Content area
Deb and Kar describe the setting up of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) electronic library in New Delhi, India to provide better services for the researchers to access the structured information from the desk top. They found that in TERI, electronic services like Current Awareness and Alerts services apart from establishing a Virtual Information Canter has further supplemented the electronic library.
Full text
Abstract
Purpose - The paper describes the setting up of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) electronic library in New Delhi, India to provide better services for the researchers to access the structured information from the desk top. The aim of this paper is to share the experience gain and invite comments and suggestion for further improvement.
Design/methodology/approach - The paper describes a case study of TERI and how the electronic library has developed.
Findings - TERI Electronic Library (EL) was created to provide access to online resources, online e-journals, electronic documents and virtual resources. The virtual libraries i.e. internet sources, together, have now crystallized to more or less to a full-fledged EL that can be browsed as well as searched. In TERI, electronic services like Current Awareness and Alerts services apart from establishing a Virtual Information Centre has further supplemented the EL. A physical electronic library has been created to address the access to all the local area network (LAN) connected systems that provide CD-ROM access and journals and books available for download for all time free access to in-house users.
Research limitations/implications - The usage has become handier for the researchers and has helped in saving their valuable time. Library management has also become easier. Any addition to the existing resources is announced by e-mail for user access. The future plan is to make the whole resources dynamic in nature. The future of libraries seems to have no escape from that of becoming the EL.
Originality/value - This paper could be useful for the small and medium special and research libraries who do not have enough funds to start an electronic library in these lines.
Keywords Internet, Digital libraries, Virtual organizations, Electronic books, Electronic journals, India
Paper type Case study
Introduction
During the last two decades there has been a tremendous impact of information technology (IT) on libraries, which has led to drastic changes in the area of the library profession and the provision of information services to the users. We are migrating from paper copies of documents to digital forms of them, permitting users convenient and easy access to the information in the library. Today we are being challenged by the notion of electronic libraries. What is an electronic library? Are the internet and the world wide web electronic libraries? The answer obviously is they are not, although they certainly have provided the impetus and the technological environment for the development and operation of digital libraries. While the internet serves as the carrier and provides the content delivery mechanism through transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) and associated protocols, the world wide web provides the tools and techniques for content publishing, hosting and access. Electronic library provides access to much richer content in a more structured manner. For instance we should be able to move from a catalogue record to the table-of-contents and then to a specific section or chapter of a book or article in a journal. An electronic library allows us to search for any word or phrase in the entire collection.
Before the last decade and a half, the library was supposed to be a storehouse of knowledge. Much earlier, the library, in India at least, was only meant for well-off people in the society - only rich people could access them. However, with the changes in society many public libraries were set up. A further boost was given when the state governments indicated they were ready to educate their citizens. Now, any person could have access to library facilities. Further, from the late 1980s and before the late 1990s computer applications became all pervasive which accelerated the use of library resources due to library automation, database development facilities and the setting up of various specialized networks and information centres to form information systems. Such information systems would take care of all sorts of information collection, packaging in the form of indexes, abstracts and dissemination in a tailor-made form. Apart from these the National Union catalogue was compiled for resource sharing. Such developments infused a great deal of new research in various areas.
However, as the technology was upgraded, so computer networking started and the users of resources on one network were able to find out what was available in the collections of other libraries on other networks. Finally with the advent of internet technology there has been a total change in the approach of sharing resources. Needs and requirements of information consumers are changing, and in line with this, information content is also required to be changed and displayed. Abstracting databases are gradually moving towards the provision of full-length documents to become article-based databases. This shift from an information to knowledge base now means that one can access the knowledge in any subject area by simply submitting a query to internet search engines or meta-search engines. The internet which is supposed to be the ocean of knowledge, requires a systematic search, scrutiny of resources that suits the researchers' requirements, categorizing and organizing them subject wise, and retrieving them as and when required. And of course both in the form of bibliography and in the form of abstracts and full length documents. Access to this intellectual effort has further enhanced due to networking technology at various levels like intranets and extranets.
