[LIS-Forum] management of digital sources- one day seminar report

Tue Oct 5 23:06:19 IST 2004

dear friends
Osmania univerrsity in colooboration with ICSSR AND USEFI had organised a one day seminar on MANAGEMENT OF DIGITAL SOURCES on 30 sept 2004.
the report of the seminar is given below

thanks
laxman rao

-------------------------------------

One-day Seminar on Management of Digital Resource organized by Department of Library and Information Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad in collaboration with USEFI and ICSSR Southern Regional Centre on 30th September 2004  A Report  

 The Inaugural function started at 10.30 am . Dr J Yadagiri Reddy (Head, Dept of Library 

Science) invited the chief guest, Sri Girish Sanghi (M.P., Rajya Sabha & Managing Editor, Vaartha group), president Dr Mutha Reddy (Registrar, Osmania University) and Dr David F. Kohl (Senior Fulbright specialist, University of Cincinnati, United States). 

Prof. N. Laxman Rao, Seminar Director, while introducing the theme of the Seminar observed that technology has brought the information sources and the users closer. On other hand the role of the library has reduced in getting information. Since the information is available in different forms and formats, there is an urgent need to understand the digital resources and their management and the seminar is intended to focus in this direction.

Dr V.Vishwa Mohan (Associate Professor, DLIS, Osmania University) introduced the guests. Dr. Kohl and Sri Sanghi addressed the gathering. Sri Sanghi observed that the Government has initiated action on an ambitious project to provide broadband connectivity to village level with 100,000 crores of rupees. We have no dearth of knowledge and expertise. The country had glorious history and culture. We have given to the world a lot of things including languages, arithmetic, vedic arithmetic, and many more things. Creative and thought provoking Indians spread from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. However, due to foreign rule there was a break.  He argued need for the specialists from the developed countries like USA. These experts will be able to share their experiences. Further he also said that we have to revive our research activity on indigenous systems. On the technology side there has been a sea change in our communication systems. The satellite technology has been increased the capac!
 ity of
 our transponders four-fold from analogous to digital.

Prof. David Kohl, Fullbrigt Scholarin his address explained the digital information sources and their impact on the libraries. He also said that we need to study various issues relating to management of the Digital sources in the libraries. The digital sources also provide wonderful opportunities to provide quality service. He also stressed the need for sharing the experiences among the LIS professionals on management of the digital sources.

Dr Mutha Reddy, in his presidential address remarked that the information and the resources are vast and the searching them on Internet is too tedious and time consuming many times. Therefore, there is a need to take up serious research to focus on information searching and retrieval.

The Inaugural function ended with presentation of mementos to the dignitaries and vote of thanks by Dr. S. Sudarshan Rao (Associate Professor, DLIS).

Technical Sessions

The session started with a power point presentation by Dr. David F Kohl on Management of Digital Resources: Tasks Remaining, Tasks Ahead.  He observed that talking about all the issues of digital information is an impossible task and it is like overloading the horse cart.  There are two issues that are particularly important  one is an old issue that we are in danger of giving up on  archiving; and the other is a new issue that we are in danger of ignoring  non-text data. Archiving digital information is an increasingly welcome problem. But mounting financial pressures are encouraging libraries to leap without looking. Libraries are offered 10% reduction in subscription costs if the print is cancelled. Libraries are bound to acquire digital collections, which they do not physically house them.

Dr Kohl observed that there are three dimensions of possible loss of digital resources and there is a need to protect them against catastrophic failure, legal failure and operational failure. Though electronic information is available everywhere, anytime, however, it may be available nowhere, forever due to destruction of a publisher or vendor site due to catastrophies like lightening strike, power surge, computer virus, human mistakes, etc. There are two solutions to this: maintaining Dark Archives and LOCKSS (Lots of copies keeps stuff safe). Tackling Licensing failure requires librarys initiatives, while operational failure could be through proper service contracts and their renewal.

Besides problems, the digital world has provided wonderful opportunities with audio and visuals. Access to images in digital form could be an important instructional and research tool. Images of political meetings, adventures, mythological themes, city plans, building architectures, laboratory sessions, etc. in digital formats pose a problem of their distribution to their users. They require sophisticated and technical infrastructures. It could be tackled, if the university libraries are provided infrastructure and the government provided the data. Now the librarys mission is not only preserving the past, but also exploring the future.

After the Lunch break, the Technical Session-2 started with the power point presentation by Dr Devika (DRTC, Bangalore), who is also a fullbright scholar on Dspace  An introduction. She argued that there is a need for supporting the open source movement and in this direction the DRTC is encouraging the use of digital object management systems like Greenstone, Eprints, Fedora and Dspace. The Dspace Digital Library System is   a joint project of MIT Libraries and HP Labs. It helps create, index and retrieve various forms of digital content.  Using Dspace DRTC has created a Digital Library. It is Open Archives  Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The DRTC LDL is an institutional as well as community repository for library and information science community.

