Soon, an ‘e-shelf’ will help students in affiliated colleges of Mahatma Gandhi university get online access to thousands of books and research material offered by leading publishers in the country and abroad.
The varsity has kick-started discussions with reputed publishing houses and online retail stores to launch this ambitious initiative, providing an online reading platform to the students and the teachers. A leading Malayalam publisher has agreed to partner with the varsity in this digital library project.
Vice Chancellor Babu Sebastian told The Hindu that the varsity had approached several publishers for the project. “The varsity will pay a monthly fee to the publisher concerned as part of the agreement. The publishing houses will offer online access to its numerous books to our students as part of the partnership,” he said.
The initiative is completely secure and password protected. Faculty members and students will have the advantage of getting free access to the e-books of leading publishers. They need not pay any fee to get access to a scholarly article or a research journal offered by the publishers.
The varsity is developing its own server, called Information Powerhouse, with a capacity of four terabytes as part of the recently launched e-learning project on the campus. Prof. Sebastian said the improved facility would support animation, simulation and graphics.
The publishing houses will provide an advanced e-catalogue that will list the various titles available online. It will be a read-only facility. Students and teachers can take printouts of the academic and research material by remitting the prescribed fee.
But the varsity’s e-learning initiatives will depend on how soon it steps up its internet connectivity and optical fibre network on the campus.
