National Electronic Library: Project Proposal Submitted to the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the National Mission on Education

through ICT(Control No.:)

PART-I Personal Details

1. Name and Dr. Jagdish Arora 2. Designation Director3. Organization Name Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre4. Postal Address: Infocity, Gandhinagar, Gujarat - 3820075. City Gandhinagar6. State: Gujarat7. Phone: 079 232682018. Fax: 079 232681119. Email: director@inflibnet.ac.in 10. Mobile: 09725051200 11. Project Category:

PART-II: Information relating to Department / Institute

1. Name of Institute: INFLIBNET Centre Infocity, Gandhinagar, Gujarat - 382007

2. Title of the Research Project: National Electronic Library

3. Department/ Broad Area: e-Resources Management, Database Management and Software R &D

4. Major Areas of Research Digital Library, Database Management, e-Resources, e-Learning Material, IRs

5. Names & Designation of Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLIBNET Centre Principle Researchers in Infocity, Gandhinagar, Gujarat - 382007the Major Areas and List (CV enclosed as Appendix I)of Publications during Last Co-PI: Mr. Ashok Kumar Rai, Scientist-D (Comp Sc), 5 Years based on Work Mr. Yatrik Patel, Scientist-D (Comp Sc),

Done in the Department: Mr Abhishek Kumar, Scientist-C (Comp Sc)

6. Is it Inter-disciplinary Project? Yes

7. Is it Inter-Institutional Project? No

8. Is any Industry/User agency participating? No

9. Brief of Completed and or Ongoing Research Projects Supported by MHRD in the Department during last 5 years:

i) N-LIST: The Project entitled “National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST)”, was being jointly executed by the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre and the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, IIT Delhi,

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with financial support from the Ministry of Human Resource Development under its National Mission on Education through ICT. The project provides for the followings:i) cross-subscription to e-resources subscribed by the two Consortia, i.e. subscription to IN-

DEST-AICTE resources for universities and UGC-INFONET resources for technical in-stitutions;

ii) access to selected e-resources to Govt.-aided/non aided colleges; and

iii) promote, impart training and monitor all activities involved in the process of providing effective and efficient access to e-resources to colleges.

Current Status: The project was formally launched on 4 th May 2010 and received funds from the NME-ICT for three consecutive years during XI Plan Period, i.e. 2009-10 to 2011-2012. However, funds could not be allocated to the project during the Financial Year 2012-2013 since NME-ICT Mission document did not provide for continuation of this initiative beyond pilot period. Considering the fact that the project has done exceedingly well during the pilot period, the UGC on requested of MHRD, agreed to subsume N-LIST into the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium as its college component. The UGC has allocated additional funding of Rs. 20.00 crores to the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium for continuation of N-LIST poject in the Financial Year 2013-2014.

The NLIST project, using a highly innovative access model, provides access to more than 6,000 e-journals and 97,000 e-books to all degree colleges except colleges imparting education in engineering, management, medical, nursing, pharmacy and dentistry. As on 20 th June, 2014, 3,789 colleges have registered themselves for the N-LIST programme including 3,440 eligible colleges. Log-in IDs and passwords have been issued to more than 5,93,955 individual users including faculty, students and researchers from the member colleges across the country. Registered users can access e-resources through proxy server installed at the INFLIBNET Centre. The project has since been honoured with three awards in the years 2010 and 2011, namely  i) Jury Choice Award e-INDIA 2010; ii)  The Manthan South Asia Award 2010 in Digital Learning Category for the year 2010; and iii) Skoch Digital Inclusion Award for Technology in Education for the year 2011.

ii) e-PG Pathshala: The MHRD, under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) has allocated funds to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for development of e-content in 77 subjects at postgraduate level. The content and its quality being the key component of education system, high quality, curriculum-based, interactive content are being created in different subjects across all disciplines of social sciences, arts, fine arts and humanities, natural & mathematical sciences, linguistics and languages under this initiative named e-PG Pathshala. The INFLIBNET Centre is technical and administrative coordinator responsible for hosting all e-content being developed under this initiatives as well as administrative role for release of funds to individual PIs institute. The Learning Management System for e-PG Pathshala (http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/), is available in open access and is hosted on INFLIBNET server. Currently 73 subjects have been identified for the development of e-content and 567 modules of different subjects have been uploaded on the LMS.

iii) VIDWAN; An Expert Database and National Researchers Network: VIDWAN received funding from National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT), MHRD during the Financial year 2014-15 for developing a premier database of Indian experts in all disciplines with detailed profile of scientists, researchers and other faculty members working in leading academic institutions and other R & D organizations involved in teaching and research in India. The database would facilitate Ministries and Govt. Departments, policy makers and funding agencies to identify experts available in various disciplines and to establish communication directly with the experts who possess the desired expertise. These experts can be engaged for evolving research policies for Government, evaluate project proposals, participate in various committees

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and task force constituted by the Govt. Departments and Ministries. Experts / scholars would also be benefited through this platform in finding potential scholars with similar expertise, publicize expertise to larger research community and create information exchanges and networking opportunities among scientists. The database is being populated with profiles of experts from academic institutions, R&D organizations including IIT, CSIR, DRDO, etc. Currently, experts are available in Agricultural Sciences (2008), Biological Sciences (542), Chemical Sciences (1034), Physical Sciences (1421), Medical & Health (2179), Engineering & Tech (2906), Social Science (1700), Arts and Humanities (760). 

iv) Integrated e-Content Portal: The Integrated e-Content Portal is a web-based portal consisting of all e-contnet developed / funded under the National Mission of Education through ICT. There are more than 55 projects awarded to various Indian institutions, universities and colleges wherein e-content is being developed with funding from NME-ICT in various subject disciplines including science, arts, engineering, social science, etc. The portal would facilitate search, browse and navigation through all e-content hosted on the portal. A learner would be able to access desired material including audio / video learning material, textual material, multimedia enriched materials, etc. through a single integrated interface. Moreover, features of faceted search, syllabus-based search, usage statistics, personalized learning experience with provision for “my account” and “my space”, etc would also be incorporated in this portal.

The Centre is currently acquiring e-content distributed on different locations / websites of institutions of respective PIs. The Centre will also identify e-content, that are available in open access, incorporate multimedia component into these e-content, if required and host them on the platform under Common Creative License.

PART-III: Information relating to Department / Institute

10.a Principal Investigator Details

Dr. Jagdish Arora, is the Director of Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre from August, 2007 onwards. Prior to his present assignment, Dr. Arora has worked as the Librarian and Deputy Librarian at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi from Sept. 2003 to August 2007 and from March 1991 to June 2002 respectively. He was also the National Coordinator of the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, one of the most successful consortia initiatives in India, since its inception in 2002. He was Librarian at IIT Bombay from June, 2002 to August, 2003 and was Documentation Officer at the National Institute of Immunology, Delhi (1983 - 1991) and Asstt. Documentation Officer, ICRISAT, Patancheru, A.P. (1980 - 1983).

