[LIS-Forum] Reply to Puna Das from the Milion Books project

Anand anandology at gmail.com
Mon Nov 12 20:00:29 IST 2007


I have couple of objections to make to Dr. Balakrishnan's response.

1. I don't think anybody will expect that he can find number of books  
available by searching for documents. No professional site should  
provide that kind of interface to find the number of items available.

2. The site presents outdated information in some places, which let  
the users believe that the site is not updated from long time.

For example, there is a "current status" link in the main page, which  
links to http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/status.html.
That page has a link to "Centre and Language wise Report" at the end  
of the page, which links to http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/ 
status_centre.htm
And it is an outdated document dated 10-10-2006.

I don't think any user will expect that there will be another link in  
the site which gives the latest information after seeing that.

3. The right way to find the current status is to visit http:// 
www.new.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/status.cgi, which I think is updated  
every day.

4. It is not appropriate to blame the person who asked the question.  
It just indicates that it is hard to find things in the website and  
usability and accessibility of the website needs to be improved. I  
spent many hours looking at the site without finding this information  
for many hours.

Thanks,
Anand
Chief Web Programmer
Open Library
http://demo.openlibrary.org

On 10-Nov-07, at 8:53 AM, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

> Friends:
>
> Prof. N Balakrishnan has provided a clarification to
> Mr Anup Kumar Das, who had posted a message to this
> list on 6 November (from Puna Das).
>
> Subbiah Arunachalam
>
> =====
>
> Dear Arun:
> The guy is again wrong regarding the CDAC Kolkatta
> books and has not
>  spent
> even a minute looking at the web site-
> Please go to www.new.dli.ernet.in and just click on
> the left hand side on the
> search button leaving all fields default- you will get
> the total number
>  of
> books as on that date-
> Next if you choose scanning centre as cdac Kolkatta
> then you will find
> 3565 books totaling more than 1.6 million pages- all
> these are common
> sense and you must make sure th guys without exploring
> do not make
>  unsavy
> comments- we are professional and have done what no
> one has done so
>  far-
> Put one million books on the web-
>
> Balki
>
> Regards
> Balki
>
>> Dear Balki:
>>
>> There is some concern expressed about the Million
>> Books project. I am forwarding a mail I received
>> today. Best wishes.
>>
>> Arun
>>
>>
>> --- Puna Das <puna_05 at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
>>
>>> Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 06:49:01 +0000 (GMT)
>>> From: Puna Das <puna_05 at yahoo.co.in>
>>> To: lis-forum at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
>>> CC: digilib_india at yahoogroups.com,
>>> atanu.garai at gmail.com
>>> Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] CMU Million Book Project
>>>
>>> Dear Colleagues
>>>
>>>   Atanu wanted to point out so called ‘current
>>> status’ of Digital Library of India project. This
> is
>>> very unfortunate that the tech-savvy DLI team could
>>> not provide us latest statistics on its site. The
>>> statistics available here is more than a year old.
>>> Another point I would like to raise, DLI’s Kolkata
>>> Mega Scanning Centre could not provide us access to
>>> a single book they have scanned using tax-payers
>>> money. To my estimate, less than 25% scanned
>>> documents are available through DLI websites. How
>>> can we please help out this overburdened project
>>> team having a blurred vision?
>>>
>>>   Thanking you
>>>
>>>   Anup Kumar Das
>>>   CSSP, JNU
>>>   New Delhi-110067
>>>   Email: puna_05 at yahoo.co.in
>>>   Ph. 011-26704400
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
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