February 2006 - LIS-Forum - ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

Need some information - Reg.
by suruli nathi 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Dear experts, i can't attatch the question for the previous mail. sorry for it. Now, if you any reflection for this questions regarding. please send me. What is the relationship between the published literature and the knowledge organization of the literature? There have been many studies that examined the links between the quantum of literature published and the knowledge organization of the literature. Growth of literature; how to control or organize the explosion of published literature? What are the knowledge organization techniques used to structure the published resources Why we have to be concerned about organizing the knowledge of the published resources? Publication rate is growing at a faster rate where as the process of organizing the literature for use is limited. What is required? In the KBS, one could witness an explosion of knowledge and information in various fields of activities. The rate of growth is bewildering demanding a concerted effort to organize these growing knowledge for retrieval and use. What will happen if there is no proper organization of knowledge? thanks and regards, N.Amsaveni __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com Dear experts, i can't attatch the question for the previous mail. sorry for it. Now, if you any reflection for this questions regarding. please send me. What is the relationship between the published literature and the knowledge organization of the literature? There have been many studies that examined the links between the quantum of literature published and the knowledge organization of the literature. Growth of literature; how to control or organize the explosion of published literature? What are the knowledge organization techniques used to structure the published resources Why we have to be concerned about organizing the knowledge of the published resources? Publication rate is growing at a faster rate where as the process of organizing the literature for use is limited. What is required? In the KBS, one could witness an explosion of knowledge and information in various fields of activities. The rate of growth is bewildering demanding a concerted effort to organize these growing knowledge for retrieval and use. What will happen if there is no proper organization of knowledge? thanks and regards, N.Amsaveni __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Email clients suitable for sending news letter
by vimal kumar 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Dear Professionals, Now Iam searching for an free/open source email client can working in Windows suitable for sending Library News Letter. Problem is that, users can see the email IDs of other subscribers from messages sent by existing email clients (Out Look Express, Thunderbird). Please help me if anybody have experience in using email clients for Newsletter delivery. Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com --------------------------------- Brings words and photos together (easily) with PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail. Now Iam searching for an free/open source email client can working in Windows suitable for sending Library News Letter. Problem is that, users can see the email IDs of other subscribers from messages sent by existing email clients (Out Look Express, Thunderbird). Please help me if anybody have experience in using email clients for Newsletter delivery. Vimal Kumar Asian School of Business Technopark Trivandrum-695 581 vimal0212(a)yahoo.com Brings words and photos together (easily) with http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail_us/taglines/PMall/*http://photomail.mail.yahoo.… PhotoMail - it's free and works with Yahoo! Mail.

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Soquel High librarian encourages students to research on Web - By Nancy Pasternack - sentinel staff writer - February 8, 2006
by Mailing List Manager 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 23:54:31 -0500 From: K.R.Mulla <krmulla(a)gmail.com> Soquel High librarian encourages students to research on Web - By Nancy Pasternack - sentinel staff writer - February 8, 2006 Hi [LIS-Forum]! Thought you might be interested in reading this story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel. http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/February/08/local/stories/09l… http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/February/08/local/stories/09l… Regards K.R.Mulla February 8, 2006 SOQUEL Soquel High librarian encourages students to research on Web By Nancy Pasternack sentinel staff writer Soquel High School's Madeline Britton is part of an endangered and often misunderstood profession: the modern school librarian. Unlike librarians of yore who managed index files, taught the Dewey Decimal System and worked in rooms crowded with books, Britton teaches her students to mine the Web efficiently for the most reliable information, and to find creative solutions for stretching nearly extinct library budget dollars. She can't afford, she says, to spend the whopping $4,000 she has for 2006-07 all in one place. The $2,400 subscription bill for Ebsco Host, the primary database she has used in the past to teach her students research skills, is too steep. So that subscription, which allows access to magazine and academic journal articles, is out — and Santa Cruz Public Library cards are in. Britton's campaign to get all her students a public library card will have them using comprehensive databases like Ebsco Host, as well as many others the school cannot afford. They can access these resources from any Internet-linked computer, between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight. And Britton can continue, she said, to teach students the necessities for adult life in today's real world. "This is the iPod generation," she said. "You have to teach them to use their brains in the ways they're wired." Her push has caught on in Santa Cruz City Schools' other high schools. Librarians from both Harbor High and Santa Cruz High have teamed up with public librarians to take students through the steps necessary to gain access to the public library's resources, and to take full advantage of those resources. "It's win-win," said Heidi Smith, the system's development librarian. "We have wonderful databases the students can now use." And because of the number of new cards the Santa Cruz Public Library system will issue, Smith can make a stronger case for continued funding. "If our databases don't get enough use," she said, "our governing board won't continue to fund it." Britton's school district is the only one in the county that still funds credentialed librarians. The ratio in California of professional media library teachers librarians to students is the lowest in the country: one media teacher/librarian for every 4,541 students. The average, nationwide, is one to 870. Because Soquel High's feeder schools — in the Live Oak and Soquel school districts — do not have professional librarians, Britton and many teachers must make an extra effort to get incoming students caught up with the online world. In order to do this, you first need access to reliable resources. "They need to learn library skills every year," O'Reilly said. "They need practice over and over again." Those skills increasingly consist of an ability to edit out sources that are either not going to be helpful, or that are not reliable. "They need to know what's a bogus Web site, and what isn't," O'Reilly said. Britton compares the Internet to an open fire hydrant. "You have to know how to swim through all that, just to take a sip of water," she said. She tells her students, "You guys have to be your own censors." "Your lives are packed," she tells them. "And you want to go to that party Friday night, right? Well, being good at this Internet research will save you time." Contact Nancy Pasternack at mailto:npasternack@santacruzsentinel.com?subject=Soquel High librarian encourages students to research on Web npasternack(a)santacruzsentinel.com .

