Digital Library

Digital Library in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Digital Library in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Digital Library may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Digital libraries are full-text databases that replicate, in digital media, many of the functions of traditional libraries. They tend to contain a purposefully selected collection of texts plus various means of access to these texts. ODLIS: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science (Reitz 2000) defines digital library simply as: A library in which a significant proportion of the resources are available in digital (machine-readable) format, as opposed to print or microform. The process of digitization began with indexes and abstracting services, then moved to periodicals and reference books.