In this age of computerization, libraries are joining hands with many government and private organizations to assemble, organize, and protect the documentation of human activity. Many national libraries and other institutions are now undertaking or planning digitization programmes for some or all of their major cultural collections, which can be used either to preserve or increase faster access to the documents.
An electronic library may be defined as a system that is accessible from anywhere via the internet, to deliver knowledge directly to their users, without being confined to the contents of a physical library nor by being caught in a web of unorganized, unmanaged information. Information from any online source can be managed and shared by librarians with their users, making more knowledge available to users than ever before; the goal of an e-library is to perform online all the functions of the traditional library, plus many more available in today's digital world.
The need for an electronic library at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) (www.teriin.org) in New Delhi started with the concept of providing online access to electronic collections from researchers' desktop or from their home computers and also to provide access to TERI regional centers and the centers abroad. Other needs were to provide the continuous easy multiple remote access needed to accelerate the research process and save the time of the researcher by allowing them to access online from their desktops to journals and documents published on the internet before they are received in print version in the library. Apart from that it would reduce the handling, processing and circulation times, and in addition, because library space is extremely costly at TERI, there is tremendous need to save the library storage space and other resources.
The TERI Electronic Library has been opened for the researchers since 1999.
TERI library services
TERI is one of the pioneering research organizations and its Information and Technology Services division has been able to establish a knowledge management system, which incorporates the electronic library. TERI is one of the most rare examples where the Library and Documentation Center came prior to the research areas. It is also one of the front-runners in India for library automation and associated services. Apart from these it has several specialized networks and information centers of national, regional and international importance, e.g. Mycorrhiza Network; South Asian Forum for Infrastructure Regulation (SAFIR), and Environmental Information System (ENVIS). Apart from these there is a separate geographic information system (GIS) in TERI.
Quite recently TERI Library has started the Virtual Information Centre for services to the corporate world. Corporate organizations are invited to join this scheme for getting the latest information in the areas of energy (power, coal, renewable energy) and environment (pollution, waste management, natural resources, natural disaster), economy (industries, investments) and regulatory issues (power, insurance, telecommunications, urban transport) over the internet. Under this project the members receive by e-mail the content pages of selected journals received at the TERI Library. Besides that they receive information about the forthcoming events (seminars and conferences), web alert services, news clipping services, etc. all by e-mail in html file. TERI is also providing e-mail based Newsflash services to various corporate bodies in various electronic forms. This Newsflash service is computer-generated hypertext markup language (HTML) files with hyperlinks to the news-items on the internet.
TERI Library is one of the research libraries in the Indian sub-continent specialized in energy, environment, biotechnology and sustainable development, providing access to a wide range of information resources and services to both in-house and outside users. Currently, it houses an updated collection with 20,000 books, reports, conference proceedings, government documents and standards, more than 700 current scientific and technical journals, 12,000 back volumes and an archive of miscellaneous literature including pamphlets, reprints, press clippings and annual reports of government, corporate, research, voluntary and multilateral organizations. Online access to in-house users is provided through TERInet (a local area network intranet facility of TERI) to the library catalogue (online public access catalog (OPAC)) and electronic collection that includes bibliographic and statistical databases, CD-ROM databases, news clipping archives, and on-line journals being subscribed by the TERI Library. Online services include daily news highlights; alert services on various aspects and automated current content service from different publishers. The bibliographical databases, comprising bibliographical details of abstracts being covered in the secondary journals being published from TERI such as Ten Information Digest on Energy (TIDE), Ten Information Monitor on Environmental Saence (TIMES) etc., are available in electronic form for TERI professionals to access under TERInet.
TERI's Electronic Library
Hardware and software used for the Electronic Library at TERI include a TCP/IP protocol-based switched network; MS Internet Information Server version 4.0 also called as web server; network attached storage acting as a file server; and the Windows NT 4.0 server operating system.