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Best Free Reference Web Sites
by Mailing List Manager 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:45:03 +0530 From: "Thapar, Amit" <amitt(a)niper.ac.in> Best Free Reference Web Sites Combined Index http://www.ala.org/ala/rusa/rusaourassoc/rusasections/mars/marspubs/MARSBES… "an index of the web sites included in the 1999-2004 annual lists issued by the Mars Best of Free Reference Web Sites Committee of the Machine-Assisted Reference Section(MARS) of the Reference and User Services Association(RUSA) ofALA to recognize outstanding reference sites on the World Wide Web." Includes links to theoriginal reviews. Extreme Makeover, Library Edition http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/001/1.htm This article from OCLC's newsletter takes off from an OCLC report on perceptions of libraries <http://www.oclc.org/reports/2005perceptions.htm> and discusses how libraries might "re-brand" themselves. FreeFullText.com http://www.freefulltext.com/ "provides direct links to over 7000 scholarly periodicals which allow some or all of their online content to be viewed by ANYONE with Internet access for free." Could be a handy place to check when somebody needs an article you don't own iimmediately. Wikinews http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page This little sister to the Wikipedia bills itself as "the free news source you can write!" -- preferably following its code of ethics and standards of fully referenced objective journalism (available at the About Wikinews page). amit@niper Cell: 9855701060 / 9417419457 e-mail: amit_thapar(a)yahoo.com URL: http://www.niper.gov.in/

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Science in India as seen from Web of Science
by Subbiah Arunachalam 13 Feb '06