Dr. Arora is recipient of Fulbright Professional Fellowship in Library and Information Science (1997 – 98), SIS Fellow (1999), Young Librarian of the Year (2001, SATKAL), Librarian of the Year (IASLIC, 1999); ILA-Kuala Best Librarian Award (2004); and Master Motilal Sanghi Best Librarian Award (2009). He delivered 7th Dr. S.R. Ranganathan Memorial Lecture organized by Delhi Library Association in 2009. He was awarded “SATKAL Life Time Achievement Award” for the year 2011 by SATKAL, a Punjab-based Organization.

Dr. Arora was the Principal Investigator for several projects sponsored by agencies like AICTE, Deptt. of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Information Technology (MIT), Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), the National Highway Authority of India and University Grants Commission. He was the Principal Investigator of the Project entitled “National Library and Information Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST)” funded by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) under the National Mission of Education through ICT. Currently, he is the Principal Investigator for the project entitled “Integrated e-Content Portal”.

He was a member of the delegation that visited selected libraries and library science schools in Germany in 2002. He was a member of the delegation to Jakarta, Indonesia and Bangkok,

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Thailand deputed by the Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Science and Technology to discuss development of INDO-ASEAN S & T Digital Library in November 2003 and May 2007 respectively. Dr Arora was a member of the International Library Advisory Boards of IEEE and IEE.

Dr. Arora has more than 70 research articles to his credit that were published in learned research journals and as chapters in books and conference proceedings. He has presented research papers in several national and international conferences and symposia in India and abroad.

His current research interests includes consortia-based subscription to e-resources, digital libraries, digitization of old and fragile documents and their storage, database-driven Web interfaces and Web-based library services, Web-based learning and education, access management technologies, scientometric analysis, etc.

10.b) Co-Principal Investigators

Mr. Ashok Kumar Rai, Scientist D (Computer science) is working at the INFLIBNET Centre since May 9, 2008. Prior to joining the INFLIBNET Centre Ahmedabad, he was working as Webmaster of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi from 1999 to 2008 and as a Consultant with Eurolink Systems Limited, Delhi. Mr. Rai has more than 19 years of experience including 5 years in teaching and researach and 16 years in software development and web technologies. Mr Rai holds a Masters Degree in Science (Mathematics) from Allahabad University (UP) and Master of Computer Applications (MCA) from Motilal Nehru Resional Engineering College (MNREC) (now MNNIT), Allahabad. Presently he is heading e-Resource Management Group including UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, NLIST and Web services at INFLIBNET Centre.

Shri Yatrik R Patel is working as Scientist D (Comp Sc) in the INFLIBNET Centre. He has been working with the Centre in various positions since 1998. Shri Patel holds BE in computer science. Presently he is engaged in software research and development activities including SOUL, open-source-software-development, installation and troubleshooting. He has extensive expertise in configuring servers and managing very large databases. He has been actively involved in almost all activities of the Centre including shodhganga, access management and open source search engines. He has contributed more than 10 papers in seminars, conferences and journals. His areas of interests are software development, library automation, digital libraries, cloud computing and virtualization techniques.

Shri Abhishek Kumar is working as Scientist-C (Comp Sc) in the INFLIBNET Centre. He has been working with the Centre since 2008. He holds M.Tech (IT) and B.E. (CS). Presently he is engaged with activities of Database Management Group, Software R & D, e-Content Development (e-PG Pathshala), UGC Schemes, etc. He is looking after the work of development of various online interfaces for different projects. He is also one of the core members of the Access Management R & D Group and Open Access R & D Group. Prior to joining the Centre, he has worked in an MNC software company.

11. Name of Participating Investigators

PI: Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar.

Co-PI: Mr. Ashok Kumar Rai, Scientist-D (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar; Mr Yatrik Patel, Scientist-D (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar and Mr Abhishek Kumar, Scientist-C (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar.

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12. Whether a MOU has been Signed

No. All participating investigators are from the same Institute. However, intervention of MHRD will be required to bring together content or metadata from various digital library initiatives taken by different Ministries or Govt. departments.

13. Present Commitments of the Principal Investigators

Dr. Jagdish Arora is the Director of INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar. He is Chief Coordinator of the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium and NLIST programme which is now college component of UGC-INFONET. He is also PI for the project entitled “Integratd e-Content Portal” funded by the NME-ICT.

14. Other Members of the Research Group to Work on Proposed Projects

Mr. Ashok Kumar Rai, Scientist-D (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar;Mr Yatrik Patel, Scientist-D (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar.Mr Abhishek Kumar, Scientist-C (Comp Sc), INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar.

PART-IV

About Research Project

15 (a). Brief Summary of the Project

Several terms have been coined at different times to represent the concept of library without books, libraries having information in computer-readable format or having access to information in digitized or digital format. Electronic library, variable called paperless library, virtual library or digital library, is defined as a system that provides coherent, seamless and structured access to an organized and managed collection of information and knowledge in a distributed networked environment with assistance to users in searching, evaluating and utilizing resources available in the electronic library. Resources available in electronic libraries can be accessed using desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones and other devices. Electronic libraries are also treated as logical extension and augmentation of physical libraries. Today’s electronic libraries are built around Internet and web technologies with electronic journals and electronic books as their building blocks.

The National Electronic Library, par se, should be a comprehensive database consisting of digital resources on or about India and as well as information generated in India. However, scientific research, being global in nature, cannot be conducted in isolation. As such, National Electronic Library of India must consist of national and international scholarly electronic resources including e-journals, e-books, learning materials, etc.

The most important component of an electronic library, besides hardware, software and network connectivity is the digital collection it hosts and provides access to. Types of e-resources that electronic library in India would host include i) electronic journals and e-journal archives that are made accessible through consortia initiatives such as UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INDEST-AICTE and N-LIST or open access e-journals made available through organizations such as Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, NISCAIR, and OJAS@INFLIBNET as well as through other national and international inititiaves; ii) electronic books and other documents that involved digitization of legacy resources such as

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Digital Library of India, National Mission on Manuscript (Ministry of Culture), projects funded by MCIT, CDAC, and Prasar Bharati or those that are purchased or subscribed from the publishers, eg. books acquired under N-LIST; iii) institutional and digital repositories consisting of digital e-resources that are borne digital such as ShodhGanga, ShodhGangotri, IR@INFLIBNET, IR@IITD, and ETD@IISc; iv) e-learning materials developed under NPTEL, NME-ICT, and other national and international initiatives; v) Govt. publications, reports, gazetters, etc.; vi) Art & cultural heritage objects and artifacts; and vii) Subject gateways and pathways such as Intute and InfoPort @ INFLIBNET.

