The National
Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC), established in year 2009, is a
network of libraries and information centres of 39 CSIR and 4DST institutes. NKRC's
origin goes back to the year 2001, when the CSIR set up the Electronic Journals
Consortium to provide access to 1200 odd journals of Elsevier Science to all
its users. Over a period of time, the Consortium not only grew in terms of the
number of resources but also in terms of the number of users as more
like-minded institutes evinced interest to join the Consortium.
Today, NKRC facilitates
access to 5,000+ e-journals of all major publishers, patents, standards,
citation and bibliographic databases. Apart from licensed
resources, NKRC is also a single point entity that provides its users
with access to a multitude of open access resources. The Consortium envisions
emerging as a leader to serve the R&D sector with much needed
information to strengthen the research and development system in the country.
Oral
communication has been an integral part of people to people interactions in all
ancient civilizations. With the advancement of science and technology, the
process of communication has been expanded over the years to cover print and
other modes like computer and associated gadgets.
India
is predominantly an agrarian country, and the growth of agriculture is
reflected in the good yields of different crops that depend on various factors
– natural and man-made. Agricultural research, the backbone of agricultural
growth in the country, demands timely dissemination of knowledge being
generated and updated across the globe from time to time. Institutions in NARS,
by and large, have been procuring print versions of journals and literature in
aid of science and technology. With the rapid growth of internet facilities and
advancement of web technology, almost all reputed international journals are
available on-line and can be accessed by researchers over the network.
Since
ICAR is having network connectivity across institutes and state agricultural
universities, select journals could be made available over the network for the
use of scientific community. Accordingly, the National Agricultural Innovation
Project (NAIP) has funded for establishing the Consortium for e-Resources in
Agriculture (CeRA) at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in
November 2007 for facilitating accessibility of scientific journals to all
researchers / teachers in the National Agricultural Research System by
providing access to information specially access to journals online which is
crucial for having excellence in research and teaching.
DBT e-Library Consortium (DeLCON) is a unique Electronic Journal
Consortium which is operational since January 2009. Currently the Consortium
includes 16 DBT Institutions including ICGEB, New Delhi and 18 North Eastern
Region (NER) Institutions. The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance
Council (BIRAC), New Delhi is also part of DeLCON. Now, the total 'DeLCON
Members' are 34. A total of 926 selective Journals and a Database (SCOPUS) are
covered under DeLCON. These all are accessible by the DeLCON Consortium Members
through the DeLCON Portal (http://delcon.gov.in). Others can also view and
access abstracts of papers as free of costs.
The
Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy & Astrophysics (FORSA) came into
existence in the year 1982, for sharing the reources available in astronomy
libraries in the country. In 2004, this group has extended its membership to
Physics and Maths libraries in the country who have common interests to carry
forward the aim of FORSA and its activities. Currently FORSA has twelve members
and it works towards the goals and services which the founder members have
started.
The IIM library
consortium is a collective activity of all six IIM libraries towards a common
goal of sharing resources. With the availability of the state-of-the art
information technology solutions and the web revolution, the IIM libraries in
India are now better off in terms of easy access to a wealth of information
through meaningful co-operation among themselves.
The year 2000 was a
landmark in the history of IIMs, with the formation of the IIM Consortia. IIMK
took leadership in the formation of the IIM Consortia, and had the first
meeting in Calicut. The objective was to ensure among the IIMs, optimum
utilization and enhancement of the resources, and to minimise the expenditure
by consortia based subscriptions to the commonly subscribed databases and
journals. The idea was to approach publishers of CD-ROM Databases to begin
with, as a consortia, for better pricing and services. Eventually, other
digital databases and journals were also planned to be covered by the
programme. The meetings were proved to be very productive and successful.
During the first meeting itself, a host of databases were jointly purchased at
very competitive prices, and a number of others promised supply of their products
at a nominal cost.
Having convinced at
the immense potential of oncosrtium based library subscriptions, during 2002,
the Ministry of HRD (GOI) took initiative and launched the national level INDEST Consortium for the benefit of all MHRD funded insitutions. IIMs are
major stakeholders in the INDEST Consortium and over 11 international products
and services are provided to the IIM Consrtium by the INDEST
IIM/INDEST Consortia have the disctinction of representation of
almost all major publishers in the field of Management such as Elsevier,
Kluwer, John Wiley, Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, and MCB University Press
(Emerald Full-Text Intelligent Library). Also world renowned aggregators such
as EBSCO and PROQUEST and a number of Corporate Information content
providers/vendors participate in the Consortium. The end result has been highly
praiseworthy, that over 1050 E-journals directly are sourced from various
publishers and over 10000 aggregated full-text E-Journals, IIMs are able to get
online access across all the campuses, by paying a nominal additional amount.