In TERI two basic ideas were taken into account when considering setting up an electronic library. First, TERI would try to have as much full-length resources in its server as possible. This meant downloading all relevant online books and journals and providing access through an electronic library. second, other resources could be accessed through the internet.
When it came to creating the Electronic Library the two concepts naturally emerged:
(1) Physical Electronic Library. Here resources are available at the TERI server. This helped in-house researchers accessing the collection through the intranet. Apart from downloaded internet resources other electronic collections were also included which were in the TERI collection and would continue to remain with TERI Electronic Library.
(2) Virtual Electronic Library. Here links to the resources accessible through the internet are provided. Access to the resources is only possible on internet computers. In this case access rights lie with the resource holder. This type of collection is also called the digital library.
The information structure of TERI Electronic Library is given in Figure 1.
Digital library/Virtual Electronic Library
With the advent of internet and internet technologies, TERI started its first leap towards developing the virtual electronic collection in the areas of energy (oil and gas; power; renewable energy - biomass energy and technology, solar energy, wind energy;), policy; economy; environment (pollution, climate change, global warming, natural resources); plant biosciences (microbiology; biotechnology, biofertilizers); biodiversity; forestry; regulatory issues (related to telecommunications, energy, water, transport, insurance, oil and gas, etc.); urban transport.
To make the project successful, internet training was provided to library and information professionals. Further from each research area a research person was assigned to evaluate the information content of the searched linkages. Every information professional was assigned more than one area of research for which they were responsible for searching information on the internet, the collection and scrutinizing of information available on the web site, and then writing an annotation about the content of the web site. After this, the information in a group of at least ten web sites were compiled on each subject and passed on to the assigned researcher of that research group for ranking the sites. The areas covered were energy modeling; wind energy; photovoltaic applications; hydrocarbons; coal energy; mycorrhizae (biofertilizer); plant tissue culture and climate change.
Five criteria were defined for ranking a web site: last update date; in depth or extent of information; amount of information; how far it is relevant so far as TERI's area of interest is concerned; and the type of information (whether it is policy related/statistical). A value of 0 (low) to 5 (high) was assigned for each parameter. Once the information was evaluated it was returned to the information professionals for further improvement and then uploaded onto a central server after removing the low valued sites. Basically the information ranged from web site of useful organizations, full length documents on the subjects, databases, mailing lists, newsgroups, discussion forums, bulletin boards, etc. These were all organized subject wise and were made searchable.
The SAFIR is one of the Electronic Library projects of TERI. It is being funded by the World Bank where there is a virtual library in the area of regulation covering publications, news/newsletters, databases, Other useful links in the areas of environment, power, telecommunications, transport, water, oil and gas etc. are available for anybody to access. The Virtual Library may be accessed at www.safir. teri.res.in/service/virtual/virtual.htm
Directory of internet journals
TERI is subscribing to more than 700 national and international journals. To aid researchers minimize the time lag (usually a minimum of three months) between when a journal is first published and the time it is actually received at TERI it was decided to provide access to online journals. A directory of internet journals with web sites was compiled so that researchers could access the internet journals just by clicking on to the links. This helped in accelerating research, as accessing the journals was possible almost immediately after the publication of a particular journal on the internet online. To aid researchers further, within this directory information about the access level was also included. The access level provides information that a journal can be accessed full text or only the abstract or up to the level of contents page only. For accessing the full text on the internet, wherever user-name and password is required it was inserted into this directory along with necessary instructions on requirements. Some of the journals provide direct access to their full text journals on providing the IP address of the domain from where it will be accessed. This eliminates the use of username and password as the publisher can detect as to from which domain address someone is accessing the web site.
To appraise researchers about the latest launch of new issues of journals, the researchers were supplemented with automated Contents Page Alert Service (CPAS) from the journal publisher through the TERI Electronic Library. The CPAS service is provided to the particular group of persons or an individual depending upon their profile for information requirement. These content pages are web-enabled with hyperlinks to the service. The fact that many of the serial publications are freely accessible on the internet was of great help to the researchers.