It is proposed to consolidate and built upon the existing digitized collections that are dispersed across various institutions through an integrated and intuitive interface that would facilitate search, browse and discovery of these resources which would be organized and presented in user-friendly manner with an aim to exploit their true potential. Figure 1 below depicts thematic view of proposed National Electronic Library.

Stack Holders

Stakeholders for the National Electronic Library would include:

Students, researchers and faculty as users as well as contributors to the electronic library;

Working professionals and life-long learners as users of electronic library as well as contributors to the electronic library through IRs;

Universities and colleges as organizations that subscribe to digital resources and define policies on content creation and its delivery;

Centrally-funded technical and research institutions that subscribe to digital resources and define policies on content creation and its delivery;

Publishers, scholarly societies, university presses and aggregators as providers of content to academic institutions and research organizations on payment basis; and

Ministries, UGC, AICTE, NAAC and other regulatory bodies as funding agencies and policy makers.

15 (b). Digital Collections in the National Electronic Library

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The National Electronic Library will have diverse types of collection from a variety of sources. Major components of collection infrastructure of the National Electronic Library would include the followings:

15(b).1. Electronic Journals

Electronic journals (or e-journals) can be defined as any journal, magazine, e-zine, webzine, newsletter or any type of electronic serial publication which is available over the Internet and can be accessed using World Wide Web. Electronic journals can either be subscribed by individual institutions or through library consortia. Besides, thousands electronic journals are published in open access by several national and international organizations.

15(b).1.1. Access to E-Journals through Consortia in India

Over the past one decade, three library consortia were set-up under the MHRD, namely INDEST-AICTE Consortium, UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium and NLIST to cater to the needs of different categories of institutions. All the three initiatives are being merged to form “Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources (CHEERS India)” with a separate budget-head for the year 2014-2015. The INFLIBNET Centre is being assigned the responsibility of executing CHEERS India with consolidated funds to take greater benefit of total number of higher education institutions in India. Table 1 given below provides details of resources and beneficiary institutions under three MHRD-funded consortia that were being operated independently till 2013-14.

Consortium Type of Institutions

Type of e-Resources

Current No. of

Institutions

No of Institutions by

end of 2017UGC-INFONET

Universities, colleges and other research organizations

8,500 journals 10 bibliographic databases

208 core members+204 Associate Members*

250 (Core Members)+500 Associate Members*

INDEST-AICTE

IISc, IITs, NITs, IIMs and a few other centrally-funded technical institutions

20,748 journals 10 bibliographical databases

65 70+

INDEST-AICTE

Govt Engineering Colleges

200 journals 60 160

NLIST Degree colleges, except for colleges imparting technical and medical education

6,000 journals 97,333 e-books

3400 10,000

Table 1: E-resources available through MHRD funded Consortia

* Associate Members are institutions that are not entitled for access to e-resources through MHRD funds. As such, these institutions can join CHEERS India as its Associate Member and get access to e-resources by paying their own subscription.

15(b).1.2. Open Access Journals

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Open-access journals are considered as golden route for providing access to peer-reviewed literature in electronic format free of charge without any restrictions of access over the Web. Directory of Open Access Journals (http://www.doaj.org/) lists 9,744 open access journals including 590 OA journals published from India including Indian Academy of Sciences (11 journals), INSA (7 journals), OJAS (14 journals), NISCAIR E-Journal Repository (18 journals) and MEDIND@ NIC (108 journals). It will ensured that metadata from all open access journals are harvested into a centralized index that would be searcheable through an intgrated interface of the National Electronic Library.

It is also advisable that the Ministry under NME-ICT initiative, promote launching of a number of electronic journals in various disciplines in open access involving subject experts of high repute as members of editorial board for these journals. These journals should accept only high-quality research articles after an extensive peer review process. These journals should aim at achieving high impact factor in a short period of time. Moreover, experts from India as well as from other countries should be encouraged to publisher their research work in these open access journals. Such journals would constitute as an important component of National Electronic Library.

15(b).1.3. E-Journal Archives

Access to a given e-resource gets terminated as soon as the subscription period is over and consortium or subscribing institute decides not to renew its subscription for subsequent year. The archives of the subscribed contents needs to be preserved for future use using appropriate archival solutions. Most publishers offer access to e-journal for the period for which subscription was paid. However, publishers, most often, demand a fee for using their platform for accessing archives of e-journals after termination of subscription.

Moreover, the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium and INDEST-AICTE Consortium have invested considerable funds for purchase of digital archives of subscribed journals for selected universities and selected centrally-funded technical institutions on one-time payment and perpetual access basis. There are multiple means to get archival access to e-resource subscribed or purchased by a consortium including i) access from publisher’s platform; ii) local hosting of subscribed content on behalf of all consortia by a central agency; iii) engaging services of organizations like Portico and OCLC; and iv) technological solutions like CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, etc.

It may be noted that UGC-INFONET as well as INDEST-AICTE Consortium are operational for past ten years and as such the subscribing institutions, i.e centrally-funded technical institutions and universties own content in journals that is being subscribed for them by these two consortia for ten years, which can be hosted on local servers under agreement with publishers. However, these consortia or subscribing institutions, on their own neither had financial resources nor technical know-how required for local hosting of content.

E-journal archives would indeed be a very important component of National e-Library. Merits and demerits of each of the above-mentioned options would be examined minutely and practices being followed by other consortia, national and international initiatives would be observed before a decision is taken in this regard.

15(b).2. Electronic Books

An electronic book or e-book is digital reading material that a user can view on a desktop, laptop, tablet, mobiles or other dedicated portable devices such as Kindle, Cybook or Nook. Electronic books can be subscribed on annual subscription basis or they can be purchased out-right on one-time payment and perpetual access basis. The NLIST (see Table 1 above), for

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example, subscribes to Ebrary that offers 84,000 ebooks, besides, 15,000 books have been purchased on one-time payment and perpetual access basis.

Some of the important e-books that are already accessible to users in India in open access include: Project Gutenberg, considered as one of the first and pioneering open access e-book initiative, hosts more than 42,000 books. HathiTrust Digital Library proposes to host more than 50 lakh books in open access. The Digital Library of India, a project funded by Carnegie Mellon University and Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, Govt. of India hosts 4.80 lakh books in open access.

The NCERT online textbooks, available through its portal can also be hosted on National Electronic Library or its content may be indexed for NEL.

The National Electronic Library would index the books available under above mentioned initiatives as well as all other books available in open access.

15(b).3. Digital and Institutional Repositories

Institutional repositories, considered as green route to open access publications, are web-based archive of scholarly material designed to organize and provide seamless access to scholarly publications produced by faculty or researchers of an institution in all subject disciplines. Directory of Open Access Repositories indexes 2,668 world-wide repositories including 62 Indian repositories. However, most of these institutional repositories in India are sparsely populated because of lack of institutional mandate on open access.

