Building a Digital Library System in Academic Libraries in India: Fantasies, Realities and Possibilities

This article casts a critical look at what the author, as a library user and spectator of the recent developments in libraries, regards as fantasies in the minds of Indian Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals about Digital Libraries (DLs), especially when they discuss the subject on professional forums; makes a brief survey of the realities vis-a-vis the DL system in the Indian context; and offers, against the background of the realities, an outsider's perspective on what are possible and what should be possible in Indian academic libraries, as far as developing a digital environment is concerned. It also addresses some larger issues vis-a-vis DLs with implications for curriculum design and classroom instruction.