Marketing of Library Services and Products through Social Media: An Evaluation

Social media has a great impact on information promotional activities by bringing tremendous changes in the field of marketing. Social networking applications help the users to possess interconnections among the community members and remix the library services and products to brand them visible in a broader way. This paper gives an overview of the concept of marketing of library services and products in the pretext of handiness of social networking technologies (SNT). The paper also discusses various social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, Youtube, Flickr etc. An outline of how the social media may successfully be applied to enhance the effectiveness in marketing library services and products is observed. Relative merits and challenges with adoption of SNS are also examined

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

Transition from Closed to Open: Case of Integrated Library Automation Software in India

Prior to Open Source Integrated Library Systems (OSILSs) availability, libraries found two alternatives to automate their housekeeping operations - either develop an exclusive in-house software system or purchase a commercial one. Commercial packages differ with each other on pricing and license agreements and function modules. Now, many libraries are shifting from such traditional proprietary automation systems where the cost of software is assumed to be a major concern, to free/open source system considering the flexibility and adaptability in using and customizing it to fit their local needs. The study evaluates the rate of adoption of OSILS in Indian libraries to understand the trend in comparison with proprietary systems available. Also examines attitude and perceptions of Indian library community towards adopting OSILS. The challenges confronted by the library community in adopting OSILS and the reasons for migrating to it are also examined. The study found Koha to be a favored OSILS option to which many Indian libraries are migrating. The study also found that acceptance of OSILS in higher education libraries in India is much higher than that of school and public library system where proprietary systems still dominate

Opportunistic mobile social networks: architecture, privacy, security issues and future directions

Mobile Social Networks and its related applications have made a very great impact in the society. Many new technologies related to mobile social networking are booming rapidly now-a-days and yet to boom. One such upcoming technology is Opportunistic Mobile Social Networking. This technology allows mobile users to communicate and exchange data with each other without the use of Internet. This paper is about Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks, its architecture, issues and some future research directions. The architecture and issues of Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks are compared with that of traditional Mobile Social Networks. The main contribution of this paper is regarding privacy and security issues in Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks. Finally, some future research directions in Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks have been elaborated regarding the data's privacy and security

Fuzzy Support Vector Machine-based Multi-agent Optimal Path

A mobile robot to navigate purposefully from a start location to a target location, needs three basic requirements: sensing, learning, and reasoning. In the existing system, the mobile robot navigates in a known environment on a predefined path. However, the pervasive presence of uncertainty in sensing and learning, makes the choice of a suitable tool of reasoning and decision-making that can deal with incomplete information, vital to ensure a robust control system. This problem can be overcome by the proposed navigation method using fuzzy support vector machine (FSVM). It proposes a fuzzy logic-based support vector machine (SVM) approach to secure a collision-free path avoiding multiple dynamic obstacles. The navigator consists of an FSVM-based collision avoidance. The decisions are taken at each step for the mobile robot to attain the goal position without collision. Fuzzy-SVM rule bases are built, which require simple evaluation data rather than thousands of input-output training data. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by a series of simulations and implemented with a microcontroller for navigation.Defence Science Journal, 2010, 60(4), pp.387-391, DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.60.49

Influence of young and mature budwood plants on growth and tappability of rubber

Healthy buds from four year old young budwood plants, 20 year old mature budwood plants and 20 year old mature trees were collected and bud grafted onto seedling stock of recommended age and size in the ground nursery and the resultant budded stumps were raised in polybags. The plants were subjected to field evaluation during 2006. At the age of seven years, trees raised from young budwood plants recorded mean girth of 45.6 cm,while those from mature budwood plants had mean girth of 42.2 cm and trees raised from buds of mature trees showed significantly inferior girth of 33.7 cm. Trees raised from young budwood plants showed lesser tree to tree variation (CV: 12.76-14.79) coupled with significantly higher percentage of tappability (60.17%). Trees raised from mature budwood plants recorded higher tree to tree variation (CV: 15.47-19.68) with 39 per cent tappability. Plants developed from the tree buds recorded only 11 per cent tappability (CV: 23.11). Present study indicated that trees generated from young budwood plants showed higher tappability with better uniformity in girth than trees raised from mature budwood plants and mature trees