The academic community and promoters of open access initiatives including grant-giving agencies are supporting open access model of publishing to counter the problem of exponential increase in cost of scholarly journals and tighter control of publishers on it. More than 240 universities and 90 funding agencies worldwide have adopted open access mandate. Amongst universities that have adopted open access mandate for faculty are Harvard University and MIT (USA), University College London (UK), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), NIT Rourkela and Madurai Kamaraj University (India). Amongst the funding agencies that have adopted open access mandate for grant recipients are NIH (USA), Research Councils (UK), Wellcome Trust (UK), European Research Council, NKN, CSIR and ICAR (India). Moreover, commercial and society publishers are also supporting open access initiatives in a variety of ways. As per the survey conducted by SHERPA / ROMEO on publisher’s copyright policies and self-archiving, out of 1,510 publishers surveyed, 1,028 (71.66%) publishers support open access in one form or other whereas 423 (28.34%) publishers do not support open access formally.

The concept of IRs is associated with Open Archives Initiative (OAI) and its Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and digital interoperability. IRs are viewed as a part of universal digital library system consisting of repositories distributed across research institutions and universities all over the world. Metadata (bibliographic de-tails) of each of these distributed IRs is harvested by the indexing services (called service providers or specialized search engines like ARC, OAISTER, Google Scholar, etc.) so as to provide unified and organized access to digital content distributed across IRs the world over. With interoperability built into the OAI-compliant IR software, individual institutions can participate in the process of building a distributed global digital library through their reposito-ries.

It is proposed that MHRD may consider mandating setting-up of institutional repositories as well as open access to research articles in the institutions of higher education funded by it through these IRs. Mandating open access to scholarly publications will accelerate innova-tion, stimulate the economy, and maximize the return on taxpayer investment in research.

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Faculty and researchers in centrally-funded technical institutions as well as universities may be asked to prefer publishing their articles in open access journals and set up institutional repositories wherein every research article brought out by faculty and researchers in universi -ties / research institutions should be deposited within six months of their publication. The IN-FLIBNET Centre may be given the responsibility to serve as a service provider and to harvest metadata from all institutional repositories distributed across various universities and other in-stitutions of higher education in India with an aim to provide a unified index to all submis-sions made in IRs distributed across academic and research institutions and to provide value added services using unified index.

Moreover, the INFLIBNET Centre may also be given the responsibility for setting-up dedi-cated Institutional Repositories for institutions that do not have adequate ICT infrastructure, requisite expertise and network infrastructure required for setting-up and maintaining institu-tional repositories. The researchers and faculty from these institutions would be able to sub-mit their research publications in the Central IR set-up at the INFLIBNET Centre. The IN-FLIBNET Centre will sign an MoU with universities and hand-hold universities in the process of setting-up interoperable institutional repositories, provide training in maintenance of IRs and train staff and faculty in populating IRs. These universities will, in turn, undertake to mandate / promote faculty and researchers in the universities to deposit preprints / post prints of their research articles in the IRs.

The institutional repositories would be an important component of the National Electronic Library. The IRs in long-term would contribute a growing number of research articles and other publications in NEL.

The Centre has already proposed a project on setting-up of inter-operable institutional reposi -tories for funding to the NME-ICT. A few examples of adequately populated institutional repositories are given below.

15(b).3.1. Shodhganga: The National Electronic Theses and Dissertation Portal

ShodhGanga is a digital repository set-up for submission of electronic version of theses and dissertations by research scholars in universities in India and make them available in open access to the world-wide academic community in response to the UGC Notification (Minimum Standards & Procedure for Award of M.Phil. / Ph.D Degree, Regulation, 2009). ShodhGanga is set-up using Dspace that uses internationally recognized protocols and interoperability standards. 167 universties have signed MoU with INFLIBNET Centre to join the Shodhganga project and deposit their theses. Shodhganga provides access to more than 16,477 electronic theses and dissertations. Shodhganga Received the eIndia Jury Choice Award for Best ICT Enabled Higher Education Institute of the Year 2011.

15(b).3.2. Institutional Repositories

Directory of Open Access Repositories indexes 2,668 world-wide repositories including 62 Indian repositories. Examples of some of the most populated and highly used IRs are: Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute Institutional Repository, National Institute of Oceanography India Digital Repository, Information and Library Network Centre Institutional Repository, National Institute of Technology Rourkela eThesis, NIC OpenMed, ICRISAT Repository, Indian Institute of Astrophysics Institutional Repository, National Aerospace Laboratories Institutional Repository, etc.

15(b).4. E-learning Material

There is a wide variety of content, across various subject disciplines that are hosted on a number of separate platforms, such as Sakshat (www.sakshat.ac.in), NPTEL

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(http://nptel.iitm.ac.in), CEC e-Content (http://cec.nic.in/E-Content/Pages/default.aspx); e-PG Pathshala (http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in), and E-Gyankosh (http://egyankosh.ac.in), etc. Moreover, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), under its National Mission on Education through ICT, has sanctioned a large number of projects on content creation to various higher education institutions in the country. Content creation, using four quadrant approach, for more than 996 courses in 20 or more science and engineering disciplines, covering both undergraduate and postgraduate courses is underway. More than 20,000 lectures have been recorded in the engineering and technology disciplines during this project period, making approximately 500 video based courses. The Consortium for Education Communication (CEC) is developing e-content in 100 subject areas at undergraduate level under the NME-ICT. Likewise, UGC, is developing e-content in 77 subjects at postgraduate level with funding from NME-ICT.

An Integrated e-Content Portal is being developed by the INFLIBNET Centre to host all curriculum-based e-content that have already been developed or are being developed under the NME-ICT with an aim to provide highly structured and organized access to aggregated e-content even after the active period of Mission.

E-learning material would be an important component of NEL targeted not only to students and faculty but also to the life-long learners.

15(b).5. Subject Gateways and Pathways

Creating library portals, subject gateways or pathways (also called virtual libraries) are also considered as an important component of an electronic library.

Most academic and technical libraries in India provide links to Web-based, open access electronic resources that are considered important for their user community. These links are organized subject-wise as well as by the type of e-resource. However, there is no national-level initiative in India in this direction.

InfoPort is one of such initiatives taken by the INFLIBNET Centre. InfoPort is a subject gateway to Indian electronic resources designed to serve as a comprehensive gateway to all Indian scholarly content. The gateway open-up the Indian scholarly content scattered over the web through an integrated interface that support search, browse and multiple listing of more than 1,700 e-resources. The InfoPortal uses “Subject Gateway Management System (SGMS)” developed in-house by the INFLIBNET Centre as hosting platform.