Two directories arranged alphabetically by title and alphabetically by subject were compiled. Another directory of journals was also prepared. In this directory the journals were relevant to TERI's areas of interest but they were not subscribed to by TERI. The relevancy of each journal was sort listed by the researchers and with the hyperlinks they were posted on to the local server. Here also the access levels and instructions were included and the CPAS service further alerted the researchers.
Virtual reference resources
The internet is a very good source of ready references. Lots of online dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauri, glossaries and the like are available for ready reference. Collections of such reference sources were compiled and made available to researchers through the compilation of a directory. It helped in solving small queries at the researchers end. As TERI's activities are diverse in nature and TERI being project dependent, the researchers need to write many research papers and project reports, etc. and they thus need to be able to look up the meaning of a particular word, or abbreviations or the expansion of an abbreviation, or units, symbols, synonyms and more. Obviously they need to consult various ready reference tools mentioned above. After the launch of these sources, usage statistics were taken and accordingly they were ranked as per the feedback by the researchers. Those most referred to were designated as most relevant for TERI. For properly evaluating the relevance the normal weekly sequence was changed from time to time to six months duration. After six months period the first five most accessed sources in each group were declared the most relevant according to TERI. Based on this, the virtual reference resources were also compiled and organized by subject and type of reference tools/sources. These included dictionaries (80), encyclopedias (six), thesaurus (12), glossaries (five), biographies (one), patents (three), standards (three), online databases (20), reference sources for current events, e.g. conference proceedings and seminars (three), Who's Who and directories (eight), translating web sites (four), among others.
Electronic collection/Physical Electronic Library
The purpose of this physical collection is to provide uninterrupted access to more than one user at any given time to the electronic collection through TERInet (a TERI LAN). The Physical Electronic Library may be referred to as the physical entity of a library in digital or collections stored in CD-ROMs or storage in the file server hard disk. This becomes the holding of that library and depending on the policy of the organization these collections may also be provided access through internet without violating any rules.
The collection of the TERI Physical Electronic Library comprises such resources as:
* Downloaded online full-length documents available on internet.
* Journals downloaded from internet or available on CD-ROMs.
* CD-ROM collections accessible through TERInet or the intranet.
* In-house bibliographic/news clippings/external library membership/reference or referral service databases.
* Other in-house databases (digital photo galleria and GIS Maps and Centre for Information Technology Resource Library).
* TERI project reports and publications.
* Library catalogue.
Downloaded online full-length documents available on internet
Requests are received from researchers through e-mail for downloading documents) from the internet. The documents are downloaded from the internet and placed on the central server meant for providing access to the researchers through the Electronic Library. And in a reply by e-mail, linkages to or the location of the downloaded document are communicated to the researcher(s) who might be interested in that particular document. At present there are more than 1,000 full-length documents available on the central server at TERI. The documents are categorized into subjects put under relevant subjects. Linkages to these documents are provided from e-books of the main opening page of the Electronic Library. The online books available on the internet are first downloaded and linkages from the electronic library homepage page are provided subsequently for accessing by the researchers and other authorized professionals of TERI.
Journals available in CD-ROMs/downloaded from internet
Similarly, TERI core internet journals with full-text access are downloaded, linked and then access to users is provided. At present out of 100 TERI core journals 25 has been downloaded to date and three journals are received on CD-ROMs.
