Returns on Library Investment: A Study of the Leading Engineering and Technology Institutes in India

The study is based on the secondary data compiled by the Ministry of Human Resource & Development, Govt., of India for the period 2012-13, 2013-14 & 2014-15 and was released as the ranking list of Institutes of Engineering and Technology in India for the year 2016. The study aims to assess the Returns on Investment (ROI) of the twenty leading libraries of the Institutes of Engineering and Technology in India in the form of institutional research output. An attempted has also been made to rank the each individual library on the basis of seven different parameters chosen for the study and worked out the difference between their ascribed rank as per the MHRD list and the achieved ranks worked out on the basis of chosen. The rankings have been calculated on the basis of scores earned by each individual library against each individual parameter. The results showed that the Institutes of Engineering and Technology in India concentrate more on procurement of electronic resources in their libraries, spending nearly three-fourth of their budget on the procurement of electronic documents mostly in thr form of online journals and eBooks. While evaluating the ascribed and achieved ranking, 95% libraries under study faced shuffle, as 55% libraries slipped in their rank, while as 45 % improved and 5% showed no change. The study gives a clear idea about the importance of libraries and the part these sub-institutions’ play in the overall ranking of their institution

Indian population is 1.244 billion and World’s popul...

Abstract: Nowadys, computers are being used to mechanization, automation and to develop decision support system, expert system, GIS, Remote Sensing for taking strategic decision on the agricultural production and protection research. Recently remote sensing and geographic information system has place a major and crucial role in agriculture research especially in the field of yield prediction, suitability of soil for particular crop, integrated pest management, water management and site specific resource allocation of agriculture inputs, etc. India has accomplished an impressive progress in agriculture during the last six decades. At present, there are numerous challenges to be addressed on priority for making India a developed nation through progress in agriculture. In the current millennium, there are challenges of scarcity of land & resources and very high population to be faced simultaneously. Therefore, there are challenges to the Indian agricultural research to provide the food to the increasing population. The event of Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a highly powerful enabling tool for delivery of services in the public and the private sector has by now been universally recognized. ICT has the potential to change the information and knowledge in agricultural research as well as to disseminate it to the farmers. Science and technology are available globally, it must be realized that information and knowledge are also available globally. This opens the avenues for internationa

Management of Digital Libraries for Active Learning Environment: Trends and Challenges

E-content learning is one of the innovative information system based learning environment that has adopted in every library throughout the world. It deals with work-related the digital library even in the presence of an electronic resources department. It can be achieved with the assistance of digital technologies for making to access and delivering the contents. A virtual classroom for learning and training has a sustainable increase in recent days. User-friendly Libraries is the major source of that contributes to improving the knowledge of both faculties and students through active search. The biggest advantage of E-content learning is you can learn at any convenient time at your workplace. Modern Libraries that have the facility of a fully automated system that helps to search the book, issue, and renewal and receiving of books. They are several formats of e-books, journals and articles are available on the internet. From reading a daily newspaper, textbooks, magazines and periodical journals are available in just the web browser. To evaluate the performance of the impact of research and books by Bibliometrics and measures the impact of characteristics of science and scientific research by Scientometrics are used. Networking technologies like internet and intranet are used for sharing the e-content in a smart manner. Every day the volume of data has increased rapidly, with the help of Digital Technologies like Cloud Computing and Big Data are used for storing and retrieving a large volume of data. In this paper mainly focuses on the current trends and challenges like unauthorized access and plagiarism that are faced by e-content management. And also give suggestion to overcome these challenges in digital libraries management are discussed

Effects o f Algal Bio Fertilizer o n t he Growth o f Vigna Radiata

India in its agricultural domain is encountering the problem of feeding the growing population along with using the land sustainably. The use of chemical fertilizers has massively increased the rate of production but indiscriminate use of these chemical fertilizers has further mystified the natural system and have caused many environmental and health related problems. Due to direct uses of chemical and inorganic fertilizers drastic problems has been arisen and the fertility has been decreased since last decades. Algal bio-fertilizers is an emerging option for the present farming era. The aim of this work is an extension of approach towards cultivating Vigna radiata, a leguminous plant treated with algal bio-fertilizer and is compared with the different chemical fertilizers to notice the growth parameters which is a biotechnological approach. A pot experiment was carried out for 60 days to evaluate the effect of algal bio-fertilizer on Vigna radiata by comparing the growth parameters with respect to FYM, NPK and combination of these three. A finding of the experiment reveals that the treatment of algal bio-fertilizer in combination with FYM showed significant result than the other treatments. The principle of this study is the simple and basic approach for using algae as a bio-fertilizer and large scale experiment has to be conducted in future to prove the sustainability of this approach