15(b).6. Government Publications, Art and Cultural Heritage Objects and Artifacts

Government publications that are either digitized or are “borne digital”, art and cultural heritage objects, artifacts and manuscripts that have already been digitized by the National Mission on Manuscript (Ministry of Culture) or under projects funded by MCIT, CDAC, and Prasar Bharati, will also be an important component of National Electronic Library. Metadata for such collections would be harvested by the INFLIBNET or by third party aggregation services, if available through an institutional repository in organized and structured format. Otherwise, these collections will have to be re-organized in institutional repositories using standard metadata schema. Intervention of MHRD would be required to get such digitized collections hosted on the Web and fine-tuning these repositories enabling INFLIBNET or a third party to harvest metadata from these repositories.

15(b). Justification, Importance of Projects

Various components of the proposed electronic library are already available on the Web that are distributed across various academic and cultural institutions in India. A true effective,

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efficient and functional electronic library can be built by bringing these distributed collections together using technological means of integration and consolidation. A user can draw maximum advantage from electronic content if they are available through a single integrated platform that facilities search, browse, discovery and multiple listing of all the content hosted on it.

It is essential not only to host all diverse and distributed e-content into a single integrated platform to promote its usage, but it is also important to apply basic tenets of preservation and implement standard metadata schema of different types so as to ensure their long-term availability. It is envisaged that the usability of content available under National Electronic Library would increase multifold once all the e-contents are made available through a single integrated interface.

15(c). Details of the Work Already Done by Principal Investigator in this Area

The INFLIBNET Centre is an Inter-University Centre of the University Grants Commission. The Centre has taken highly innovative projects in the recent years that can effectively become an important component of proposed National Electronic Library. Such projects include networking of universities under UGC-INFONET, automation of university libraries, UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, NLIST project, setting up of institutional repositories for electronics thesis and dissertations (Shodhganga and Shodhgangotri), IR@INFLIBNET, VIDWAN database, InfoPort, Union Catalogue of books, journals, theses, etc.

Recently, the Centre has created an e-learning hosting platform to host e-content being developed under e-PG Pathshala project, funded by MHRD, NME-ICT. The Centre, besides hosting and maintaining its own websites and web-based services, is also hosting and maintaining website of the UGC as well as its portal for scholarships and fellowships. Dr Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLIBNET Centre is Principal Investigator for development of e-content for the Library & Information Science under e- PG Pathshala. Moreover, the Centre is also being given the reposibility to execute “Consortium for Higher Education Electronic Resources (CHEERS India) that has come into effect with merger of three MHRD-funded consortia, namely UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium, INDEST-AICTE Consortium and NLIST. The Centre has also set-up its own Data-Centre in the new building of INFLIBNET Centre.

16. Total Amount Required

17. Financial Requirement for the proposed project along with item-wise breakup expenditure for National Electronic Library is as follows:

a) Non-Recurring Expensesb) Recurring Expensesc) Manpower

Budget Summary

18. Summary Sheet

1. Name of the Institution: INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar2. Title of the Project: National Electronic Library

3. Name of the Department: E-resources Management, Database Management and Software R &D

4. Cost of the Project:

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5. Amount Released Earlier if any: Not Applicable

6. Utilization Position in Respect of Grants Released Earlier: Not Applicable7. Reasons for Unspent Balance: --8. Name of the Principal Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLIBNET

Investigator Responsible for Centre, Gandhinagarimplementation of the Project:

Part-V: Detail Project Report

1. Mission and Objectives

1.1. Mission

Access to scholarly information to all learners of the country as an academic right.

1.2. Objectives

i) Leveraging on the latest technology, create a national electronic library with an aim to provide effective and efficient access to knowledge resources through perseverance, in-novation and collaboration;

ii) Built upon the existing digitized and borne digital collections distributed across academic institutions and provide an integrated and intuitive interface to facilitate single window service to the user community along with value-added services;

iii) Provide seamless, reliable and ubiquitous access to scholarly, peer-reviewed electronic re-sources to the academic community in all educational institutions with a focus on services and tools, processes and practices that support its effective use;

iv) Promote creation as well as usage of research and educational material through open ac -cess institutional repositories in every academic institute for local hosting of educational and research content;

v) Ensure long-term preservation, availability, and access to all digital resources made avail-able through National Electronic Library;

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vi) Develop tools, techniques and procedures for secure and convenient access management enabling users to access information in electronic format from anywhere, anytime; and

vii) Develop resource selection guides and online tutorials for effective delivery and usage of e-resources.

2. Methodology

Methodology to be adopted for developing proposed national electronic library would depend largely on the underlying diverse and distributed digital collection infrastructure that constitute its building blocks. These building blocks will be enhanced and enriched with appropriate metadata with an aim to deliver these content to the widest possible audience. Methodology for handling various components of the National Electronic Library is as follows:

2.1. Electronic Journals

The CHEERS India Scheme of the MHRD would handle all electronic journals, either subscribed or those available in open access. Additional resources and additional eligible institutions, for example Schools of Planning and Architecture (SPAs), open universities and other eligible institutions, would be identified and included under CHEERS India Scheme. Journal-level access to all open access e-journals including Indian open access journals would be made accessible through CHEERS India Website. While metadata for all e-journals (subscribed or open access) at article level will be made accessible to users through an integrated interface, access to full-text articles in case of subscribed journals will be restricted only to subscribing institutions depending upon their subscription plan. Institutions / individuals who do not have access to full-text articles would be able to send their requests for supply of articles to the INFLIBNET Centre. MHRD would be requested for policy interventions for publishing in open access journals as well as for launching high-quality open access journals.

2.2. E-journal Archives

E-journals archives purchased by various consortia or by the individual member institutions would be identified and journal-level links would be provided through CHEERS India Website. Additional archives will be purchased based on demand from the users or “denials” from e-journal platforms. As in case of e-journals, metadata for e-journal archives at article level will be made accessible to users through an integrated interface, access to full-text articles, in case of subscribed e-journal archives, will be restricted only to subscribing institutions depending upon their subscription plan. Institutions / individuals who do not have access to full-text articles may send their request for supply of articles on payment basis.

2.3. Electronic Books

All electronic books, either subscribed / purchased or available in open access, would be handled by CHEERS India Scheme of the MHRD. As in case of e-journals, metadata for all electronic books (including books that are purchased, subscribed or available in open access), preferably at chapter level will be made accessible to users through an integrated interface. However, access to full-text chapters in case of subscribed e-journal archives will be restricted only to subscribing institutions depending upon their subscription plan. Institutions / individuals who do not have access to full-text e-books may send their request for supply of chapters to the INFLIBNET Centre. Efforts would be made to extend access to e-books to users in universities that are currently available only to users in colleges under the NLIST Programme. Additional e-books would be purchased / subscribed under NLIST /

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CHEERS India. MHRD’s intervention would be requested for its policy interventions encouraging faculty and researchers to publish open access books.