DRTC Digital Library Repository consists of three main communities of collections: 1) Digital Library of Library and Information Science, which includes the DRTC Seminar volumes, articles by LIS professionals, theses/dissertations, ppt , etc., 2) DL in Indian Languages  demo site of multilingual documents and Down the Memory lane  a collection of Prof. Ranganathans photographs. DRTC LDL is available at https://drtc.isibang.ac.in.

The Post-Tea session was a Panel Discussion. The Panel consisting of Dr. David F Kohl, Mr.P.Divakar, Dr.Devika and Prof.N. Laxman Rao. Prof. Laxman Rao started the discussion by enumerating the current developments in digital resources - data mining tools, social publishing, internet, email usage, exploitation of publishers for document delivery services, cellular communication, etc. Mr Divakar traced the evolution from print medium to digital resources and observed that the role of librarian as intermediary is fading in the digital era. Librarians are forced to develop skills of bargaining and negotiation in order to acquire digital resources and manage consortia. Dr Kohl observed that there is too much of information in the hands users and users have to validate information and evaluate its sources before making use of it. Dr. Devika reiterated the need for evaluating the information sources. From the participants side Mr D Madhusudhana Rao raised the problems of organizin!
 g the web
 resources, especially downloaded articles. 

About 110 participated in this program. This program was covered by Doordarshn and other newspapers. This program was also shown on Sunday and Monday 3 &  4 October 2004.

Dr. Sudarshan Rao, Associate Professor proposed formal vote of thanks. He said that but for USEFI support this program would not have been possible. The USEFI had given a wonderful opportunity to organize such a program, because of which the professionals could get an opportunity to gain the knowledge. He also proposed thanks to ICSSR and all others who gave their support in making this program a success. 

Prof.N.LAXMAN RAO,
Dept.of Library & Information Science,
Osmania University, HYDERABAD- 500 007 (INDIA)
President, Indian Association of Teachers in Library and Information Science (IATLIS).
Ph:+91-40-27171565 (res): +91-40- 27682290 (off) 9246547599 (Mobile)
e:mail--  naglaxman at yahoo.com    OR   naglaxman at indiatimes.com

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-------------- next part --------------
dear friends
Osmania univerrsity in colooboration with ICSSR AND USEFI had organised a one day seminar on MANAGEMENT OF DIGITAL SOURCES on 30 sept 2004.
the report of the seminar is given below

thanks
laxman rao

-------------------------------------

One-day Seminar on Management of Digital Resource organized by Department of Library and Information Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad in collaboration with USEFI and ICSSR Southern Regional Centre on 30
th
September 2004  A Report

The Inaugural function started at 10.30 am . Dr J Yadagiri Reddy (Head, Dept of Library
Science) invited the chief guest, Sri Girish Sanghi (M.P., Rajya Sabha & Managing Editor, Vaartha group), president Dr Mutha Reddy (Registrar,
Osmania
University
) and Dr David F. Kohl (Senior Fulbright specialist,
University of Cincinnati
,
United States
).

Prof. N. Laxman Rao, Seminar Director, while introducing the theme of the Seminar observed that technology has brought the information sources and the users closer. On other hand the role of the library has reduced in getting information. Since the information is available in different forms and formats, there is an urgent need to understand the digital resources and their management and the seminar is intended to focus in this direction.

Dr V.Vishwa Mohan (Associate Professor, DLIS,
Osmania
University
) introduced the guests. Dr. Kohl and Sri Sanghi addressed the gathering. Sri Sanghi observed that the Government has initiated action on an ambitious project to provide broadband connectivity to village level with 100,000 crores of rupees. We have no dearth of knowledge and expertise. The country had glorious history and culture. We have given to the world a lot of things including languages, arithmetic, vedic arithmetic, and many more things. Creative and thought provoking Indians spread from
Kashmir
to Kanyakumari. However, due to foreign rule there was a break.

He argued need for the specialists from the developed co! untries like
USA
. These experts will be able to share their experiences. Further he also said that we have to revive our research activity on indigenous systems. On the technology side there has been a sea change in our communication systems. The satellite technology has been increased the capacity of our transponders four-fold from analogous to digital.

Prof. David Kohl, Fullbrigt Scholarin his address explained the digital information sources and their impact on the libraries. He also said that we need to study various issues relating to management of the Digital sources in the libraries. The digital sources also provide wonderful opportunities to provide quality service. He also stressed the need for sharing the experiences among the LIS professionals on management of the digital sources.