CD-ROM collections accessible through TERInet or intranet
The browser friendly CD-ROMs are mirrored in the CD-ROM server, so that they become easily accessible just by a click on the hyperlinks. Application-based CD-ROMs that are not browser friendly may be accessed through TERInet from where the applications run easily. TERI's annual allocation of funds for databases; journals; encyclopedias; conference proceedings; magazines; computer software; computer-based learning; etc. in the form of CD-ROMs is more than RsS lakhs (c$11.300). Those are placed in the CD-juke box, and are also issued from time to time for home use. The entire web-based (i.e. HTML) CD-ROMs may be accessed anytime through the browser. However the application based CD-ROMs can only be accessed through a separate module of TERInet. TERI library has also acquired the CD-Mirror server where at any time mirror or images of 500 CD-ROMs can be kept instead of the CD-ROMs and can be accessed by the TERI researchers through the intranet/extranet. Already it is becoming quite popular among the TERI professionals.
In-house bibliographic/news clippings/external library membership/reference or referral service databases
TERI is managing around seven in-house databases on various subjects and in various ranges in CDS/ISIS. At present the WWWISIS web interface has been implemented. These databases are linked and accessible from the opening page of the Electronic Library page.
Other in-house databases
In-house databases that do not fall in the previous category are put over here all these are web-based databases and can easily be accessed.
Library catalogue
The library catalogue is an OPAC and TERI is using Libsys software for its library management. This is accessible through TERInet, however, for easy access, again the database has been converted to CDS/ISIS for the WWWISIS interface.
The resources available on the Electronic Library server are thus not only vast, but also searchable. DOMINO application software has been used to map the resources. This application helps also in mapping the server drive(s) to enable carrying out free-text searches.
About TERInet
TERInet (Figure 2) connects more than 350 nodes distributed across seven floors of the main building and library block. The main building and library block are connected through a fiber link and there are 35 nodes in the library block. There are close to ten servers, mostly Compaq, providing services such as mail, web, ftp, file, print, dns, RDBMS, CD-cum-NAS and customized applications. The electronic library collection is housed on CD-cum-NAS server. The main network operating system is Novell NetWare, which provides the login facility to TERInet. Windows NT and Windows 2000 server as mainly used as application servers. The access to TERInet based resources is through an intranet and TERInet services program launcher. In-house users mostly use these resources. To provide access for outside offices and mobile users, Citrix metaframe software has been deployed. The Citrix works on the thin client principle and delivers the content through a web browser and creating virtual extranet. TERI regional offices (Bangalore, Guwahati, Goa) in India and offices abroad (TERI-NA, Washington; TERI-Germany; TERI-Moscow; TERI-Middle-East at Sarjah; TERI-Japan at Tokyo) are able to access main office intranet resources using this extranet technology. From an e-mail-based survey carried out on TERI research professionals, out of 175, roughly 100 research professionals responded to the survey. In this survey it was found that 48 professionals have internet access at home. Another 18 professionals have systems at their home. Of these, 50 percent have extranet connection to TERI. This requires a telephone connection. Anybody wants to access the TERI intranet resources will have to dial once to TERI and will eventually get access to intranet. The calls will be transferred to TERFs telephone account.
Benefits of TERI's Electronic Library
The Electronic Library has been proved to be a boon for TERI. Previously, on urgent requirement for a given document one had to come to the library for reading or issuing the same. With the advent of the Electronic Library researchers can now look for their document availability online. Without having to come to the library they can read a full-length document or article or chapters) from their desktop. There were situations that the same checked out documents were equally demanded for reference at the same time. To avoid that situation we had to purchase books in duplicate or go for inter-library loan (ILL), which was found to be a wastage of resources in terms of time and money. The Electronic Library has provided a better solution by permitting multi-user access through networks and from any remote place having at least internet access plus TERInet access permission. The multi usage has helped in increasing user satisfaction. Earlier, one had to wait for the next document to arrive either by purchase or ILL. Now, processing and providing access to the document is done within five minutes of downloading from the internet just by informing the user by e-mail or by a phone call. In other words, a significant amount of time has been saved.
