The Delhi University's Library System (DULS) is all set to go digital. Besides launching a separate library website, which will help in getting all electronic resources available in the public domain, the library resources, including the books which are out of the Copyright Act, will also be digitised soon....As all kinds of primary and secondary sources of electronic texts, including journals, newsletters, encyclopedias, footnotes and bibliographies of scholarly articles, will be available, research papers in different subjects by students of foreign universities will also be just a click away. "The electronic journal is a hybrid. It springs from an effort to merge the informality, speed, and relative cheapness of network communication with the durable scholarship of the print world. The aim is to use the networked information sources in scholarly communication. The network-based electronic communication processes will survive and grow, at least as a supplement to the existing print-based system," said Dr S Majumdar, Librarian, DULS...."We are catalysing all available information in electronic form and putting it in a database form to help the students in accessing the right information in the shortest period of time," said Dr Majumdar. Not only the electronic resources available in free domain are included in the website but the electronic translation of the printed publications, to which the university library subscribes, will also be added in the list. To make it a perfect and user friendly website, the library staff members have turned into researchers looking for ideal links and hyperlinks. In addition to an online catalogue to assist the available library, the books, which are out of the Copyright Act, will be digitised. Trials run of electronic database for three months helpful for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses is already on with participation from 35 colleges, connected through the Intranet. Over 1,800 students have accessed such resource in the first month. "The aim of the trial run was to assess the usefulness of the data base on the basis of the access made by the faculty members, research scholars and students," said Dr Majumdar.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/10/2005 12:19:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
