May 2003 - LIS-Forum - ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

RE: [LIS-Forum] Classification on Ayurveda (fwd)
by Mailing List Manager 13 May '03

13 May '03

Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 17:19:42 +0530 From: VYASAMOORTHY /IKP/HYD <Vyasamoorthy(a)icicikp.com> Dear Friends: Niscom Project on Traditional Knowledge Dihital Library also looks into Classification aspects. Here is a news item: ======== TKDL- A safeguard for Indian traditional knowledge by Nirupa Sen Excerpted from: Current Science 82 (9): 1070-71. India has woken up to the task of protecting her traditional knowledge from patent bio-piracy. The trigger was the successful revoking by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of patents filed on turmeric, neem and basmati. This success set the tarmac from which the new initiative called the 'Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL)' is getting ready for flight. The first phase of TKDL on ayurveda is marked for completion in October this year. For bringing out a TKDL on ayurveda, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on 6 June 2001 between the National Institute of Science Communication (NISCOM), New Delhi and the Department of Indian Systems of Medicine and Homeopathy (ISM&H), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. When compiled, TKDL would have documented the traditional knowledge available in the public domain in a digitized format. Starting with the existing literature in ayurveda, it would later cover unani, siddha, naturopathy, homeopathy and folklore medicine. In the first phase, a 'Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC)' is being prepared for 2147 medicinal plants. The content of TKDL would initially consist of about 35,000 'slokas' (verses) from ayurveda. These slokas gleaned from 14 ancient texts and recognized books would be digitally transcribed into a readable form and made available both in Indian and foreign languages. The methodology adopted in setting up TKDL is explained below. TKDL would help patent examiners the world over to have a ready reference to Indian traditional knowledge, while granting patents in such domains. The project cost for TKDL is about Rs.1.18 crore. TKDL is an effort that brings together the Department of ISM&H, CSIR and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. : At the inauguration of TKDL in New-Delhi on 26 March 2002, the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, C. P. Thakur emphasized that TKDL would play 'a crucial role not only in documenting our precious heritage in the area of traditional health-care systems, but also in preventing bio-piracy and un- - scrupulous patenting of indigenous herbal medicinal formulations'. He stated that in the prevailing era of globalization, only the efficient would survive. Therefore we need to protect ourselves from theft of traditional knowledge. The TKDL, he added, could also serve as a useful reference point for research workers. The awareness that such a library would create might help the cause of preventing extinction of rare species. Awareness generated could be helpful in the propagation of such species in conjunction with farmers, Thakur felt. R. A. Mashelkar, Director General of CSIR, while speaking on this occasion pointed out that the global market for herbal/traditional medicines is US $ 60 billion, with an annual growth rate of 5- 15%. In this, China's share is about US $ 7-8 billion and India's US $ 400- 500 million. He also referred to a TKDL Task Force study of the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (USPTO) database conducted in March 2000. The study showed that out of 4896 references on 90 medicinal plants mentioned in the USPTO database, 80% of these references was on seven medicinal plants of Indian origin: Kumari, 'Mustaka, Tamraparna, Garjara, Atasi, Jambira, Kharbuja. The findings revealed that out of the 762 patents on medicinal plants studied, 360 of them could be characterized as traditional. There has been international acceptance of TKDL, Recently, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) constituted a group of members from USPTO, China, Japan, European Patent Office and India for discussing the findings of the TKDL Task Force. The group presented their views at the International Patent Classification (IPC) Union meeting in February this year. The outcome is to create a new sub-class for TKRC in IPC and link TKRC with ayurveda. India's TKDL database has also been selected for a pilot study by 170 member states of WIPO. India presently is not a member of the IPC Union. When completed, TKDL would help patent examiners for easy retrieval of traditional knowledge-related information, thus avoiding the possibility of granting patents to unoriginal inventions. Further, a review process of patents already granted in light of the TKDL database would help in cancellation of some patents. Methodology used for TKDL Slokas from ayurvedic texts are first identified. Each sloka is read and converted into structured language using Traditional Knowledge Resource Classification (TKRC). TKRC is innovative in itself. The TKRC classification has been evolved for about 5000 subgroups as against one group in file International Patent Classification (IPC) for traditional knowledge. The TKDL portal would be based on XML standards and would be platform-independent. The codes for each sloka are fed into a data entry screen and also saved on the database. Computer-savvy ayurveda experts carry out the data entry. These are then decoded in different languages. The ayurvedic formulations can be presently decoded in English, French, German, Hindi, Japanese and Spanish. In future, it would be available in 20 foreign languages and all Indian languages. The decoded format of the formulation is easy to read and understand, even by the layman. The web version of TKDL would include a web-based search interface. This would provide for a full text search and retrieval of traditional knowledge information on IPC and keywords in multiple languages. TKRC would be an integral part of TKDL, and would provide a background on ayurvedic concepts, definitions and scientific basis of Indian systems of medicine. In addition, it would carry information on practitioners, hospitals and dispensaries. There are several search features incorporated in the format. According to V. K. Gupta, Director of National Institute of Science Communication, the TKDL software developed in-house does not do transliteration but it does smart translation. Once abstracted, data from the slokas are converted into several languages using Unicode meta data methodology. The software developed can perform smart translation of botanical names and ayurvedic descriptions from traditional terminology into modern terminology. Examples of this are 'Kumari' to 'Aloe Vera', or 'Mussorika' to 'small pox', etc. Nirupa Sen, 1333 Poorvanchal Complex, I.N.U. New Campus, New Delhi 110067, India (e-mail: nirupasen(a)vsnl.net). ================== Dr.P.Vyasamoorthy, Advisor, Virtual Information Centre, ICICI Knowledge Park, Turkapalli Village, Shameerpet Mandal, RR District, Hyderabad 500078 (Website: www.vic-ikp.info ) Ph: 2348 0053; Fax: 2348 0007; Ph. Res: 2784 6631

