UGC NET Law Unit – VIII Syllabus

What are key issues/challenges in building digital libraries?

Copyright/IPR, cost of digitization, technical obsolescence, long-term preservation, metadata standardization, interoperability, security, and digital divide/access.

What is digital preservation?

The set of managed activities, policies, and strategies needed to ensure long-term accessibility and usability of digital materials despite technological obsolescence and media decay.

Why is digital preservation needed?

Because of media degradation, hardware/software obsolescence, file-format changes, and the risk of data loss — to ensure continued authentic access to digital content over time.

Name the main strategies/methods of digital preservation.

Migration, emulation, refreshing, replication, encapsulation, technology preservation, and use of standard/open formats.

Differentiate migration and emulation in digital preservation.

Migration transfers/converts data to newer formats or systems to keep it readable; emulation recreates the original hardware/software environment so the original data can run unchanged.

What is the OAIS reference model?

Open Archival Information System (ISO 14721) — a conceptual framework/standard for a long-term digital archive, defining functions such as Ingest, Archival Storage, Data Management, Administration, Preservation Planning, and Access.

Name important national and international digital preservation projects.

International: LOCKSS, PANDORA (Australia), PADI, JSTOR; National (India): National Digital Library of India (NDLI), National Digital Preservation Programme (NDPP), Digital Library of India.

What is LOCKSS?

Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe — a peer-to-peer digital preservation system (Stanford) that preserves authoritative copies of web/electronic content across multiple distributed servers.

What is open access (OA)?

Free, immediate, online availability of scholarly literature, permitting users to read, download, copy, and reuse it with minimal restrictions, removing price and permission barriers.

Why is open access needed?

To overcome high journal subscription costs (serials crisis), increase visibility and impact of research, ensure equitable access to knowledge, and accelerate scholarly communication.

What are the two main routes/types of open access?

Green OA (self-archiving in repositories) and Gold OA (publishing in open-access journals); related variants include Hybrid, Bronze, and Diamond/Platinum OA.

Differentiate Green and Gold open access.

Green OA: author self-archives a version of the article in an institutional/subject repository. Gold OA: the article is published openly in an OA journal, often funded by article processing charges (APCs).

What is an institutional repository (IR)?

A digital archive that collects, preserves, and disseminates the intellectual output (papers, theses, reports) of an institution, providing open access to its scholarly content.

Name notable open-access initiatives/declarations.

Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI, 2002), Bethesda Statement (2003), and Berlin Declaration (2003) — collectively the 'BBB' definitions of open access.

Name some institutional repositories in India.

Shodhganga (ETD repository, INFLIBNET), Shodhgangotri, ePrints@IISc, OpenMED@NIC, DSpace at IITs/IISc, and Raman Research Institute repository.

What is Shodhganga?

A national repository of Indian electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) set up by INFLIBNET, where universities deposit PhD theses for open access.

What is ROAR?

Registry of Open Access Repositories — a searchable international directory that registers and provides information about open-access repositories worldwide.

What is OpenDOAR (DOAR)?

Directory of Open Access Repositories — a quality-assured global directory of academic open-access repositories, allowing search by location, content type, and software.

What is SHERPA/RoMEO?

A service listing publishers' copyright and self-archiving policies, indicating which version of an article authors may deposit (colour-coded: green, blue, yellow, white).

What is OAI-PMH?

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting — a protocol enabling interoperability by allowing service providers to harvest metadata from data providers (repositories).

What is data harvesting in the context of repositories?

The automated collection (gathering) of metadata records from distributed repositories, typically via OAI-PMH, to build aggregated/searchable services across multiple sources.

What is a content management system (CMS)?

Software for creating, managing, storing, and publishing digital content (especially web content) without deep technical knowledge, e.g., Drupal, Joomla, WordPress.

What is data integration?

The process of combining data from multiple heterogeneous sources into a unified, consistent view, enabling interoperable search and use across distributed systems.

What does SMAC stand for?

Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud — the convergence of these four technology pillars that together drive digital transformation and new service models.

What is cloud computing?

On-demand delivery of computing resources (servers, storage, software, applications) over the Internet on a pay-as-you-use basis, characterized by scalability, elasticity, and remote access.

Name the main service models of cloud computing.

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service); deployment models include public, private, community, and hybrid clouds.

What is the Semantic Web?

An extension of the Web (proposed by Tim Berners-Lee) in which data is given well-defined, machine-understandable meaning using standards like RDF, OWL, and SPARQL, enabling automated reasoning and data linking.

What is Linked Data?

A method of publishing structured data so it can be interlinked and become more useful through semantic queries, using URIs and RDF; underpins the Semantic Web (Linked Open Data).

What is Big Data and its characteristic 'V's?

Extremely large, complex datasets beyond traditional processing tools; characterized by the Vs — Volume, Velocity, Variety, Veracity, and Value.

What is data mining?

The process of discovering patterns, correlations, and useful knowledge from large datasets using statistical, machine-learning, and database techniques (e.g., classification, clustering, association).