A digital library is a collection of documents in organized electronic form, available on the Internet or on CD-ROM (compact-disk read-only memory) disks. Depending on the specific library,a user may be able to access magazine articles, books, papers, images, audio files & videos.

On the Internet, the use of a digital library is enhanced by a broadband connection such as cable modem or DSL. On CD-ROM, the amount of data is limited to several hundred megabytes (MB) per disk, but access is generally much faster than on an Internet connection. Several CD-ROMs can be combined in a set, and becomes a large digital library.