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300-Year-Old Plant Treatise Bears New Fruit (fwd)
by Mailing List Manager 13 May '03

13 May '03

Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 22:42:53 +0530 From: Atanu Garai <atanu_garai(a)hotmail.com> A 325-year-old treatise on the medicinal plants of the southern Indian state of Kerala, just translated into English, promises to raise a storm in the world of traditional plant-based remedies and biopirates. NEW DELHI, May 08, 2003-- Fully 325 years after its publication in Amsterdam, the 132-volume Hortus Malabaricus ("Garden of Malabar"), a treatise on the medicinal plants of the southern Indian state of Kerala, has finally been translated from Latin into English - and it has unlocked a wealth of information for historians, botanists and medical researchers. Its original author, Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede, the Dutch governor of the former princely state of Cochin between 1670 and 1677, would have approved of the effort taken by the Kerala University in bringing out an English version after it defied translation for centuries. More:http://www.gvnews.net/html/DailyNews/alert4336.html Source of News:http://www.propoor.org ******************************************** Atanu Garai MLIS Student 2001-03 Department of Library and Information Science University of Calcutta College St.Campus Kolkata 700 073 India Email:atanu_garai@hotmail.com OR atanu_garai(a)indiatimes.com http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/atanu_garai ********************************************

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FW: [BOAI] Launch of Directory of Open Access Journals
by Mailing List Manager 13 May '03

13 May '03

Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 09:06:57 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun(a)mssrf.res.in> LUND UNIVERSITY LAUNCHES DIRECTORY OF OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS May 12, 2003 Lund, Sweden - Lund University Libraries today launches the Directory of Open Access Journals ( DOAJ, http://www.doaj.org ), supported by the Information Program of the Open Society Institute ( http://www.osi.hu/infoprogram/ ), along with SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, ( http://www.arl.org/sparc ). The directory contains information about 350 open access journals, i.e. quality controlled scientific and scholarly electronic journals that are freely available on the web. The service will continue to grow as new journals are identified. The goal of the Directory of Open Access Journals is to increase the visibility and accessibility of open access scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. The directory aims to comprehensively cover all open access scholarly journals that use an appropriate quality control system. Journals in all languages and subject areas will be included in the DOAJ. The database records will be freely available for reuse in other services and can be harvested by using the OAI-PMH ( http://www.openarchives.org/ ), thus further increasing the visibility of the journals. The further development of DOAJ will continue with version 2, which will offer the enhanced feature of allowing the journals to be searched at the article level, and is expected to be available in late fall 2003. "For the researcher DOAJ will mean simplified access to relevant information said Lars Bjrnshauge, Director, Lund University Libraries. The directory will give open-access journals a simple method to register their existence, and a means to dramatically enhance their visibility. Moreover, level, the next stage of DOAJ development will save research time and increase readership of articles." If you know a journal that should be included in the directory, use this form to report it to the directory: http://www.doaj.org/suggest. Information about how to obtain DOAJ records for use in a library catalog or other service you will find at: http://www.doaj.org/articles/questions/#metadata.