The Ministry of Human Resource
Development (MHRD) has set-up the "Indian National Digital Library in
Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium" on the
recommendation made by the Expert Group appointed by the ministry under the
chairmanship of Prof. N. Balakrishnan. The Ministry provides funds required for
subscription to electronic resources for (60) institutions including IISc,
IITs, NITs, IIMs and a few other centrally-funded Government institutions
through the consortium headquarters set-up at the IIT Delhi. Besides, (8) Government or
Government-aided engineering colleges and technical departments
in universities have joined the Consortium with financial support from the
AICTE. Moreover, the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, as an open-ended proposition,
welcomes other institutions to join it on their own for sharing benefits it
offers in terms of highly discounted rates of subscription and better terms of
agreement with the publishers. All electronic resources being subscribed are
available from the publisher’s Website. The Consortium has an active mailing
list and a Web site hosted at the IIT Delhi. The INDEST-AICTE Consortium is the
most ambitious initiative taken so far in the country. The benefit of
consortia-based subscription to electronic resources is not confined to 38
major technological institutions in the country but is also extended to all
AICTE-accredited and UGC-affiliated institutions. (60) engineering colleges and institutions have
already joined the consortium on their own. Recently (1245) engineering colleges and institutions joined
under self support- new scheme.
HELINET stands for Health Science Library and Information Network
conceived by the University and successfully implemented which is first of its
kind in the country. The consortium was started with a vision to improve
the quality of education and research in the Health Science institutions of the
state through enhanced access to high quality medical
information. HELINETs goal is to deliver information to users’ desk-top,
with round-the-clock access.
The major benefit of this consortium was expanded access to core
international e-journals. Before the launch of the consortium, access to
foreign medical journals by each college was limited to around 100. HELINET has
made it possible for each college to access and share the contents in more than
600 journals, in effect increasing the access provision by 6-times.
In India,
a number of library consortia operate to share e-resources among
member libraries to
serve their users. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology oversees the MCIT Library Consortium to subscribe to and share e-resources
at highly discounted rates, and to extend to its services to various
organisations and institutions under its umbrella. Three departments of the
MCIT, namely the Department of Information Technology(DIT), the Department of Telecommunications (DOT) and the Department of Posts (DOP),
administer the program. Important member consortia include the INDEST-AICTE
Consortium, UGC Infonet, the CSIR Consortium, and FORSA.
Beneficiaries of the consortium include the NIC, NKN, DEITY, CDAC, DOEACC, SAMEER, STQC, STPI, ERNET INDIA, C-DOT,
and others. The e-Resources currently subscribed to by the consortium are IEEE/IEE Electronic Library, ACM Digital
Library, and ISO/IEC
Standards. The consortium had operated continuously since 2005. Its
headquarters are at the Department of Information Technology in New Delhi.
The UGC-Infonet Digital Library
Consortium was formally launched in December, 2003 by Honourable Dr. A P J
Abdul Kalam, the President of India soon after providing the Internet
connectivity to the universities in the year 2003 under the UGC-Infonet
programme. The Consortium proved to be a recipe to university libraries which
have been discontinuing subscription of scholarly journals because of
"Serials Crisis". The term "serials crisis" refers to
exponential and continuing increase in subscription cost of scholarly journals.
The crisis is a result of rise in cost of journals much faster than the rate of
inflation, increase in number of journals and the paucity of funds available to
the libraries
The Consortium provides current
as well as archival access to more than 7500+ core and peer-reviewed journals
and 10 bibliographic databases from 26 publishers and aggregators in different
disciplines. The programme has been implemented in phased manner. In the first
phase that began in 2004, access to e-resources was provided to 50 universities
who had Internet connectivity under the UGC-Infonet Connectivity programme of
the UGC. In the second phase, 50 more universities were added to the programme
in the year 2005. So far 209 Universities including 14 National Law schools and
central universities that come under the purview of UGC, have been provided
differential access to subscribed e-resources. These e-resources covers almost
all subject disciplines including arts, humanities, social sciences, physical
sciences, chemical Sciences, life sciences, computer sciences, mathematics and
statistics, etc. The programme is wholly funded by the UGC and executed by the
INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network) Centre, Gandhinagar.
The benefit of subscription to
e-resources would also be extended to the colleges, to begin with the College
for Potential with Excellence (CPE) and autonomous colleges. The Consortium has
also launched its "Associate Membership Programme"
wherein private universities and other research organizations are welcomed to
join the Consortium for selected e-resources.
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