Organization and use of multimedia resources in Indira Gandhi national centre for arts and Desidoc, Delhi: a comparative study

Abstract

Multimedia technology provides an opportunity to present information by the integration of different media on a single hardware platform, which is mainly concerned with the computer-controlled integration of text, graphics, drawings, still images, animation, audio, video and any other media where any type of information can be represented, stored, transmitted and processed digitally. Multimedia technology is being used to develop many applications for different fields. Libraries and information centers have also started to use this technology, to serve the users, in different ways as multimedia kiosks, walkthrough programs, webcasting, video-conferencing, user-orientation programs, in-house production of multimedia resources and maintenance of multimedia library. Multimedia technology has changed the collection of libraries and information centers from traditional resources to digital multimedia resources. Many libraries have started digitizing the old formats, to covert them in digital multimedia resources. The collection is also growing by in-house production of various multimedia resources. These resources are organized on shelves in the multimedia libraries and make it accessible through the internet. Digital multimedia libraries are digital libraries, where the organized contents include media types beyond text, like images, maps, music, videos and mixtures of different media objects. The management of multimedia resources in libraries is a challenging task because of its varying formats. It requires different type of skills on the part of librarian. Better infrastructure to run the resources and technically trained personnel are its prerequisites. The responsibility of the multimedia The responsibility of the multimedia librarian also broaden while taking care of many issues like infrastructure, hardware and software support, copyright, fair use guidelines, controlled access etc.