The Virtual Reference Resources section is very popular within TERI in general. A total of 90 percent users are of the opinion that it enhances ready reference. It is a handy tool to refer at any point of time to those so many sources and options from checking a spelling, knowing the meaning of a word, pronouncing it, to knowing about the concept, something, someone, some place and is a place to further build-up your knowledge that is available at any point of time. These reference sources in fact have really cut down the researchers' time from visiting library for very small things and wandering through those voluminous reference documents. In fact researchers have accepted that they are better equipped than ever in grasping or conveying their views in any sort of write-up. These reference tools have provided the researchers with more working space within less time and help relating the concepts they precisely want to convey while writing reports, papers, proposals, presentations, etc.
Access to electronic journals on the internet has substantially accelerated the research speed because of their availability at least by two to three months ahead of their being received in the paper form in the Library. The Electronic Contents Page Service further aids this. However, users are of the opinion that the Physical Electronic Library should have more resources like databases and online documents.
A further advantage is the remote access. As TERI offices are distributed in Bangalore, Goa, Guwahati, Gual Pahari - Gurgaon, New Delhi and worldwide in USA, Japan, Sarjah, UK, Russia it was difficult to coordinate with their library resources. Now with the TERInet facility and Internet access any of the local offices can very well use the main offices at New Delhi. The Electronic Library in fact has been able to take the library resources to the users of all the TERI establishments whether it is TERI-worldwide or the professionals working at TERI New Delhi. Furthermore, the Electronic Library has helped in containing the growth of physical documents. For organization like TERI space is very costly and the Electronic Library has been able to slow down the growth of the documents in the physical form on the shelf. Resources are better utilized because more than one user is able to accesses the same document and on request part of a document can either be printed for use and or be sent to the researchers.
On the other hand, there have been a few criticisms of the Electronic Library system. Reading long documents is very painful because readability on computer screens is not good especially for portable document file (PDF) documents. TERI users are of the opinion that more full-length documents should be made accessible and the number of full-length journals should be increased to the maximum. All systems in TERI require an internet connection and it has been suggested that a search engine should be provided that is able to search both the in-house and internet resources together. The collection of physical electronic journals also need to be strengthened in the form of CD-ROMs as all the systems are not internet systems and there are chances of very slow speed access and sometimes not accessibility.
Conclusion
The paper has tried to explain the Electronic Library activities at The Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi. Earlier it started as just a project, now it has become an ongoing activity within the TERI Library and Information Centre. However the Library has geared up to face any challenges which may arise in future due to technology changes or any new ideas that may eventually crop up. The system at the Library is quite flexible to adapt to any changes. Up to now the services are meeting the satisfaction of users whose views are incorporated following users' meetings held from time to time. As might be expected, visits to the library by researchers have reduced and at present no concrete methodology has been devised to measure the usage of the Electronic Library.
The user survey reflects that the usage has become handier for the researchers and has helped in saving their valuable time. From the library management point it has become easier with the browser-based access for researchers. Once any document or journal is downloaded and linked, it is announced by e-mail for the user access. This has helped immensely in time management and provides quality work. Future plans include making the whole resources maintained in a database dynamic in nature. Although, much still remains to be done, however, it can be said that the future of the library has no escape save that of becoming an electronic library.
Subrata Deb
TERI, Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India, and
Debal C. Kar
Library and Information Centre, TERI, Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India
(Subrata Deb has been an Information Analyst, Library and Information Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) since 1995. He led the creation of the Electronic Library of TERI. He was also responsible for managing the Mycirrhiza Information Centre, Mycorrhiza Network Asia, within TERI. His interests are mainly focused on library automation, database management of textual information and documents, and electronic library and digital library aspects. He is also involved in the Digital India User group. He can be contacted at: Subrata Deb, Library and Information Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003. E-mail: [email protected]
Debal Kar is Fellow and Area Convener, Library and Information Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). He has been associated with TERI since 1987 where he currently is managing the Library and Information Centre. He has several conference papers and journals articles to his credit. He was coordinator of the International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL2004), February 24-27,2004 held at New Delhi. He is also involved in the Digital India User group. He can be contacted at: D.C. Kar, Library and Information Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi - 110003. E-mail: dckar@teri. res.in)
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