Search

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to describe the initiative of the University Grants Commission of India in setting up the Infonet Digital Library Consortium (The Information and Library Network) in order to provide access to scholarly communication to the academic community in India. Design/methodology/approach - The context of higher education in India and the expansion and establishment of universities under the five-year plan is given along with details of e-resources that are being provided. The usage trends of e-resources from various publishers during 2004-2007 are detailed. Findings - The paper finds that there has been a qualitative increase in overall usage, but use is also dependent on a high-bandwidth connection. Originality/value - The study provides evidence of increased use of consortial services for access to e-resources in Indian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - The paper seeks to provide a comparative analysis of the functionality of five web-based OPACs available in Indian academic libraries. Design/methodology/approach - Same-topic searches were carried out by three researchers on the web-based OPACs of Libsys, VTLS's iPortal, NewGenLib, Troodon, and Alice for Windows, implemented in five academic libraries in India. Their functionality was compared using criteria selected from the literature on OPAC searching. Findings - The web-based OPACs investigated offered a range of facilities for searching by author, title, control number and by keywords. Federated searching across several e-collections was limited. Originality/value -This paper should be a useful source of information to librarians who are planning to introduce web-based OPACs and also for software vendors who wish to improve the functionality of their products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose — The purpose of this study is to investigate the use and usability of e-books from the perspectives of users in an academic and research environment. Design/methodology/approach — This study involved an e-mail questionnaire to survey researchers in the academic and research environment of the Indian Institute of Science regarding their use of e-books. Findings — The responses indicated that the students tend to use this new technology more often than faculty members and staff. Those who did use e-books mostly used reference and technical material. The highest response was from the Centre for Ecological Science, followed by the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre, and then the Department of Molecular Reproduction and Development and Genetics. The majority of the respondents have used computers for over five years for a variety of purposes including e-mail communication, internet browsing and text processing as well as for other advanced uses such as numerical computing and DNA sequence analysis. However, the use of e-books appears to be very low, indicating a requirement for creating awareness and user education about both software and hardware related to e-books. Only 37 of the 104 respondents had used the free trial offer from Kluwer and Edutech eBooks during July 2004. Originality/value — There has been no previous study reported which has investigated users' perspectives of e-books in an academic and research environment in India using a questionnaire method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]