2.4. Digital / Institutional Repositories

The INFLIBNET Centre has submitted a project entitled “Interoperable Network of Distributed Institutional Repositories for Universities and Institutions of Higher Education & Research in India” for financial support to the National Mission on Education through ICT by the INFLIBNET Centre. The project was recommended for funding by the Standing Committee of the NME-ICT and is pending for approval of the Project Approval Board (PAB). The project proposes to set-up a chain of interoperable distributed institutional repositories in universities and institutions of higher education and research in India. Moreover, it is also proposed set-up a Central Institutional Repository for institutions that do not have adequate ICT infrastructure, requisite expertise and network infrastructure required for setting-up and maintaining institutional repositories. The researchers and faculty from all institutions including universities and colleges would be invited to submit their research publications into the Central Institutional Repository set-up at the INFLIBNET Centre. The INFLIBNET Centre, under the project, would extend its assistance to universities in the process of setting-up interoperable institutional repositories; providing training in maintenance of IRs and train staff and faculty in populating IRs. The participating universities would be responsible for uploading of preprints / post-prints of research articles produced by the faculty and researchers in the universities in these IRs. Moreover, the INFLIBNET Centre would also act as a service provider and harvest metadata from all repositories with an aim to provide a unified index to all submissions made in IRs distributed across beneficiary universities and other institutions of higher learning. While access to e-resources through library consortia such as UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INDEST-AICTE Consortium and N-LIST (now CHEERS India) would facilitate access to subscription-based scholarly content, institutional repositories would enable participating institutions to create a repository of their own scholarly content and share it with other universities and institutions of higher learning.

Once the project is sanctioned, the INFLIBNET Centre would develop detailed documentation on how to set up IRs, standard Dublin Core based metadata schema to be used for various collection types. The Centre may either harvest metadata from all these distributed IRs in India (or world-wide depending on the policy to be decided in this regard) or hire services of a third party may be engaged for this purpose along with all other collection types available under NEL. As a policy intervention from the Ministry, it is requested that Ministry may mandate setting up of IRs in every academic institutions and submission of research articles.

2.5. E-learning Materials

The INFLIBNET Centre is developing an “Integrated e-Content Portal” for all e-content developed under NME-ICT. This portal would also index open access e-content available from other International Platforms such as Coursera, EDX, Udemy, Udacity, Kahn Academy, etc. The “Integrated e-Content Portal” will handle all requirement of this component of National Electronic Library.

2.6. Subject Gateways

Important national and international initiatives on subject gateways would be identified and either the INFLIBNET Centre or third party engaged for developing discovery services would be ask to index these identified subject gateways.

2.7. Government Publications, Art and Cultural Heritage Objects and Artifacts

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Government publications that are either degitized or are “borne digital”, art and cultural heritage objects, artifacts and manuscipts that have already been digitized by the National Mission on Manuscript (Ministry of Culture) or under projects funded by MCIT, CDAC, and Prasar Bharati, will also be an important component of National Electronic Library. Metadata for such collections would be harvested by the INFLIBNET or by third party aggregation services, if available through an institutional repository in organized and structured format. Otherwise, these collections will have to organized in digital repositories using standard metadata schema. Intervention of the Ministry would be required in such cases.

2.8. Access Mechanism: Anywhere, Anytime Access to Knowledge Resources

Access to subscribed e-resources is enabled on IP addresses used by member institutions, in case of UGC-INFONET & INDEST, and through proxy servers in case of NLIST. As such, access to e-resources in case of IP enabling is restricted to the university campuses although a few member institutions also provide off-campus access to the subscribed e-resources using proxy servers, VPN and other secure authentication technologies. Proxy server and VPN services can, at best, be considered as temporary solution with several inherent problems.

However, a more robust authentication service is required to provide off-campus access of e-resources to the authorized users at any place and any time. This can be achieved using Shib-boleth Access Management System which is widely accepted off-campus authentication mechanism by the publishers. The Shibboleth is standard-based open source middleware soft-ware that provides Web-based single sign-on (SSO) access to subscribed e-resources across the globe enabling users to access e-resources from anywhere irrespective of their physical location. The Shibboleth working architecture requires each participating institutions to set-up their own service identity provider (IDP). However, looking at the present scenario in India, several member institutions do not have requisite technical know-how and ICT infrastructure, as such, INFLIBNET Centre, as an executive agency for National Electronic Library, can take-up the task of acting as an IDP for all its members. The implementation of Shibboleth technology at INFLIBNET would result in a scenario wherein: i) the service providers (publisher) will recognize INFLIBNET Centre as a trusted organization for authenticating the user and give an option on their Web sites to select INFLIBNET as an IDP; ii) When a user chooses INFLIBNET as its IDP, he / she would be re-directed to IDP link at INFLIBNET server; iii) After verifying user's credentials, IDP at INFLIBNET will pass “user attributes” to the publisher which would include user’s institute, department and role as faculty / student / researcher; and iv) Once authenticated, user gets access to his / her authorized e-resources. Unauthenticated users would be denied access.

2.9. Aggregated Metadata and Integrated Interface for Search and Discovery Services

With ever growing number e-resources made accessible through National Electronic Library, its users would expect a single integrated interface to interact with the digital objects available in electronic library, search, browse and discover its content. A federated search and discovery service that provide seamless and coherent access to all e-resources would be an essential feature of the NEL. Local availability of metadata for all content available through NEL would be a prerequisite to an effective search and discovery service that, in turn, would provide a simple, fast and reliable search interface. It is proposed to use services of a 3 rd party aggregator having agreements with a large number of publishers to index and store their metadata, that is updated frequently. The third party engaged for such services will not only index subscribed e-resources, it would also index content that are available in open access (including e-books and e-journals), e-journals archives, digital / institutional repositories, e-learning materials hosted on integrated e-content portal, etc. so as to provide integrated access to all content available in NEL. The possibilities of developing discovery services in-house

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can also be explored in due course of time under agreement with the publishers wherein every publisher would be required to submit metadata for the subscribed e-resource at a regular interval in a defined XML format to the NEL for developing in-house discovery service.

2.10. Usage Harvesting, Monitoring and Trend Analysis

The usage of e-resources is one of the most important parameters to judge effectiveness of a digital library as well as relevance of a subscribed resource. Most of the libraries and library consortia in India depend on publishers to compile their usage statistics that leads to the possibilities of manual intervention and data manipulation. Moreover, manual compilation and analysis of usage statistics is a time-consuming process for a consortium having large number of member institutions.

The usage of e-resources is one of the most important parameters to judge effectiveness of a digital library. Manual downloading and analysis of usage statistics is a time-consuming process for a consortium like UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium having more than 420 core members. COUNTER and SUSHI standards have the potential to ease the work of a consortium administrator by minimizing the time involved in manual downloading of usage statistics allowing more time for analyzing the usage statistics for better decision making.