Enhanced muscarinic M1 receptor gene expression in the corpus striatum of streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats

Acetylcholine (ACh), the first neurotransmitter to be identified, regulate the activities of central and peripheral functions through interactions with muscarinic receptors. Changes in muscarinic acetylcholine receptor (mAChR) have been implicated in the pathophysiology of many major diseases of the central nervous system (CNS). Previous reports from our laboratory on streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic rats showed down regulation of muscarinic M1 receptors in the brainstem, hypothalamus, cerebral cortex and pancreatic islets. In this study, we have investigated the changes of acetylcholine esterase (AChE) enzyme activity, total muscarinic and muscarinic M1 receptor binding and gene expression in the corpus striatum of STZ – diabetic rats and the insulin treated diabetic rats. The striatum, a neuronal nucleus intimately involved in motor behaviour, is one of the brain regions with the highest acetylcholine content. ACh has complex and clinically important actions in the striatum that are mediated predominantly by muscarinic receptors. We observed that insulin treatment brought back the decreased maximal velocity (Vmax) of acetylcholine esterase in the corpus striatum during diabetes to near control state. In diabetic rats there was a decrease in maximal number (Bmax) and affinity (Kd) of total muscarinic receptors whereas muscarinic M1 receptors were increased with decrease in affinity in diabetic rats. We observed that, in all cases, the binding parameters were reversed to near control by the treatment of diabetic rats with insulin. Real-time PCR experiment confirmed the increase in muscarinic M1 receptor gene expression and a similar reversal with insulin treatment. These results suggest the diabetes-induced changes of the cholinergic activity in the corpus striatum and the regulatory role of insulin on binding parameters and gene expression of total and muscarinic M1 receptors

Designing a Comprehensive Information System for Safeguarding the Cultural Heritage: Need for Adopting Architectural Models and Quality Standards

The cultural heritage of any region is an integral part of the life of the people there irrespective of their community, caste, religion, and the social and economic status. As man continues his journey forward from the position at which his forefathers left him conservation of heritage assets, especially knowledge embedded in them, is essential for future generations and sustainable development. The study discusses the need for developing and managing a comprehensive information system that can preserve, conserve and retrieve the knowledge related to heritage assets in a single platform. The requirement of adopting internationally accepted guidelines, policies, methods, and standards and practices for managing heritage information is important and it has economic, legal, and technological concerns. The paper emphasizes necessity of adopting suitable architectural models and quality standards to design information systems to safeguard cultural heritage assets

Role of Libraries in Enhancing the Research Visibility and Collaboration of Academics

Promoting collaboration among the academics can improve the quality and visibility of research at global level. This paper discusses publication strategies that can help to achieve maximum research visibility and enhance the chances of collaboration among the academic and research community. Also presents how research and publication marketing tools such as Researcher Identifiers and Profiles, Academic Social Networking Sites, Online Reference Management Tools, Blogging and Online Magazines, Personal or Institutional Websites and Open Repository System can support in disseminating the scholarly publications for its optimal visibility. Stresses the role of librarians in guiding the academic and research community to use publication marketing tools, which can improve the visibility of their research and help them to create collaborative network

Distinguish Yourself from Someone: Role of Researcher Profiles in the Academic Environment

This paper discusses the different types of researcher profile platforms used by the academic community, their advantages, and limitations. Awareness, usage, and application of researcher profiles for various utilities with reference to the faculties of the Central University of Kerala have also been examined in this paper. The study found that the majority of the faculty members have created at least one or other researcher profile; however, faculties from the Science discipline were found to be more familiar with the researcher profile system, whereas Humanities, Arts, and Social Science disciplines are not explored the facility efficaciously. The study suggests that irrespective of the discipline in which the faculty belongs, libraries have to play a vital role in educating the academic community on the importance of having a researcher profile to maximize their online reach