The Library Soup : November 2012

Friday, November 2, 2012

National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST) to help Allahabad University students access library e-resource

ALLAHABAD: If you are among students pursuing higher education from any of the government-aided or recognised colleges, or any of the constituent colleges of Allahabad University and deprived of e-resource in the library, there comes a good news for you. The project titled National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST) would equip any library which can support e-resource.

Once an educational institution gets registered for the said project, all colleges covered under section 12B/2F of UGC Act and Non-Aided Colleges (except Agriculture, Engineering, Management, Medical, Pharmacy, dentistry and Nursing) can access electronic resources subscribed by the UGC-INFONET Digital Library consortium as well as selected e-resources found appropriate for colleges including e-journals and e-books. The resources include more than 3,100-plus e-journals and 75,000-plus e-books.

Any college that wants to access the given facility of e-resource has to deposit an annual fee of Rs 5,000 to INFLIBNET-NLIST, Ahmedabad which would open an account and provide password after which the e-content can be accessed in the library by members of the institution.

"Earlier, the facility was limited to computers at the Central Library of AU or nodes attached to the main server of the university but it was not available to the colleges. The option given by the UGC-INFONET Digital Library consortium, these institutions can also get accessed to the e-content", said deputy librarian of AU's central library B K Singh. He informed that institutions interested in getting the said facility can attend a one-day training programme which would be organised at AU on November 9.

The content that would be provided under the project includes full text of e-journals including American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, Annual Reviews, Cambridge University Press, Economic and Political Weekly, Indian Journals, Institute of Physics, Oxford University Press, Royal Society of Chemistry and HW Wilson. Among the e-Books are Cambridge Books Online, e-brary, EBSCoHost-Net Library, Hindustan Book Agency, Institute of South East Asian Studies, Oxford Scholarship, Springer eBooks Taylor Francis eBooks and Myilibrary-Mcgraw Hill, informed Singh.

"The one-day training programme, scheduled for November 9, would go a long way to provide the best of these e-resources to students of various institutions, who are otherwise deprived of access to large number of e-content they require in many ways", said B K Singh.

In-red Hardayal libraries face closure

Thirteen branches of Hardayal Municipal Library in South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) and East Delhi Municipal Corporation areas have stuck in limbo as both the civic bodies are considering closing them in the absence of adequate funds.

However, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NMC) has adopted remaining other 13 branches falling under its jurisdiction. Three branches are under East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC).

On Tuesday, the NMC had passed a resolution in its House meeting adopting 13 branches of the Hardayal Municipal Library — including its headquarters at Chandni Chowk. After trifurcation of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), the NMC has been made the nodal corporation to run all the branches of the library which was renamed as Hardayal Municipal Public Library from its original name Hardinge Municipal Public Library in 1970. The headquarter of the library, located at Gandhi Ground, Town Hall in Chandni Chowk, is one of the richest library in the city with collection of some rare books.

However, the fate of some of its branches and around 50 employees remains uncertain as the SDMC officials said they might shut down the branches under its jurisdiction. “While the library has 27 branches across the city, the headquarters of library is the best. Other branches are no match to the headquarters. Since the headquarters lies in the jurisdiction of North Corporation, it has adopted it for maintenance. As far as branches under the jurisdiction of SDMC are concerned, we need to seriously consider whether it would be prudent to run them,” said a senior official of SDMC.

A senior councillor from the ruling BJP in the SDMC said a decision of the issue of operating the library would be taken soon. “We would discuss the issue with the Mayor, senior leaders and officials of the corporation. A decision over the future of the libraries would be taken soon. If we decide to run the libraries, we would re-launch them on a grand scale,” he said.

Even as the fate of some of the branches hangs in balance, salary to the employees of the library has not been paid for the past four-five months. Deliberative wings of three civic body said the decision would hit the employees of the remaining branches as the other two corporations do not have budgetary allocation for maintaining the libraries.

Leader of Opposition in NMC Mukesh Goel said, “Before trifurcation, the MCD had a budgetary allocation of `3 crore as grant-in-aid for maintaining the library. After trifurcation the budgetary allocation was transferred to the North Corporation. The corporation has now decided to adopt only 13 branches and has allocated `2.3 crore for their maintenance. The future of the rest branches falling under South and East corporations has become uncertain as the South and East civic bodies do no have any budgetary allocation for maintenance of the library”.