Don't get lost in the book maze
Look in the catalogue computer first. Photo: H. Satish
A BIOLOGY teacher can get away with an "I don't know" if students ask doubts in English grammar. But nobody will take a `no' from the librarian when it comes to finding a particular book or information. Especially, when knowledge is available at the click of a mouse.
Library science has come of age in the digital world. As piles and piles of books, old and new, jostle for space with CD-ROMs and microfilms in libraries, in the age of Internet and virtual libraries, it is necessary for librarians, scholars and students to keep themselves abreast of technological developments.
"Earlier, you could walk up to a rack and pull out a book. Now, information is available on your desktop," says computer science professor S.V. Raghavan of Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
That has not made the job any easier. "Now you have to provide a uniform interface to the users so they can easily access the information lying scattered," Prof. Raghavan told a group of librarians at a recent workshop held in Chennai.
The way out of thumbing through index files that are bigger than databases is to ensure scientific cataloguing, storage and archiving of information. "A lot of open source software and databases are available. I find them easier to use," he says.
DSpace, for instance, helps you capture, store, index, preserve and redistribute the output of an organisation's research faculty in digital formats. It is a joint project of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Labs. This open source software, freely downloadable from www.dspace.org, allows scientists and researchers to upload digital documents from anywhere. It also acts as a repository from where research materials and publications can be easily accessed. IITM's Central Library is also planning to use DSpace for dissemination of information generated by the institute, mainly post-doctoral theses.
Says librarian Harish Chandra: "We find it difficult to make our printed documents available to all." Already the library has a `Digital Knowledge Centre,' which has 101 computer systems with access to a large number of e-resources.
Log on to www.cenlib.iitm.ac.in to access 50,000 books, nearly 3,000 journals, various international newspapers, reference sources and linkage to a large number of libraries abroad. Most of the resources are free and can be accessed from any part of the globe.
Now, Internet search engine, Google, has joined the digitising bandwagon. According to media reports, a multimillion-dollar scheme is on between Google and five of world's top libraries to make classic texts available on the Net.
All these efforts are to make reading, researching and working easier. If you are still clinging on to your good ol' books, never mind. Ask the librarian to take you through the digital world.
Sandhya Soman
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