The Centre has developed a dedicated usage portal called “InfiStat” for managing the usage statistics of the Consortium and for delivering usage statistics to the member universities. The portal uses a SUSHI client for harvesting the usage reports, storing these reports into a database and providing automated usage report to the member universities. The client was developed using PHP. The InfiStat portal would enhanced and augmented to harvest and report usage statistics not only for subscribed content, but for all kinds of content made accessible through National Electronic Library.

2.11. Steps in Setting-up of the National Electronic Library

3. Deliverables Yearwise and its Possible Contribution to Major Objectives of Mission

4. Time schedule (Year-wise)

5. Details of Permanent Assets to be Procured from the Project with Estimated Cost

6. Details of Financial Outlay in Year for Recurring and Non-recurring Funds

7. Management of Deliverables & IPR etc.

It is expected that a few software tools may be developed during the process of execution of this project. Software tools and other content thus developed will be made available as open source software for the benefit of academic community at large.

8. Justification of the Projection and its Contribution towards Mission Objectives

Various components of an electronic library proposed to be built are already available on the Web that are distributed across various academic and cultural institutions in India. Several of these components are built using funding from NME-ICT. A true effective, efficient and functional electronic library can be built by bringing these distributed components together using technological means of integration and consolidation. A user can draw maximum advantage from electronic content if they are available through a single integrated platform that facilities search, browse, discovery and multiple listing of all the content hosted on it.

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It is essential not only to host all diverse and distributed e-content into a single integrated platform to promote its usage, but it is also important to apply basic tenets of preservation and implement standard metadata schema of different types so as to ensure their long-term availability. It is envisaged that the usability of content available under National Electronic Library would increase multifold once all the e-contents are made available through a single integrated interface.

Summary of DPR - with Suggested Strategies

Name of the Project: National Electronic LibraryControl No.: Name of PI(s): Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLINET Centre, Gandhinagar Co-PI: Mr. Ashok Kumar Rai, Scientist-D

Mr Yatrik Patel, Scientist-D, INFLIBNET Centre Mr Abhishek Kumar, Scientist-C, INFLIBNET Centre

Name of the Institute(s): INFLINET Centre, Gandhinagar

1. Mission and Objectives

1.1. Mission

Access to scholarly information to all learners of the country as an academic right.

1.2. Objectives

i) Leveraging on the latest technology, create a national electronic library with an aim to provide effective and efficient access to knowledge resources through perseverance, innovation and collaboration;

ii) Built upon the existing digitized and borne digital collections distributed across aca-demic institutions and provide an integrated and intuitive interface to facilitate single window service to the user community along with value-added services;

iii) Provide seamless, reliable and ubiquitous access to scholarly, peer-reviewed elec-tronic resources to the academic community in all educational institutions with a fo-cus on services and tools, processes and practices that support its effective use;

iv) Promote creation as well as usage of research and educational material through open access institutional repositories in every academic institute for local hosting educa-tional and research content;

v) Ensure long-term preservation, availability, and access to all digital resources made available through National Electronic Library;

vi) Develop tools, techniques and procedures for secure and convenient access manage-ment enabling users to access information in electronic format from anywhere, any-time; and

vii) Develop resource selection guides and online tutorials for effective delivery and us-age of e-resources.

2. Deliverables Year-wise and its Possible Contribution to Major Objectives of Mission

3 (i). Arrangements for Quality Control

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Most of the e-resources that are proosed to be made accessible to the user community through National Electronic Library would be from reputed commercial publishers, scholarly societies, university presses, aggregators and open access initiatives including MOOCs. The National Electronic Library would essentially be an integrated interface to distributed repositories of e-content, each one of them having their own arrangements for quality control. Domain experts would be involved in designing an integrated interface to all e-content to be made accessible through National Electronic Library. Domain expertise would also be used for creation of metadata for content that are hosted in-house. Moreover, well-tested open source software would be used to ensure robustness of platform used for National Electronic Library. The National Electronic Library would be hosted on the NME-ICT cloud with back-up at the Data Centre at INFLIBNET Centre.

3(ii). Accuracy

Most of the e-resources proposed to be made accessible through National Electronic Library would consist of peer-reviewed journals, electronic books, learning materials, etc. Accuracy of information contained in these sources would be duly authenticated by the respective agencies / publishers responsible for their creation.

3(iii). Coverage

Electronic resources offered under the National Electronic Library would largely consist of resources that would be offered under Creative Commons Open Access Licensing arrangement and as such would be available to all users across the world. However, a formidable collection of e-resources that are being subscribed through consortial arrangements from scholarly societies, commercial publishers, university presses and aggregators. Subscribed resources would only be accessible to subscribing institutions. However, subscribing institutions may allow users from the public to use subscribed resources on their premises since all publishers provides for access to e-resources to “walk-in users” in their license agreements. The INFLIBNET Centre already has such a facility.

National Electronic Library may also consider obtaining national licenses for e-resources having universal appeal and usability. Resources like JSTOR, important dictionaries, glossaries, encyclopedias and handbooks may be identified for national licensing.

Majority of resources available in the electronic library are in English language. However, some of the documents that are scanned under Digital Library of India are available in various Indian languages. Most of the digitized legacy documents are out of copyright as such they are very old.

3(iv). Updation Mechanism

The National Electronic Library would essentially be an integrated interface to distributed repositories of e-content, each one of them would have its own arrangements for updation mechanism. It may be noted that all subscribed resources as well as open access resources are updated at a regular interval ranging from quarterly to weekly. The unified index of metadata from all distributed repositories made accessible through the National Electronic Library would be updated on day-to-day basis.

3(v). Testing by Users

The beta version of integrated interface to the National Electronic Library will be tested thoroughly and extensively by real users and volunteers for its robustness and features and functionalities.

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3 (vi). Testing by Peer Group

Most e-resources that would be offered through the National Electronic Library would have gone through the process of peer review by experts. Journals that are subscribed or that are available in open access have their editorial boards consisting of domain experts in their respective fields. Articles published in these journals are peer-reviewed by experts. Likewise, all other resources including books offered through National Electronic Library would be from reputed publishers who have established mechanism to review the content of books before publishing. Experts in the field would be invited to examine and evaluate the integrated interface for desirable features.

4. Scaling-up

4 (a). Plan: It is proposed to add new content to the National Electronic Library including content that is available in open access as well as subcribed content including electronic journals and electronic books. Moreover, all eligible institutions including universities, colleges and Centrally-funded technical institutions would be incldued under CHEERS India and would be offered access to appropriate e-resources.

The INFLIBNET Centre is also developing technologies that would enable off-campus access to e-resources to eligible member insitutions irrespective of their physical location.

