Hello! This section will help you to learn how the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) works and how you can use it to the best of your ability to achieve your desired outcome.
The National Digital Library of India (NDLI) integrates all existing digitized and digital content across institutions of the nation to provide a single-window access with e-learning facility. It caters to different groups of users ranging from primary level to higher education level and even life-long learners of our country. It provides educational materials in various languages, in all disciplines, in different forms of access devices and plans to cater to differently-abled learners too, in the near future. At the moment, NDLI's user interface supports English along with ten other Indian languages like Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telegu etc. and is slowly being expanded to include other languages.
In the face of global pandemic Covid-19, NDLI has introduced three new features for online learning enthusiasts:

Study at Home:

The Study at Home section is dedicated to all students and researchers who are determined to keep the learning process going despite adversities. Students can now refer to books and learning resources from the comfort of their home. This section is divided into seven sub-sections or subjects like Engineering, Humanities, Law, Management etc. It comprises learning materials for these subjects from school-level up to graduation and research.

Covid-19 Research Repository:

This section is dedicated to research and information on the Covid-19 global pandemic. It has a collection of informational documents including journals and scholarly publications on this issue. Further, this section also discusses research funding for Covid-19 as well as start-up opportunities in the face of such challenges.

Featured Collections:

This is the final section dedicated to popular topics and renowned figures on a weekly basis. If you want to keep yourself updated, check On This Day for regular updates on interesting events that have happened in the past on this day. Users interested in lectures and webinars on digital library and associated technology can also find them in this section.
Click the grey navigation buttons on the homepage to gain more insight about NDLI.

Compatible Browsers:

Mozilla Firefox 46.x and above, Google Chrome 45.x and above, Microsoft Edge 13.x and above, Safari 10 and above

Compatible Devices:

Any device with resolution 1280 × 720 (720p) or above

You can immediately search for an item of your choice by entering a keyword on the search bar in the homepage. Once the search result(s) appears, you can click on any one of them to view the complete content.
However, NDLI has some exclusive contents under national license (for instance, South Asia Archive). Users need to have an NDLI account to access them. The registration process is explained in detail in the next segment.

Bulk Registration:

To register a large group of users of an institute on NDLI portal, mention the name of the institute and send an excel file in comma separated values (CSV) format to The steps for creating CSV file are as follows:
1. Create an excel sheet for all users of the respective institute which includes students, faculty and staff.
2. This file should contain (1st column) e-mail id, (2nd column) first name, (3rd column) last name, only with no other information like serial number, heading, signature, etc.
3. Save the excel file in .csv format.

Individual Registration:

For smooth and satisfactory usage of NDLI portal, users can create an account with NDLI that involves a simple two-step registration process.
Account Set-up::
Visit the NDLI website. On the top right, click Log In. If you are already a member, enter your log in credentials to continue. If you are a new member, click Register. This opens a registration form where you can enter your details - including your name, e-mail id and password. Once you have done this, NDLI sends an activation link for your account on your e-mail id. You can click on this link to become a member and browse content easily at home.

Account Recovery:

Each time that you access NDLI, enter the log-in id and unique password used during the registration process. In an event where you have forgotten your e-mail id or password or there is any other issue, use the Account Recovery option. This option helps to recover your account details.

The NDLI repository can be accessed in two ways:

1. Search

This is the first method to access content on NDLI. Search option helps to look for a particular item, with the option to refine the search by subject, author, source, or education level.
If you have a specific item in mind, you can look it up using the 'Search' option on the homepage. Type in a keyword for whatever you are looking for - a subject name, a topic name or may be a question paper for a particular Board - into the search box and hit Enter on the keyboard to get a list of Search results.
In fact, NDLI provides the benefit of searching in three different languages - English, Hindi and Bengali. You can simply click on the drop-down menu beside the search bar, choose your language, and type in the name of the search item in English. It will be automatically converted into a word(s) in the chosen language and the results displayed on the screen.

2. Browse

This is the second method to access content on NDLI.The Browse option facilitates users to look through NDLI content using filters like subject, source of content, type of content or learning resource type. If you would like to find an item on NDLI repository in the same way as you browse the shelves of a library, all you need to do is use the 'Browse' button on the top left. You can browse the content on the basis of Subject, Source, Type of the document and Learning Resource.
Browse by Subject:
Browsing 'By Subject' provides three levels of choice that you can make to arrive at your chosen subject. The screen has an in-built explanation of the steps to follow.
Browse by Source:
Browsing 'By Source' shows a list of institute names, with some important institutes featured on top, so that you can choose your preferred organization name and browse through all the available content from that organization. The screen has an in-built explanation of the steps to follow.
Browse by Type:
Browsing 'By Type' allows you to browse content in the form of 'Text', 'Video', 'Image', 'Animation', 'Simulation', Audio' or 'Presentation'. You can choose the type of media so that all content pertaining to that media set are displayed. The screen has an in-built explanation of the steps to follow.
Browse by Learning Resource:
Browsing by 'Learning Resource' allows you to choose a particular type of learning resource from a drop-down menu. Consequently, you can then browse through all the items from that resource type. The screen has an in-built explanation of the steps to follow.