Dr Mutha Reddy, in his presidential address remarked that the information and the resources are vast and the searching them on Internet is too tedious and time consuming many times. Therefore, there is a need to take up serious research to focus on information searching and retrieval.

The Inaugural function ended with presentation of mementos to the dignitaries and vote of thanks by Dr. S. Sudarshan Rao (Associate Professor, DLIS).

Technical Sessions

The session started with a power point presentation by Dr. David F Kohl on Management of Digital Resources: Tasks Remaining, Tasks Ahead.

He observed that talking about all the issues of digital information is an impossible task and it is like overloading the horse cart.

There are two issues that are particularly important  one is an old issue that we are in danger of giving up on  archiving; and the other is a new issue that we are in danger of ignoring  non-text data. Archiving digital information is an increasingly welcome problem. But mounting financial pressures are encouraging libraries to leap without looking. Libraries are offered 10% reduction in subscription costs if the print is cancelled. Libraries are bound to acquire digital collections, which they do not physically! house them.

Dr Kohl observed that there are three dimensions of possible loss of digital resources and there is a need to protect them against catastrophic failure, legal failure and operational failure. Though electronic information is available everywhere, anytime, however, it may be available nowhere, forever due to destruction of a publisher or vendor site due to catastrophies like lightening strike, power surge, computer virus, human mistakes, etc. There are two solutions to this: maintaining Dark Archives and LOCKSS (Lots of copies keeps stuff safe). Tackling Licensing failure requires librarys initiatives, while operational failure could be through proper service contracts and their renewal.

Besides problems, the digital world has provided wonderful opportunities with audio and visuals. Access to images in digital form could be an important instructional and research tool. Images of political meetings, adventures, mythological themes, city plans, building architectures, laboratory sessions, etc. in digital formats pose a problem of their distribution to their users. They require sophisticated and technical infrastructures. It could be tackled, if the university libraries are provided infrastructure and the government provided the data. Now the librarys mission is not only preserving the past, but also exploring the future.

After the Lunch break, the Technical Session-2 started with the power point presentation by Dr Devika (DRTC,
Bangalore
), who is also a fullbright scholar on
Dspace  An introduction
. She argued that there is a need for supporting the open source movement and in this direction the DRTC is encouraging the use of digital object management systems like Greenstone, Eprints, Fedora and Dspace. The Dspace Digital Library System is

a joint project of MIT Libraries and HP Labs. It helps create, index and retrieve various forms of digital content.

Using Dspace DRTC has created a Digital Library. It is Open Archives  Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). The DRTC LDL is an institutional as well as community repository for library and information science community.

DRTC Digital Library Repository consists of three main communities of collections: 1) Digital Library of Library and Information Science, which includes the DRTC Seminar volumes, articles by LIS professionals, theses/dissertations, ppt , etc., 2) DL in Indian Languages  demo site of multilingual documents and Down the Memory lane  a collection of Prof. Ranganathans photographs. DRTC LDL is available at https://drtc.isibang.ac.in.

The Post-Tea session was a Panel Discussion. The Panel consisting of Dr. David F Kohl, Mr.P.Divakar, Dr.Devika and Prof.N. Laxman Rao. Prof. Laxman Rao started the discussion by enumerating the current developments in digital resources - data mining tools, social publishing, internet, email usage, exploitation of publishers for document delivery services, cellular communication, etc. Mr Divakar traced the evolution from print medium to digital resources and observed that the role of librarian as intermediary is fading in the digital era. Librarians are forced to develop skills of bargaining and negotiation in order to acquire digital resources and manage consortia. Dr Kohl observed that there is too much of information in the hands users and users have to validate information and evaluate its sources before making use of it. Dr. Devika reiterated the need for evaluating the information sources. From the participants side Mr D Madhusudhana Rao raised the problems of organizing the web resources, especially downloaded articles.

About 110 participated in this program. This program was covered by Doordarshn and other newspapers. This program was also shown on Sunday and Monday 3 &  4 October 2004.

Dr. Sudarshan Rao, Associate Professor proposed formal vote of thanks. He said that but for USEFI support this program would not have been possible. The USEFI had given a wonderful opportunity to organize such a program, because of which the professionals could get an opportunity to gain the knowledge. He also proposed thanks to ICSSR and all others who gave their support in making this program a success.

Prof.N.LAXMAN RAO,
Dept.of Library & Information Science,
Osmania University, HYDERABAD- 500 007 (INDIA)
President, Indian Association of Teachers in Library and Information Science (IATLIS).
Ph:+91-40-27171565 (res): +91-40- 27682290 (off) 9246547599 (Mobile)
e:mail-- naglaxman at yahoo.com OR naglaxman at indiatimes.com
http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=21626/*http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger
- all new features - even more fun!