Information Pasteboard
Weekly reports of meetings at NAL, snippets of R&D activity, conference announcements and other features of popular interest

NAL

 

#IP 837 29 Sep - 5 Oct 2008

Meet of Nodal Officers’ of CSIR E-Journal Consortium               

A two day meet of Nodal Officers’ of CSIR E-Journals consortium was held at NAL during 29th-30th of September 2008.  In total, 41 participants from 33 CSIR represented their respective laboratories including the Director and COFA of NISCAIR, the consortium administrator. The main objective of this meet was to explore the various ways and means to ‘rationalise’ the journal subscription to meet the growing needs of the user community and the escalation of the journal subscription.

The inaugural ceremony was held on 29th morning at 10 a.m.  Mr. Shyam Chetty, Head FMCD and Chairman Library Advisory Committee, in his welcome speech appreciated the efforts done by the E-Journal Consortia’s team in providing access to more than 6000 titles for the benefit of  CSIR community. The inaugural speech was delivered by Mr. S K Rastogi, the Director of NISCAIR. In his speech he highlighted the efforts made by NISCAIR in realizing the consortium and problems faced due to unreasonable increase in the subscription by one of the publishers and the need to find possible solution to face the challenge and meet the expectation of the CSIR scientists.

A brief introduction about the e journals consortium from its inception  to the current status was presented by Mr. Prakash Chand, the Coordinator of the consortium. He also spoke about the purpose of the meet and the efforts being put in this direction to provide access to the more resources to all the laboratories. Advisor (M&A), NAL , Dr. M R Nayak delivered the ‘Residential’ which he thought was more appropriate term instead of Presidential since NAL being the host, address. In his remarks, he mentioned the present problems being faced by the librarians to meet the persistent demands of the user community because of the cost factor and the rigid attitude of the publishers as he is on the editorial board of many important journals. He praised the initiative taken by the consortia and wished success in this endeavor. Dr. I R N Goudar, Head, ICAST proposed the vote of thanks.

A detailed presentation by Mr. Prakash Chand on adopting different ‘approaches to build an unique and vibrant information resource base in CSIR system’ was the next item . In his presentation, he came up with the objectives and amicable solutions to the journal crisis being faced by the CSIR labs. ‘Quick document delivery system through ICAST gateway’ as  one of the tools to make use of resource sharing for journal holdings of all CSIR libraries, especially for Elsevier titles was demonstrated by Ms. Poornima Narayana, Dy Head ICAST.
Post lunch session was group discussions for finding solutions to this problem. The first and foremost point was finding a permanent solution to the access to “Elsevier titles’ , the most in demand by the CSIR users’ followed by other publisher’s holdings. The discussions continued the subsequent day till lunch session which were nothing short of ‘brain storming’ and ‘mind bogging’ sessions. Ultimately, The resolutions/recommendations were framed by the committee with the following mandates:

  • Building an unique title based collection;
  • Print subscription  and dissemination with respect to e-only access;
  • Pooling and sharing mechanism for expansion of  resources;
  • Evolve a cost sharing model among the labs.;
  • Resource sharing among labs. ;
  • Training requirement;
  • Open consortium for national S&T institutions which eventually will lead to ‘Consortium of consortia’s’ viz., INDEST, DST, INFLIBNET etc.

Dr. A R Upadhya, Director joined the discussions for a short while the next morning . He mentioned that there is a need to “match resources to demand” by the librarians who have an important role in balancing the user’s needs as the cost and also the number of journals are escalating because of emergence of new disciplines. He emphasized on  the “ rationalization” of journal subscription as there is a need to debate on the right resource for right information. Further, he advised the Information providers to be ‘unemotional’ in deciding the continuity or subscription for new titles.
The concluding session had Dr. Ranjan Moodithaya, Head, KTMD/ATF presiding and wishing the consortia all the success. The meeting ended with thanks to the Director, NAL and team ICAST for the excellent arrangements made in spite of the short notice.

Poornima Narayana