Digital archiving of manuscripts and other heritage items for conservation and information retrieval

Expression of cultural heritage looking from the informatics angle falls into text, images, video and sound categories. ICT can be used to conserve all these heritage items like; the text information consisting of palm leaf manuscripts, stone tablets, handwritten paper documents, old printed records, books, microfilms, fiche etc, images including paintings, drawings, photographs and the like, sound items which includes musical concerts, poetry recitations, chanting of mantras, talks of important persons etc, and video items like archival films historical importance. To retrieve required information from such a large mass of materials in different formats and to transmit them across space and time, there are several limitations. Digital technology allows hitherto unavailable facilities for durable storage and speedy and efficient transmission / retrieval of information contained in all the above formats. Hypertext and hypermedia features of digital media enable integrating text with graphics, sound, video and animation. This paper discusses the international and national efforts for digitizing heritage items, digital archiving solutions available, the possibilities of the media, and the need to follow standards prescribed by organizations like UNESCO to enable easy exchange and pooling of information and documents generated in digital archiving systems at national and international level. The need to develop language technology for local scripts for organizing and preserving our cultural heritage is also stressed

E-Learning Initiatives in India

Abstract: emergence of world wide web has completely globalized the whole world into a global village business, entertainment, education, teaching, learning every field has achieved new dimensions and plays important role in the development of nation.one of the outcome of this is e learning. E-Learning is the extended form of traditional classroom teaching. The paper highlights concept, tools and initiatives taken by several and institutions and Library centers around the world and in India

Institutional Repositories in India: A Case Study of National Aerospace Laboratories

This paper traces the history and developments in Open Archives Initiatives including open access journals, e-print archives and Institutional repositories. The setting up of NAL’s Institutional Repository using OSS GNU Eprints, document types with statistical analysis, country wise statistics of full text download, levels of accessibility and technologies used in building the Institutional Repository have been discussed at lengt

Management of e-Resources in R amp; D Centers: A Case Study of the Information Center at NAL13;

The developments in information technology and their applications to library and information services have given new dimension to the entire spectrum of information management. The information generated is usually stored in four physical media: paper, film, optical, and magnetic disks. The e-document be it a book, journal, technical report, conference proceedings is portable; has random access to its contents; and the document can also be a multimedia object, in that it may contain not only text, but also graphics, drawings, photographs or video. Now we have the emergence of publications over the electronic networks and the activity took off in a big way following the invention of the World Wide Web. The Open Access movement is becoming the order of the day. More than 3000 journals are free on net for anybody to access. A number of Institutional repositories and e-Prints archives have thrown challenge to the publishing industry. Consortium approach through different pricing, management and licensing models is enabling the libraries to provide access to thousands of e- journals, e-books and other kinds of e-documents. The Information center at NAL with its state-of-the-art library has progressed a good deal in this direction by acquiring different kind of documents especially e-form, cataloguing amp; processing them appropriately, storing and giving access to its patrons not only in library premises, but on to the desk tops spread in three different campuses through laboratory LAN and also extending selected services through Internet for the benefit of any body from any part of the world. 13; Created and maintained by ICAST the Portal x2018;AeroInfox2019; (www.aeroinfo.org.in) serves as one window information search facility for Web sources in aerospace science and technology. This virtual library facilitates multiple approach to information seekers as the web sources are indexed and organised using different schemes of classification including NASA subject categories. Care is taken to cover Indian aerospace sources exhaustively. The ICAST site (www.icast.org.in), apart from giving detailed information about library sources including books, journals, E-journals, databases and technical reports makes available different search tools for its users. Other details like working hours, library rules, staff details, contact persons, etc are provided. One can submit an online query and suggest documents for acquisition using online forms provided. The Library Database (OPAC) is probably is single largest in the country with more than 3.25 lakh bibliographic records of books, technical reports, patents, standards, journals, etc. ICAST users can search International databases like Aerospace Database, NTIS, J-Gate, Medline, etc through campus LAN. Users can access more than 2500 full text journals covering titles published by Elsevier (ScienceDirect), ASME, AIAA, Springer, John Wiley, OUP, CUP, AMS, World Scientific, few Annual Series, etc. Created by ICAST an e-journals gateway with browse and search (alphabetical and subject wise) facility for titles provides access to more than 700 journals available free on the net. The Centre provides a number of web/e-mail based innovative information services including Journal Contents Service, News Clipping Service, Monthly Documents Additions Lists covering both Books and Technical Reports, Web Alert Service and Union Catalogue of Journals -CSIR and Aerospace Libraries, etc