Electoral participation of scheduled tribes in Maharashtra, India: A case study of Nashik District, from 1992 to 2012

La sociedad india se caracteriza por presentar un alto grado de desigualdad estructural debido al sistema de castas. Tradicionalmente la sociedad india se dividía en cuatro grupos, de acuerdo a ocupaciones tradicionales: Brahmín, Kshatriyas, Vaishya y Sudra. Pero en el sistema social moderno indio existen dos grupos marginados más, las castas registradas y las tribus registradas, que viven fuera de la corriente principal de la sociedad debido a su inferior condición social y económica. Este sistema de castas se basa en los principios de pureza y contaminación, lo que implica la división de las personas en castas con una asignación jerárquica y desigual de derechos económicos y civiles atribuidos desde el nacimiento. La exclusión social entre las castas se asegura por las prácticas de endogamia y separación social. Estos grupos sociales por lo general son definidos como grupos endogámicos con especialización profesional tradicional. La categoría de Tribu Registrada incluye grupos que se distinguen por estar aislados geográficamente del resto de la población, así como por sus diferencias lingüísticas y culturales. En términos generales, las tribus registradas presentan un relativo aislamiento, atraso económico y diferenciación cultural en relación a la población no tribal. En el contexto de India la política basada en castas ha permanecido siempre en la primera línea, lo que no sólo se refleja en la vida social de los indios sino también en los comportamientos económicos y políticos de las personas gobernadas por el sistema de castas. Esos grupos han tenido carencias culturales, económicas y sociales, lo que juega un papel muy significativo en sus modos de vida

Open Source Software for Integrated Library System : Relative Appropriatness in the Indian Context

Libraries in all fields of human activity are involved in collection, preservation, management, and effective distribution of information that determines the quality of development in concerned sectors including that of higher education and research. Now information is flooding and along with that the recorded information to be managed; which necessitates automation of libraries to make the information stored in their collections useful and retrievable. Hitherto the cost of commercial packages for automation has prevented millions of libraries from using those tools. The recent emergence of Open Source Software has drastically reduced the cost of automation as well provided tools for new and innovative information services. The present research work focuses on comparative study of library automation packages with stress to appropriateness of Open Source Integrated Library Systems (OSILS) for countries like India. Study is based on a survey among library professionals from India using commercial and OSILS packages. The sample users belong to 601 libraries covering university, college, school, special and research libraries using any one of the integrated library systems. Packages covered is limited to the software /versions used in India. The survey found that features users of library automation packages consider are cost effectiveness, technical infrastructure, staff skills, software functionality and the availability of support, documentation and community. Study revealed that OSILS provides technological freedom and so is changing the landscape of library automation. Survey found Koha to be most popular in India. Suggests solutions to improve the situation. Few recommendations are provided to help libraries to choose suitable OSILS by understanding their advantages. Opines that being an attractive alternative to costly commercial package for any type of libraries OSILS, which is free to experiment and easy to use and customize for local requirements needs to be promoted in Indian libraries

Social Water

We encounter water every day. It is a vital substance biologically as much as socially. We may notice this in art exhibitions and university courses communicating submersed and subversive facts about water; the rhythms of floods and tides resonating with fishing techniques and conflict patterns; inundations carrying moral and political weight as much as water and pollution; and particular mixtures of water and land generating wealth, anxieties and memories. In short, wherever people deal with water, they are involved not only with a physical element, but also with social relations. In fact, whenever we pretend that water is foremost the molecule H2O, we ignore all the political, economic, infrastructural, emotional and legal aspects of this element without which water would not be what it is for us today. This issue explores some of the ways in which water is profoundly social, both in the sense of being co-produced by social life, and by being a core constituent of it. Some contributions to this issue do this through the examples listed above. Others illustrate the way water positions people and their perspectives. A few show how large water infrastructures reshuffle social lives. And some suggest that water may sometimes be better imagined as a word in the plural, rather than a singular, universal substance

Public knowledge, attitudes and perceptions towards genetically modified organisms in India : final report

Attitude to food is overwhelmingly guided by cultural-religious factors, irrespective of education and economic status. This, rather than a rational analysis of the benefits of a particular food, determines food choices. The sanctity of food is underlined by the clear articulation in rural communities that any food transformed in the way that GM foods are, would be unacceptable for special ceremonies and religious festivals. Many people felt that NGOs provide useful, reliable information; others felt that NGOs doctored their information to suit their ideology. This paper reports on a three-year research project undertaken by Gene Campaign and the University of Hyderabad to study the awareness, attitudes and perceptions to GM technology