My final year dissertation is based on the idea of a virtual library(Digital library), this isnt the types of libraries you find on databases etc.
By Virtual library i mean a online system that can be used as a possible proxy rather than visiting the physcial library near you, in my opinion i believe that a virtual library can be accessed at any time and any place in the world.

Recently which doing research i came across a page on wikipedia that said Virtual libraries do have some kind of a relation with NLP and IR,  i understand the basics due to the fact that i had done NLP and IR for a semester but i dont believe its enough to explain to someone who has never heard of it. That is why i am opening this topic inorder to get a clear idea of the relation between virtual libraries and NLP/IR
Below is a link to the page i found, i am not sure how much of it is true but as it said Digital libraries are a type of information retrieval system I just needed to know a bit more in order to give a clear explanation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library

I would like to thank you all for helping me out before when i needed to see the relationship between Chatbots and information retrieval.

Project Gutenberg may be the closest thing to a digital library so far. It has books that have been digitized.

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Libraries are embracing digital assets. Ebook readers makes it easier.

Many libraries are embracing digital assets. It is changing what the traditional definition of a library is. Some (like the Mentor Public Library) are even trying to use chatbots to help their users.
http://www.mentorpl.org/catbot.html

Merlin thank you for the great answers they have helped quite a bit, if Erwin is watching this topic I would like to ask him if i can at some point put up a questionnaire regarding this topic.

It would basically be looking at type of environment that people prefer i.e. physical/virtual etc

You can create a questionnaire right here in the forum. Just use the ‘add a poll to this topic’ option when making a new topic in the forum.

EDIT: looking at it again, you can only have one question in an poll, you probably want to ask some more questions then just one.

Maybe Erwin can implement something like Limesurvey on the site here

http://www.limesurvey.org/

I have to say, Hetal, I think we are a biased group for that questionnaire.

@Hans-Peter: great idea! We actually have a need for this, not only for the forum and not only for this website, so I think we’ll implement this soon.

An idea I’d like to add: if people complete the survey, they’ll earn contribution points. It will higher their rank on the website, but in the future they might redeem those points to get a reduced fee to a chatbot convention. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Contribution points have already been implemented btw, about three weeks ago, check out the profiles of the members on this forum!