Newsletter

Editors Desk

Volume 4 Issue 7 July 2012

Private tuition is no more a stigma, whereas sitting longer in libraries has become one: the need for metamorphosis of libraries
A series of J-Gate training programmes scheduled across the country was inaugurated on 5th June 2012 at PESIT, Bangalore. In addition, Webinars have also been kick started simultaneously benefiting both end-users and trainers of J-Gate in general and JET and JSMS in particular. A brief manual has also been released and distributed to customers. Shortly a revised animated tutorial will be uploaded.

Inaugurating the training programme, the chief guest, Dr. Balasubramanya Murthy, the Principal of PESIT, stressed the need for customer driven design and pointed out two significant changes in the academic world over a generation. Private tuition, a stigma in the previous generation has become a necessity in the present competitive educational system. Similarly, use of library which was a hallmark of brilliant and

studious students in the past is no more so as an intelligent student is now able to get much of what he wants even without physically visiting or sitting long in the library. The lesson is that if libraries have to retain their customers, they have to update their technology and the way they deliver their service Citing two recent developments, namely closure of nearly 160 engineering colleges and registering of one million aspirants for an online course of MIT and other American Univerisities, Dr. Murthy felt that educational institutions with conventional mind set, if they dont change, are likely to extinguish in the near future.

Mr. N V Sathyanarayana, Chairman and Managing Director of Informatics , while agreeing with Dr. Murthy, explained the metamorphosis of libraries into digital libraries. The continuously evolving libraries will have two key changes, namely D&D (Discovery & Delivery) as they become digital libraries. While the discovery helps to know the 1

availability and add bibliographic value, the delivery value provides access to full text content. His presentation logically argued how to reap better ROI from journals subscribed by libraries, particularly in the context that as the primary scholarly communication medium journals continue to be under-used in libraries. Most libraries spend anywhere between 50% to 75% of their budget on subscription to journals in addition to expenditure on maintenance, binding, development of Current Awareness Service and journal article database or subscription to costly A&I journals/databases to make optimal use of the subscribed journals. In addition, users also need to know the articles from journals not subscribed by the library and also from a huge lot of about 10000 OA (Open Access) journals. It is in this context that the J-Gate portal fits as a de facto OPAC for journal articles of a library as well as consortium of libraries and yields a very high ROI on such perpetual huge investments on journals. J-gate not only saves time and money by eliminating the need for subscribing to and searching multiple A&I journals/databases but also prevents under-usage of journals. The inauguration was followed by a presentation on Why J-gate? by Mr. Sanjay Grover, He explained the scenario of end users and libraries that obviously show the need for J-Gate to solve their problems. Later, detailed sessions of training on both Basic searching and Advanced searching were imparted by Mr. Kalyan Chakraborthy. The day-long programme ended with Q&A session followed by vote of thanks.

End-users, librarians and trainers are welcome to register on line for Webinars.

M S Sridhar sridhar@informindia.co.in