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Subscription information for PLoS Biology (fwd)
by Shyam Prasad pujar 13 May '03

13 May '03

Dear List members, It could be of interest to few of you. Regards, S.M. Pujar Assistant Librarian IGIDR, Mumbai ----------- Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 16:42:45 -0700 From: Rebecca Kennison <rkennison(a)plos.org> Subject: Subscription information for PLoS Biology Apologies for cross-posting. Please circulate widely. The Public Library of Science (PLoS), a nonprofit organization of scientists committed to making scientific and medical literature a public resource, is pleased to announce that we have established a nonprofit scientific publishing venture and that we will be publishing our first open-access journal, PLoS Biology, in October 2003. The PLoS journals will be governed and operated by scientists, and these publications will retain all of the important features of scientific journals, including rigorous peer review and high editorial and production standards. The journals will employ a new publishing model that will allow PLoS to make all published works immediately available online, with no charges for access and no restrictions on subsequent redistribution or use. PLoS has already assembled an outstanding academic editorial board and a first-class professional editorial team. We began accepting manuscript submissions for PLoS Biology on May 1, 2003. As an open-access journal publisher, we will provide the online versions of all our journals free of charge to anyone with Internet access, but we also intend to offer a paper version for those who wish to pay for that. Distribution of the paper copy will follow a traditional subscription model, although the price for subscription will be as close to cost for printing and mailing as possible. We have set the subscription price for 2004 at $160/year, which includes shipping. This is the subscription price for both the United States and the rest of the world. The subscription comprises all 12 issues published in 2004 as well as the three issues (October, November, and December) that will appear in 2003. If you would like a sample copy of PLoS Biology or if you wish to subscribe to the print version of the journal, please either contact us directly at subscriptions(a)plos.org to add your names to our database or complete our subscription form, found at http://www.plos.org/journals/biology/pbio_subscribe.pdf. Additional information about the Public Library of Science, as well as copies of the Call for Papers for PLoS Biology, may be found at our website, www.plos.org <http://www.plos.org/> .

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Classification on Ayurveda
by Mailing List Manager 13 May '03

13 May '03

Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 14:28:02 +0530 From: manish mankad <Manish.Mankad(a)unilever.com> Dear all, I wish to know if there is a separate classfication on Ayurveda.. DDC gives only one number and that is just not sufficient..or will it be sensible to create a new classification based on Allopathic class numbers after mapping the equivalents? although 100 percent mapping may not be possible. Regards. -Manish Mankad Information Executive Hindustan Lever Research Centre, Andheri (E), Mumbai, 400 099 INDIA ext. 208/330 (022) 28276 208 28276 330

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What is a library anymore, anyway?
by Mailing List Manager 12 May '03

12 May '03

From: "[iso-8859-1] Saiful Amin" <saifulamin(a)yahoo.com>Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 19:50:25 +0100 (BST) What is a library anymore, anyway? by Michael A. Keller, Victoria A. Reich, and Andrew C. Herkovic Libraries in the future will undertake local control, especially for long-term preservation and accessibility of digital as well as analog collections. Failure to embrace that role would cause libraries and librarians rapidly to lose relevance and value as Internet and other digital resources develop. Local control of collections is critical both to assure permanence and to provide a key degree of selectivity, which ^ contrary to the irrational exuberance of making everything available to everybody ^ is vital to providing service to communities of readers. Librarians need new tools, such as the LOCKSS system, to enable both persistence and selection of electronic information. Read this interesting article at: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_5/keller/ Regards, Learning Resource Centre Indian School of Business Gachibowli Hyderabad - 500 019 Ph. +91-40-2318-7963/7999 http://purl.org/net/saiful

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Can India go all alone in applying ICT to Rural Development?
by Mailing List Manager 12 May '03

