-line access available to those books that are out of copyright or where the author has given permission. Library collections include those from Stanford University, Harvard University, Oxford University, the University of Michigan, and The New York Public Library. Many think of it as the world's largest card catalog.
American Literature is maintained by a professor in the Department of English at Nagasaki University. The resources are organized by genre and historical periods in American history.
Annotation
Virtual libraries for students can encourage them to seek a primary source as a context for a particular quotation or, as the publishing industry evolves, for current magazine articles on topics in science, not available in local libraries. The Library of Congress has initiated an effort to digitize their unique collections which are appropriate for school research projects. That could be very exciting and enriching.