Development of Lifelong learning through libraries- use of the web pages as a marketing channel in University Libraries of Sri Lanka

Lifelong learning is a concept that a person engages in learning process throughout the whole his/her lifetime by using acquired knowledge and skills, by experiencing in different circumstances, and critical thinking. It also means the obtaining of knowledge and know- how required for one’s living. Objective of this paper was to identify the role of libraries in Sri Lanka for the process of improving lifelong learning and identify strategies applicable from the e-marketing concept. Use of the web pages as a marketing tool among university libraries were examined by logging onto the homepages of respective libraries of government universities. Contents, strategic links, and the accessibility of these homepages were explored. However, this was not a technological exploration but a view in a marketing perspective. Underutilization of university libraries has become a common issue and it was assumed that implementation of Lifelong learning could address this issue to a certain extent. Orientation of marketing can target the real need of users and retain users as lifelong learners. Web pages can be utilized in university libraries to interact with users, conduct live communication with them, develop information skills among users, and disseminate information directly to relevant individual or group. The success of this process leads to the proliferation of Lifelong learning. Thirteen home pages out of Fifteen were logged on. Almost all the pages have given priority to include contact details, history, general procedures of the respective library, online public access catalogue, staff details, and free electronic resources etc. Nearly 50% of libraries have made worthy attempts to link the page with other libraries and information resources available outside. Yet some of these links were not updated or associated with errors of linking. A few libraries have made satisfactory attempts to include subject gateways, Ask a Librarian facility, Live Chat corners etc which are helpful to enhance lifelong learning. Lack of authority, limitation of know-how technology, untrained staff, and limited infrastructure facilities were seen as barrios

Creating digital library collections with Greenstone

The Greenstone digital library software is a comprehensive system for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a way of organizing information based on metadata and publishing ti on the Internet. This paper introduces Greenstone and explains how librarians use it to create and customize digital library collections. Through an end-user interface, they add documents and metadata to collections, create new collections whose structure mirrors existing ones, and build collections and put them in place for users to view. More advanced users can design and customize new collection structures

InfoInternet for Education in the Global South: A Study of Applications Enabled by Free Information-only Internet Access in Technologically Disadvantaged Areas (authors' version)

This paper summarises our work on studying educational applications enabled by the introduction of a new information layer called InfoInternet. This is an initiative to facilitate affordable access to internet based information in communities with network scarcity or economic problems from the Global South. InfoInternet develops both networking solutions as well as business and social models, together with actors like mobile operators and government organisations. In this paper we identify and describe characteristics of educational applications, their specific users, and learning environment. We are interested in applications that make the adoption of Internet faster, cheaper, and wider in such communities. When developing new applications (or adopting existing ones) for such constrained environments, this work acts as initial guidelines prior to field studies.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure, under review for a journal since March 201

Ideas, Artifacts, and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource

The goal of this paper is to summarize the lessons learned from a large body of international, interdisciplinary research on common-pool resources (CPRs) in the past 25 years and consider its usefulness in the analysis of scholarly information as a resource. We will suggest ways in which the study of the governance and management of common-pool resources can be applied to the analysis of information and \u27the intellectual public domain.\u27 The complexity of the issues is enormous for many reasons: the vast number of players, multiple conflicting interests, rapid changes of technology, the general lack of understanding of digital technologies, local versus global arenas, and a chronic lack of precision about the information resource at hand. We suggest, in the tradition of Hayek, that the combination of time and place analysis with general scientific knowledge is necessary for sufficient understanding of policy and action. In addition, the careful development of an unambiguous language and agreed-upon definitions is imperative. As one of the framing papers for the Conference on the Public Domain, we focus on the language, the methodology, and outcomes of research on common-pool resources in order to better understand how various types of property regimes affect the provision, production, distribution, appropriation, and consumption of scholarly information. Our analysis will suggest that collective action and new institutional design play as large a part in the shaping of scholarly information as do legal restrictions and market forces