12 May '03

Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 09:39:48 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun(a)mssrf.res.in> Friends at lis-forum: I got this mail in another list. Found it extremely interesting and worth sharing with you all. Arun Dear Colleagues: The recent episode of Media Lab Asia raises an important issue. Can India go all alone in applying Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to Rural Development? The first question to be answered is, Does the Indian Government believe that applying ICT is essential for rural development? On paper there is evidence that it does. On the ground, it looks as if it is driven by personalities and not purpose. Many of the Government schemes and projects in this area have not been evaluated rigorously or lessons learned from them. Applying ICT for rural development is not just opening an information kiosk but developing the services and content necessary for supporting activities in rural development. This needs significant transformation in its Institutions and Organizations. There is strong evidence that India missed the opportunities offered by the personal computer and local and wide area networking to improve its Institutions and Organizations engaged in rural development and is now missing the opportunities from use of the Internet to improve governance, health, food security, agriculture, education and trade etc. for rural areas. The second question is what are the strengths of India in going all alone? A country that can launch Geo-Stationary Satellites does certainly have the technological skills. There are several initiatives in ICT application for rural areas that have drawn attention for their innovativeness and it is said in many International circles that if an "IT cannot work in India, it will not work elsewhere in developing countries". India is a leading test bed of ICT application for rural areas of developing countries and others use it for testing their ideas. India can certainly do it and if it needs collaboration, it is more South-South so that costs of innovating the needed technologies can be spread around developing countries. The third question is, what are its weaknesses? To answer this question, India should look at how other ICTs such as radio, television and telephones penetrated into rural areas. Radio receivers in the 1960's and 70's were made cheaply, batteries became available, the All India Radio established a strong network of local radio stations using medium wave band providing context specific rural information. In 1980's television black and white television sets became cheaper, low power transmitters and regional and state level television services were established. This led to the second generation Cable TV use largely supported in peri-urban and rural areas by small private entrepreneurs. Telephones became more ubiquitous, at least on major rural roadsides, through another public-private partnership of PCOs. The lessons India should learn are, let the government create the infrastructure for rural areas and let there be public-private partnership for the network and content. In case of new ICT, such as for access to the Internet, India would need public-private-community partnerships. The weaknesses, as I see it, is not of technology. The type of technology India needs for providing cheaper access to ICT services in rural area is already there. What India does not really have is a policy for ICT use across sectors in rural development. India has a telecomm policy, an education policy, an agricultural policy, livestock policy etc. but it has not integrated ICT either in these policies or integrated these sectoral policies into an ICT policy for development. Until India does this, It will not be able to decide how to lower access costs to ICT based services or create opportunities for partnerships. The fourth question is what are the opportunities? ICT and information access is becoming more a basic necessity just as electricity and water. The experience of Spain and Portugal of providing Automatic Teller Machines in rural areas that enabled farmers to access financial credit which in turn enabled these countries to become the vegetable and fruit baskets of Europe should be a lesson for India and is the type of direction needed from the Government to support ICT application in rural development. If India can prove success in ICT application in rural areas in the next few years, it can be a leader in ICT trade and services for Asia and Africa. The fifth question is of threats? The threats, as I see them, are more from not applying ICT in rural areas than in going alone. Indian software skills are world renown. With a billion people, the domestic market for intellectual capital (information and because the core issue will be context specific content in health, agriculture, education etc. which the North does not have for developing countries and not the hardware. IMHO India can go alone or with more South-South collaboration in this area of applying ICT to rural development. In the revamped Media Lab Asia, let its main mission be to apply ICT successfully in rural development and enable India to be a leader in trade and providing ICT services to rural areas in developing countries. Can Mr. Shourie do this? Warm regards, Ajit

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Kuvempu Univeristy LIS Dept. Alumni Home page
by library＠beamseducation.ae 10 May '03

10 May '03

Dear professionals, Dept. of PG Studies and Research in Library & Information Science, Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka, is completing it's 10 year on December 1st, 2003, In this view LIS Dept. has inuagarated its, LIS Dept. Alumni, in this view, the Dept. is hosting it's Alumni Home page, in this view, I would like to have ur views on the upcoming our Dept. alumni site. The URL is http://www.kuvlib.cjb.net/ And it's Happy to inform you all that, I am one of the first batch student of the same LIS Dept. Kuvempu University, who is presently working in Learning Resource Centre, Dubai. With Kind regards Vijayakumar M ************************************************************** Vijayakumar M Learning Resource Centre Beams International Education Institute Post Box. 31199, Dubai, United Arab Emirates Phone : 009714-3342929 or 009714-3342928 Mobile : 0097150-4734077 Fax : 009714-3342922 e-mail : vijayakumar71(a)yahoo.co.in Home Page : http://www20.brinkster.com/vinija/

