Applications of cloud computing for resource sharing in academic libraries

Universities and Colleges are the core of innovation through their advanced research and development. Higher education libraries of different size and type all over the world suffer from common problems such as shrinking budgets, accommodating resources within the budgetary constraints, Countering increased scope of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of subjects, flexibility associated with the e-data, diminished levels of efficiency, and huge cost involved in managing the entire IT infrastructure in the modern day academic libraries. Libraries are at the threshold of embracing the concept of cloud computing because of its both technological and economic advantages. Resource sharing, among the academic libraries through Cloud will in principle reduce the overall cost and increase the efficiency. It will also enhance the user experience and will help in making the libraries a lot more scalable. In this paper authors have made an attempt to discuss the types, applications, advantages and disadvantages of implementing cloud computing mainly for resource sharing in an academic library environment. The purpose of this article is to look specifically at how cloud computing can be employed by libraries and what are the potential areas need to be considered before moving into a cloud computing solution implementation.