Bharathidasan University on Thursday launched its library website, http://library.bdu.ac.in, to further improve information access for faculties and students of university departments and affiliated colleges.
To provide access to a variety of web-based online resources available on internet, a link has been created in the website to the University Library DSpace-digital repository system, which stores, indexes, preserves the resources and distributes full text material including the faculty publications and university in-house documents. The site also has subject directories that provide links to more than 50,000 e-books, e-journals, protocols, databases and other scholarly resources.
The website was launched by the Vice-Chancellor of Anna University of Technology - Tiruchi P.Devadass Manoharan during the inaugural of a two-day workshop on ‘Access to Library Network and Scholarly Databases' organised by the department. Dr.Devadass Manoharan launched the website in the presence of the Vice-Chancellor of Bharathidasan University K.Meena, the Registrar T.Ramaswamy and the university library in-charge and head of DLIS Srinivasa Raghavan.
Deluge of information on the one hand and the cost of collecting, processing, storing and disseminating information warrant heavy library budgets. However, the decline in buying power of libraries warrant resource sharing and cooperative functioning through network, Dr. Meena said, presiding over the inaugural function. Ranked fifth in the country and first in Tamil Nadu in the usage of UGC Infonet e-resources, Bharathidasan Universiy, Dr.Meena said, was well equipped with books, journals and e-resources. Through UGC-Infonet, the University has access to more than 4,500 journals and 16 databases including the bibliographic abstracting databases. In addition, access to 3,500 scholarly open access journals have been enabled through Internet and Intranet. The library software has been upgraded to enable the webopac and digital archive of the Meta Data, she said.
The UGC, under the XI Plan, has sanctioned Rs. 1 crore for construction of Library including common seminar halls for various departments. A major research project in ‘developing online union catalogue of Bharathidasan University Library and its Affiliated Colleges' for the value of Rs. 4.38 lakh was underway for the period 2009-11, she informed.
In his inaugural address, Dr.Devadass Manoharan traced the growth of libraries over the centuries and observed that the information overload at present has made knowledge management a challenge.
Internet can never diminish the importance of libraries, he said, adding that access to information in the mother tongue will translate into knowledge in a better way. The onus was on universities to take knowledge to the rural masses, he said.
