"Sluggish" digitization of library documents

The Provincial Library reading room attracts many young people to read books and look up study materials.

In 2021, the Provincial People's Committee issued a plan to implement the "Digital transformation program for the library sector by 2025, with a vision to 2030" with a specific goal: from 60 to 80% of valuable documents and research works are digitized, but up to now, after nearly 5 years of implementation, this number is still modest.

For a long time, every working day, Mr. Nguyen Giang Nam - General Administration Department ( Ha Tinh Library) has been diligently using the scanner to transfer documents into the digital system. However, up to this point, the only machine for digitalization work is no longer effective. Mr. Nguyen Giang Nam said: In the past 2 years, the digitalization work has had to be temporarily suspended, leading to many documents remaining "inactive".

Mr. Nguyen Giang Nam (in blue shirt) and colleagues discuss documents that have been entered into the archive system through digitalization.

For e-books, Ha Tinh Provincial Library is currently purchasing the right to use 2,600 documents from the document supplier sachweb.vn. The right to use electronic documents is renewed annually and is widely shared with all readers. For internal documents, up to now, Ha Tinh Provincial Library has only been able to digitize 615 documents with a total of 73,994 pages, including: 380 geographical entries with 43,524 pages of digitized documents, 66 French documents with 5,017 pages of digitized Han Nom documents, and full-text directories. The library also has about 3,000 documents out of a total of more than 118,000 existing printed documents with about 450,000 pages that need to be digitized.

Ancient documents are being stored at Ha Tinh Library

It is worth mentioning that currently, for digitized documents, there is only full-text bibliographic data to serve the needs of readers through the service of tailieu.vn; other documents cannot be put on the internet to serve readers according to the requirements of the spirit of digitization.

According to Ms. Phan Thi Thuy - Head of Administration - General Department (Ha Tinh Library) - the person directly monitoring and managing the digitization work, said: For digitized documents, the library currently does not have professional equipment to perform and is doing it manually. Manual digitization only stops at the storage level, there is no equipment to process on the network.

There are still many valuable and rare documents about Ha Tinh that have not been digitized to serve readers.

This has also directly affected the access to information of those who regularly use the resources from the Ha Tinh Library for research purposes. According to Dr. Nguyen Tung Linh - Vice President of the Provincial Literature and Arts Association - who regularly uses the documents stored at the Ha Tinh Library, the timely digitization of documents, especially ancient and rare documents about Ha Tinh, not only helps domestic and foreign readers access a lot of valuable and rare information about Ha Tinh but also better promotes the locality.

Thus, after 5 years of implementing the Government's "Digital transformation program for the library sector to 2025, with a vision to 2030" and nearly 10 months of implementing Resolution 57-NQ/TW on breakthroughs in science and technology development, innovation and national digital transformation, digital transformation in general and library digitalization in particular are still sluggish and delayed for many reasons.

Mr. Mai Quoc Quyen - Director of Ha Tinh Provincial Library said that the digitalization of libraries still faces many difficulties. However, in order to meet the requirements of digitalization of libraries in particular and digital transformation of the library sector in general, since 2024, the unit has developed a " Technical and economic report on digital transformation in the library sector, comprehensive digital transformation application in the management and operation of Ha Tinh Provincial Library" to submit to competent authorities for consideration. Hopefully, in the coming time, the digital transformation and digitalization of libraries will continue to receive attention and support for better implementation.

Source: https://baohatinh.vn/i-ach-so-hoa-tai-lieu-thu-vien-post295324.html