Use and Awarness of U.G.C. Infonet Consortia on The Users of Ranchi University Ranchi in the Region of Eastern India: A Study
Bal Ram Bal Ram, Bhaskar Karn · International Journal of Scientific Research · 2012
Now day’s electronic resources are becoming more prevalent as well as easy to use and consistent also. The electronic resources make the e-learning operative which advances the attention among the students as well as staff and encourage them for the independent learning. This paper discusses the awareness and utilization of e-Resources and UGC Infonet consortium in the users of Ranchi University Ranchi concept of e-resources apart from that this paper also covers the Consortium in Indian context in brief. Today the value of Information and users need have increased enormously so much. No single publisher or institute fulfil their needs. Use and Awarness of U.G.C. Infonet Consortia on The Users of Ranchi University Ranchi in the Region of Eastern India: A Study Introduction For hundred years, printed information sources have been used either by users purchasing them, or by using them through libraries. The situation began to change about four decades ago with the introduction of computers in information handling, and there has been a dramatic change over the past few years. Recent developments in information and communication technologies, especially the internet and the web, have brought significance changes in the ways we generate, store, access and make use of Information.1Presently E-Journals have become the largest and fastest growing areas of the digitalcollections for most of our libraries. For instance, the E-Journals a few years ago numberedjust few hundreds of titles, are now running in many thousands and the rate of growth isphenomenal as well as amazing. The advancements in digital technologies and the recentproliferation of E-Publishing across the world have brought in a revolution in journalpublication, subscription, and access and delivery mechanism. E-journals are the electronicequivalents of their print counter parts possessing numerous additional features. E-Journalsoften referred to interchangeably as “Electronic Serials”, “Online Journals” and “ElectronicPeriodicals”. Lancaster (1995) defines E-Journal as “a journal created for the electronicmedium and available only in this medium”. Electronic serials may be defined very broadlyas any journal, magazine or newsletter which is available over the internet.2 Historical Background of Consortium The UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium was formally launched December, 2003 by Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, Honourable President of India, soon after providing the internet connectivity to the universities in the year 2003 under the UGC-Infonet programme. The Consortium proved to be a recipe to university libraries, which have beendiscontinuing subscription of scholarly journals because of “Serials Crisis” that refers toexponential and continuing increase in subscription cost of scholarly journals. The crisis is aresult of rise in cost of journals much faster than the rate of inflation; increase in number ofjournals and the paucity of funds available to the libraries.The universities were given benefit of access to e-resources under the UGCInfonet Digital Library Consortium in a phased manner. In the first phase that began in 2004, access to e-resourceswas provided to 50 universities who had Internet connectivity under the UGC-Infonet. Connectivity programme of the UGC. In the second phase, 50 more universitieswere added to the programme in the year 2005. So far, 150 universities out of 171 thatcome under the purview of UGC have been provided differential access to e-resourcessubscribed under the Consortium. These e-resources covers almost all subject disciplinesincluding arts, humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, chemical sciences, lifesciences, computer sciences, mathematics and statistics, etc. The programme is whollyfunded by the UGC and executed by the INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network) Centre, Ahmedabad.3 STATUS OF CONSORTIA IN INDIA The history of higher education in India has been started way back to ancient and colonial time whichused to restrict up to oral and written communication only. But modern higher educational system in India has been started 147 years back when grounds of three major universities in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay were led by the British. Today, we have more than 310 universities and 14000 colleges’ affiliatedto these universities and about ten million students are studying in these institutions. All this makes Indian educational system as one of the strongest and largest educational systems in the world. No doubt that it is very complex and complicated to manage this whole educational system in systematicand qualitative manner. Library is the essential and most important part to drive this whole educational system in systematic way.Students, research scholars, faculty members all have to deal with information only and this is theresponsibilities of the library to collect, manage, and disseminate the information to its user according totheir need. But in true sense university library in India started making progress after 1924 when Dr. S R Ranganathan the father of library science in India, chaired the Madras University Library. He did severalefforts to improve the status of university and college libraries. Establishment of University GrantsCommission (UGC), 1953 as the apex national organization concerned with the setting up andmaintenance of standards in higher education throughout the country was a mile stone in the history ofhigher education in India. Right from very beginning UGC has been giving importance to the development of university and colleges libraries and taking significant steps to improve the higher education.4 Due to that reason in order to provide recent Information to the users the consortium term has exist in the world, In context to UGC website, there are more than 171 Universities, Inter University Centres of UGC and Deemed Universities that are under direct purview of UGC, are entitles for getting e-resources through the UGC-INFONET. Apart from that Digital Library Consortium of 171 Universities, 150 Universities that have been given Internet connectivity under the UGC-INFONET Connectivity programme are being provides differential access to e-resources as per the decision of the National Steering Committee of Consortium. However, quite a few of these universities are highly specialized dealingwith subjects like Urdu, Sanskrit, Hindi and Law, etc. As such, these universities do nothave much use for e-resources that are being offer through the Consortium. The UGC provides funds required for providing differential access to electronic resources aswell as Internet connectivity to universities directly under the purview of the UGC. The Consortium provides differential access to more than 5,000 scholarly journals and tenbibliographic databases from 23 major publishers (including scholarly societies, universitypresses and aggregators) to more than 125 universities. Besides access to their currentissues, most journals are available with their archives from 1997 onwards. Some of thepublishers like American Chemical Society, Institute of Physics, and JSTOR provide access totheir contents from Vol. 1 onwards.