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[Fwd: library management summer school courses]
by Mailing List Manager 09 May '03

09 May '03

Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 07:42:00 +0530 From: Subbiah Arunachalam <arun(a)mssrf.res.in> FYI Three library management courses, as part of the International > Summer School on the Digital Library, will be held at Tilburg > University, the Netherlands, in August 2003. The courses focus on: > > - Library vision and strategy (2 days, 11-12 August) > - Change management (3 days, 13-15 August) > - Management of electronic resources and e-publishing (3 days, 25- > 27 August) > > The full programme of all three courses is now available via the > course website at http://www.ticer.nl/summer03/. > > Registration should take place preferably before 1 June.

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NCSI Workshop on Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL)
by Dr. T.B. Rajashekar 08 May '03

08 May '03

Dear All We are pleased to announce: Workshop on Developing Digital Libraries using Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) 2.6.2003 to 4.6.2003 Organized by: National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Venue: NCSI, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Number of participants: 20 About the Workshop: Affordable software is a key requirement for successful development and deployment of digital libraries. Though it is possible today to create simple digital libraries using prevailing Web and database technologies, it would take lot more effort to develop software that integrates functions such as metadata, full text search and retrieval, multilingual support, access management, and support for multiple document formats. Greenstone (GSDL) is a suite of software for building and distributing such digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project (http://www.nzdl.org/) at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO (http://humaninfo.org/). It is open-source software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The aim of the software is to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries. More details of the software and example digital libraries built using the software is available at http://www.greenstone.org/ The goal of this Workshop is to enable individuals and organisations to initiate building their digital libraries. The specific objective of the workshop is to impart practical training to participants in using GSDL for creation and maintenance of digital libraries. Focus is on installing, configuring, application and administration of this package. At the end of the Workshop, you should have acquired the knowledge and skill sets required to build your own digital libraries using GSDL. The workshop covers both introductory and advanced use of GSDL. Apart from experienced and knowledgeable resource persons who will lead the workshop, NCSI has excellent infrastructure, including a switch-based LAN, servers, laboratory, lecture hall and Internet connectivity. Each participant will have a dedicated workstation to work with. Latest version of GSDL software package (version 2.39) will be distributed to the participants on CD-ROM. The workshop is limited to twenty (20) participants on first-come-first-served basis. Last date for receiving registrations is 25th May 2003. More details of the workshop, including workshop content, fees, and registration form can be downloaded from the following URL: http://144.16.72.189/gsdl-ncsi-workshop.doc If you are unable to download this document, let me know. A text-based registration form is given below for your convenience. Do contact us for any more information you may need. Regards - Rajashekar ------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. T.B. Rajashekar Associate Chairman Tel: +91-80-3600271, 3601427 National Centre for Science Fax: +91-80-3601426, 3600683 Information (NCSI) E-Mail: raja(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Indian Institute of Science URL: http://144.16.72.189/raja/ BANGALORE-560012 (India) ------------------------------------------------------------- SciGate: http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ The IISc Science Information Portal ---------------------------------------- NCSI Workshop on DEVELOPING DIGITAL LIBRARIES USING GREENSTONE DIGITAL LIBRARY SOFTWARE (GSDL) 2.6.2003 to 4.6.2003) Registration Form ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Participant's Name: (Ms./ Mr./ Dr./ Prof.) Position: Organization: Address: City: Pin: Telephone: Fax: Email: Registration details: First participant (Rs. 6,000/-) Additional participant from the same organization (Rs. 4,000/-) (Note: Additional participant and main participant share the same workstation) (Pl. use copy of this form and provide details separately) I need accommodation in IISc campus: YES / NO (Accommodation cost is included in the registration fee for the dates 1-5 June 2003) Dates of accommodation requirement: From: To: Payment details: DD No. & date: Bank drawn on: Amount: (Note: DD to be drawn in favour of "The Registrar, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore", payable at Bangalore) Date: Signature: Please fill this form and send it to the coordinator, along with the registration fee, on or before 25th May 2003. Dr. T.B. Rajashekar Associate Chairman National Centre for Science Information(NCSI) Indian Institute of Science Bangalore - 560 012(India) E-Mail: raja(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Phone : 080-3601427, 3600271 Fax : 080-3601426, 3600683

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