3. Refining Search

Once you have entered a keyword in the search bar, NDLI gives you a list of content pertaining to your search. However, that's not all. You can further refine the search on the basis of filters like Author, Subject Category, Educational Degree, Difficulty Level, Educational Level, File Format, Language, Learning Resource Type and Source as provided on the left-hand panel of the screen. Let us take a closer look at each of these filters:
Access Restriction:
At the moment, NDLI has nearly 5 crore content that are classified into five categories based on their accessibility to the user. An icon at the bottom left of each document indicates its accessibility. You can select content between open and freely accessible to subscribed content or content that have limited access. NDLI also provides free access to some special content for its users by way of national license. Access restriction is explained in detail in the next segment.
Author:
This filter provides a list of authors whose content are available at NDLI while also displaying the number of contents by each author. So, when you look for an item, you can select one or multiple authors and access the content by them.
Subject Category:
This filter allows you to narrow down your search to one or more subjects like Natural Science, Technology, Literature, Philosophy and more. You can make one or multiple choices here to retrieve the items from these domains for the search item defined on the search bar.
Educational Degree:
This filter helps to narrow down content on the basis of educational degree - such as B.Tech, M.Phil, Ph.D etc. You can choose the degree relevant for the specified item.
Difficulty Level:
This filter helps choose an item at the 'Easy', 'Medium' or 'Difficult' level to suit the needs of a starter against that of an experienced or advanced level learner.
Educational Level:
This filter caters to students who want to access learning resources for a particular educational level. Using this filter, you will be able to browse content as per your required level ranging from class I to the post-graduate level.
File Format:
This filter shows the file formats (.pdf, .doc, .mp3, .html, .jpeg etc.) of all NDLI content relevant to your search phrase so that you can choose the required file format that is best suited for your needs.
Language:
The language filter offers you a set of languages to choose your search result from. Hence if you are looking to access content in a specific language, this is a good option.
Learning Resource Type:
Using this filter, you can look for your search phrase within 'Books', 'Articles', 'Journals', 'Video Lectures', 'Audio lectures', 'Thesis' and so on.
Source:
Once you key in your search phrase, this filter gives you a list of all the institutions that have contributed to populating NDLI matching the respective search phrase. You can select one or multiple options from here to view the items of your choice and make further selections from there.

Advanced search

The Advanced Search option helps you to find your desired content in one go. You can enter a subject, a book's title or an author's name of your choice along with filters like Source, Educational Level, Language and Learning Resource Type to get a list of relevant search results.
Choosing these filters at one go will help to specify your search and thereby, narrow the search results. This is a great way of making the desired choices at one shot.
The Advanced Search is available on the top right when you are using the NDLI Search to access content.

Accessibility and Restriction

View of the documents, full text or not, is controlled by the source organization. While many organizations are happy to provide full text access to all their documents, many would like to restrict it in some way or the other. You will notice an icon beside each document which will tell you upfront about the access rights of the document.
NDLI: - This icon signifies that the document can be accessed in full-text mode by all registered NDLI members, that is, by users who have logged in to NDLI. This icon also signifies that the content is exclusive but freely accessible for NDLI users. Outside of NDLI, you need to pay to access them. For instance, all content from South Asia Archive fall under this category.
Open: - This icon signifies that the complete text is freely available to all. This includes content from sources like NCERT, NDLI Tutor - JEE Main, NDLI Tutor - JEE Advanced, StemEZ among others.
Limited: - This icon signifies that part of the text is available but access to the entire content requires authorization by the content's author/owner. This includes content from Semantic Scholar, ERIC among others.
Subscribed: - This icon signifies that the complete text is available for institutions that have subscribed to the source of the text. Otherwise, the source organization will expect you to pay certain fees to actually buy the book or have a view of it. You can still view the 'Metadata' of the item without any payment so as to understand the relevance of the book for your use, as is shown below. Example: IEEE, Springer, British Medical Journal.
Authorized: - This icon signifies that accessing the complete text requires authorization by the source's authority and separate login to the source. Example: IIT Jodhpur.
Content Stitching:
NDLI provides a very useful feature called 'Content stitching'. Refer to the screenshots below. For instance, for a source like NCERT, selecting a link like 'Composition and Structure of Atmosphere' opens up the unit and will display all the other chapters of the book so that a user can select any chapter just by a click.

There are several buttons at the bottom of the home page which are self-explanatory.
The About button gives an outline of the objective behind NDLI.
The Disclaimer button highlights the responsibility for assuring the quality of the content displayed.
The FAQ button is all about answering some of the questions frequently raised by users.
The Sponsor button shows that the entire project has been funded by Ministry of Education, Govt. of India.
The Contact button provides details of the support team whom you can approach for any issues faced while working on NDLI.
You may provide us your feedback for improving upon your NDLI experience by clicking on the Feedback button.
You can visit NDLI on YouTube through the NDLI YouTube Icon and learn more about the NDLI project as also how to easily access the content available on the site. Links to different Social Media channels of NDLI, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram are also there at the bottom of the page through which you can be updated about the recent activities and additions.
To download NDLI Android App, you can go to Playstore and search for NDLI. NDLI App is available for iOS also.
The Bulk registration button explains the process to follow for registering a large group of users.