In the digital age libraries are no longer archaic rooms of dusty books, but a gateway that provides seamless digital access to content—both text and audio-visual. With the establishment of UGC Digital Library (UDL) Bangladesh has made a qualitative leap in this regard. UDL started its journey in June, 2012. It is hosted by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of Bangladesh and is largely funded by the World Bank's Higher Education Quality Enhancement Project (HEQEP).
Dr Gauranga Chandra Mohanta, Project Director of HEQEP, shares that the main aim of the UDL is to advance teaching, learning and research in the member institutions through collaborative subscription to electronic resources such as online full-text journals, e-books, bibliographic databases, datasets and reference resources at lower rates of subscription fees. Currently, UDL provides access to 3,100 journals and 31,000 e-books provided by the world's leading publishers such as ACM, Emerald, IEEE, SAGE, Springer, Oxford University Press and JSTOR. He also informs that UDL is now providing high quality e-content to 84 educational and research institutions including 34 public universities and 46 private universities.
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Professor M Omar Rahman, Vice Chancellor, IUB shares that in the ever-changing educational environment digital library is a reality. UDL is a great beginning; now it should expand its resource base by subscribing to e-content from other reputed sources such as ScienceDirect which is not affordable for a single university, says Professor Rahman.
