Abstract:
The purpose of this research are; to study the current development and the trend in the development of digital libraries of universities in Thailand in the aspectes of forms and contents, and to invertigate the problems and obstacles in development of digital libraries of university's libraries in Thailand. The population of this study consisted of the 44 heads of information technology departments, having the responsibility in developing digital libraries of both public ans private universities inThailand, Including their remote campuses. 44 questionnaires were forwarded to the population, and 86.36% of them, or 38 questionnaires were returned. The research instrument was the questionnaire created by the researcher using a 5-point Likert scale as the value list. The ststistical analyses used were percentile, mean, and standard deviation. The results of the study were as follows:1. In general, the information technology departments were responsible for the development of the digital libraries. Also, the people who were responsible for this development were mostly from the information technology departments. Each university'd library had 1-3 staff. The staff who developed digital libraries were mostly librarians and computer scientists. And, the budget for developing digital libraries is a part of the major budget allocated for the information technology development of the libraries.2. There are three forms of technologies used in the development of digital libraries: the production technology, presentation technology, and the retrieval technology. For the production technology, most digital libraries utilized a computer to enter the data, and the had the tendecy to use scanners and computers the most. Most digital libraries used software developed in house by their personel. Microsoft Word and Acrobat Distiller were the softwaer used the most. Scanning was the method used most in development. The pdf was the most popular form use for document storage. For the presentation technology, each digital libraries built Web pages. For the retriveal method, most userd search the information using titles, but the had tendercy to search with uses of keywords most. Most of the digital libraries contents were theses ans research publications. And the types of resources the had obtained and will asquire were mostly online resources.3. Most digital libraries had serious problems related to inadequate and unqualified staff. The budget for this development is limitted. In addition, they had problems with copyright issues, and the development was time-consuming.