4 (b) i) Strategy (in-house): Not applicableii) Outsourcing: Not applicable

5. Popularisation and Extension Activities and Plan

5(a). Strategy for Popularisation

The INFLIBNET Centre, as executing agency for UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, N-LIST programme, Shodhganga, Shodhgangotri, IndCat, Library Automation programme for Universities, etc. is also working very closely with universities and colleges in India. Awareness training programmes and workshops are being organized at regular intervals on e-resource awareness, library authomation, Shodhganga, NLIST, etc. Given the fact that every college is affiliated to one or another university, universities have been asked to conduct Awareness Programmes for colleges affiliated with their universities. 100s of such programmes have already been conducted in past few years. Moreover, help would be sought from Regional Offices of the UGC to generate awareness through awareness training programmes. Higher Education Directorates in states would also be contacted to help in generating awareness and for enrolling more and more colleges, universities for CHEERS India as well as other inintiatives of the INFLIBNET Centre.

Newspaper advertisements will also be issued on regular interval. Advertisement will also be given in Newsletters and Magazines such as University News, Economic and Political Weekly, etc. Moreover, it would be ensured that press coverage is given to the training and awareness programmes during conferences, workshops, conventions and symposia organized by the Centre in collaboration with universities.

5(a)-i. Policy Interventions to Encourage Usage of e-Resources Made Accessible through National Electronic Library

The following measures are proposed to encourage usage of e-resources made accessible through National Electronic Library:

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i) UGC and its Regional Offices will be communicated to inform universities and colleges about availability of e-resources through National Electronic Library;

ii) Colleges and universities would be advised to include availability of resources through National Electronic Library into the prospectus, course-curriculum and other publications from colleges and universities;

iii) NAAC would be requested to assigned weightage for availability / accessibility of e-resources in colleges and universities;

iv) Faculty in colleges and universities would be advised to give assignments to the students where use of e-resources would be essential;

v) The librarians in colleges and universities are now including availability of e-resources and their usage in the orientation programme imparted to students in the beginning of an academic year. They will be requested to spread awareness about National Electronic Library;

vi) State Higher Education Directorates / Departments in every state are advised to encourage colleges to enroll for N-LIST Programme and make use of e-resources available under this initiative. They would also be advised to spread awareness about National Electronic Library; and

vii) A communication from MHRD may also be sent to universities, colleges and Education Directorates / Departments of states asking them to encourage universities and colleges in their states to join CHEERS India and encourage them to use e-resources through National Electronic Library.

5(b). Extension of Activities and Plan

Increase in usage of e-resources including electronic journals and electronic books through National Electronic Library would be ensured to justify the cost incurred on subscription / purchase of these resources. The INFLIBNET Centre would organize awareness programmes to reach out to all its stakeholders to maximize the usage.

5(b)-i. Maintenance

The National Electronic Library would be made accessible through servers hosted on NME-ICT cloud as well as in the Data Centre of INFLIBNET Centre having NKN network connectivity of 1 Gbps and Internet connectivity of 120 Mbps. The Data Centre at INFLIBNET is maintained professionally with assurance of 99.9% uptime. All services offered from the INFLIBNET’s Data Centre are giving un-interrupted services for past more than a year. Moreover, multiple servers would be deployed for load balancing with increase in number of users of the National Electronic Library. The integrated interface would be maintained and updated using user’s feedback.

5(b)-ii. User Feedback Mechanism

The feedback from the users would be invited through an interface that would be made available on the website of National Electronic Library. The feedback of the user would be published online in real time environment that would be available to all visitors. Moreover, an exclusive email address i.e. nel@inflibnet.ac.in or nel@shakshat.ac.in will be created for getting feedback from the user community.

6. Review Mechanism

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6(a). Frequency of Review

All activities and services offered by the National Electronic Library would be reviewed as frequently as required. However, quarterly review will be ensured.

6(b). List of at least 10 Reviewers

i) Prof. Uma Kanjilal, School of Library and Information Science, IGNOU, New Delhiii) Prof. Karmeshu, School of Computer and System Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Univer-

sity, New Delhiiii) Dr. Bablu Sutradhar, Librarian, IIT Kharagpuriv) Dr. S.C. Jindal, Librarian, Delhi University, Delhiv) Prof. A.R.D. Prasad, Professor and Head, DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute, Ban-

galorevi) Prof. Savita Gandhi, Deptt of Computer Science, Gujarat University, Ahmedabad

vii) Shri R.K. Chadha, Additional Secretary, Lok sabha, New Delhi viii) Shri R.S. Mani, National Informatics Centre, New Delhi

ix) Shri H. Anil Kumar, Chief Librarian, IIM Ahmedabad x) Shri T.S. Kumbar, Chief Librarian, IIT Gandhinagar

7. Budget

7(a). Capital Expenditure: Rs. lakhs

7(a-i). Item-wise Details

7(a-ii) Focused Comments on High-cost Equipment

7(b). Revenue Expenditure: Rs. lakhs

7(b-i). Item-wise Details

Manpower Requirement #Position Number Rupees in Lakhs

Senior Project Scientist 1 3.60Project Scientists 3 9.00Project Associates 6 14.40Project Assistants 6 10.80Office Attendant 1 1.20

Total 39.00 #- Manpower would may vary as per actual volume of work

7(b-ii) Focused Comments on:

Total Honorarium to be Paid in the Project: As per NME-ICT guidelinesTotal Consultancy Fee to be Paid during the Project: As per NME-ICT guidelines

7(c). Anchor Institution for Disbursement of Funds INFLIBNET Centre, Gandhinagar, Gujarat

8. Cost Benefit Analysis

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Most of the e-resources proposed to be offered through the National Electronic Library are either available in open access or are being subscribed through various consortial arrangements. Detailed cost-benefit analysis for subscribed e-resources under various consortia has already been done and published in various journals. It may be noted that e-resources through the National Electronic Library would be accessible to faculty, researchers, students and staff in universities, colleges, centrally-funded technical institutions, private institutions as well as to a common man in India. This will have a great impact of quality of education and teaching, learning process.

9. Social Impact

The project would essentially enable every citizen including faculty, students and researchers in colleges, universities and other institutions to access scholarly content free-of-cost. The project would provide access to e-content from diverse and distributed digital repositories in different subject disciplines as described above. Easy access to qualitative and scholarly content would bring in a new cultural of referencing and consultation in the learning process. Access to qualitative e-resources to students as well as life-long lerners would improve the learning and teaching process. As such, there would be a remarkable improvement in the quality of professionals and students coming out of colleges and universities, which, in turn, will increase their employability and over all personality.

10. Outcome: Extent to which the Project will Realize the Objectives of the Mission

The project would contribute in the process of development of information enriched society. The project would successful bridge the digital divide and would help in the nation move towards knowledge society.

Part-VI Document Uploaded

i) DPR

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