13 Feb '06

Friends: Here is a table provided by Thomson Scientific - ISI, Philadelphia. Our share in new biology research [Molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, etc.] is rather low and below India's 2.3% share in science overall. What is more our work in these fields is cited less often on average than our work in physics, chemistry and materials science. India's share in agriculture, materials science and chemistry is well above India's share in science overall. Arun Science in India, 2000-04 India's world share of science and social-science papers over a recent five-year period, expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 21 fields in the Thomson Scientific database. Also, India's relative citation impact compared to the world average in each field, in percentage terms. 10-year country rankings for India, 1995-October 2005. Field Percentage of papers from India, 2000-04 Relative impact compared to world Agricultural Sciences 5.30 -65 Materials Science 4.79 -29 Chemistry 4.23 -38 Physics 3.45 -21 Plant & Animal Sciences 3.39 -70 Pharmacology 2.83 -57 Engineering 2.63 -35 Geosciences 2.53 -50 Space Science 2.43 -51 **<--- India's overall percent share, all fields: 2.39 --->** Ecology/Environmental 2.29 -58 Microbiology 1.88 -53 Biology & Biochemistry 1.85 -63 Mathematics 1.83 -44 Computer Science 1.46 -18 Clinical Medicine 1.02 -60 Molecular Biology 1.00 -68 Immunology 0.93 -68 Economics & Business 0.74 -48 Social Sciences 0.71 -60 Neurosciences 0.50 -49 Psychology/Psychiatry 0.30 -35 Between 2000 and 2004, Thomson Scientific indexed 89,976 papers that listed at least one author address in India. Of those papers, the highest percentage appeared in journals classified in the field of agricultural sciences. As the right-hand column shows, the relative impact of published research from India has yet to attain the world average in any of the fields shown. Nevertheless, there were areas of relatively strong performance--including physics, in which papers from India scored at 79% of the world average (2.89 citations per paper for India, versus the world figure of 3.64 cites), while India's research in computer science was just 18% below the world mark. Materials science, engineering, and chemistry were also areas of comparative strength. SOURCE: National Science Indicators, 1981-2004 (containing listings of output and citation statistics for more than 170 countries; available in standard and deluxe versions from the Research Services Group. Friends: Here is a table provided by Thomson Scientific - ISI, Philadelphia. Our share in new biology research [Molecular biology, biochemistry, immunology, etc.] is rather low and below India's 2.3% share in science overall. What is more our work in these fields is cited less often on average than our work in physics, chemistry and materials science. India's share in agriculture, materials science and chemistry is well above India's share in science overall. Arun Science in India, 2000-04 India's world share of science and social-science papers over a recent five-year period, expressed as a percentage of papers in each of 21 fields in the Thomson Scientific database. Also, India's relative citation impact compared to the world average in each field, in percentage terms. http://in-cites.com/images/quickscience-icon.gif 10-year country rankings for javascript:popUp5ColRank('january_23_2006-4.html') India , 1995-October 2005. Field Percentage of papers from India, 2000-04 Relative impact compared to world Agricultural Sciences 5.30 -65 Materials Science 4.79 -29 Chemistry 4.23 -38 Physics 3.45 -21 Plant & Animal Sciences 3.39 -70 Pharmacology 2.83 -57 Engineering 2.63 - 35 Geosciences 2.53 - 50 Space Science 2.43 - 51 **<--- India's overall percent share, all fields: 2.39 --->** Ecology/Environmental 2.29 -58 Microbiology 1.88 -53 Biology & Biochemistry 1.85 -63 Mathematics 1.83 - 44 Computer Science 1.46 - 18 Clinical Medicine 1.02 - 60 Molecular Biology 1.00 - 68 Immunology 0.93 - 68 Economics & Business 0.74 - 48 Social Sciences 0.71 -60 Neurosciences 0.50 -49 Psychology/Psychiatry 0.30 -35 Between 2000 and 2004, Thomson Scientific indexed 89,976 papers that listed at least one author address in India. Of those papers, the highest percentage appeared in journals classified in the field of agricultural sciences. As the right-hand column shows, the relative impact of published research from India has yet to attain the world average in any of the fields shown. Nevertheless, there were areas of relatively strong performance--including physics, in which papers from India scored at 79% of the world average (2.89 citations per paper for India, versus the world figure of 3.64 cites), while India's research in computer science was just 18% below the world mark. Materials science, engineering, and chemistry were also areas of comparative strength. SOURCE: http://www.in-cites.com/a-prod/nsi.html National Science Indicators , 1981-2004 (containing listings of output and citation statistics for more than 170 countries; available in standard and deluxe versions from the http://www.isinet.com/rsg.html Research Services Group . http://in-cites.com/images/aaa-spacer.gif

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Chat: Teacher librarians and compulsory internships
by Saji S. Nair 11 Feb '06

11 Feb '06

Dear All, As part of the curriculum, the LIS students in India have to imbibe more theories than practical aspects. As we know, theoretical facets form the backbone, but exposure to real-life situations may not be ignored. Library schools could prepare a panel of librarians with sufficient knowledge/expertise/skills and deploy them at regular intervals to supplement their academic programs. Such an interactive teaching and learning process may essentially have some potential benefits. Compulsory internships to library professionals are also a neglected area. A neo-graduate/postgraduate without necessary training will find it difficult to cope with the situation, if he/she has been assigned professional duties. Why don�t we think about compulsory internships, as is practiced for years in various professions? This isn�t inoperable, since we have a number of libraries in the locality that demand more manpower investment. Bye for now Saji S. Nair Regional Cancer Centre Library Trivandrum Kerala _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!

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Public-Private Partnership for an OA database in genetics
by Subbiah Arunachalam 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

Friends: Please forward this to biomedical researchers and geneticists whom you know. Best wishes. Arun ------------------------------------- New OA database coming from the NIH The NIH will partner with Pfizer and other private corporations to launch an OA database of genetic data. See yesterday's press release from Pfizer: The Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Pfizer Global Research & Development, New London, Conn., today announced the launch of a unique public-private medical research partnership -- the Genetic Association Information Network (GAIN) -- to unravel the genetic causes of common diseases over the next three years. The information derived from GAIN will be publicly available to researchers world-wide. GAIN brings new scientific and financial resources to the NIH's existing whole genome association programs, encouraging all partners -- across and beyond NIH -- to work together toward the common goal of understanding the genetic contributions to common diseases. Organizers of the GAIN partnership believe the model holds promise of achieving rapid, scientifically sound results that any single researcher or institution working alone would be hard-pressed to equal. GAIN is designed to help medical researchers quickly identify the many genetic contributions to common illnesses such as heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis and stroke by comparing the genetic makeup of people with the disease to people who are healthy. Identifying genetic differences between these two groups will speed up the development of new methods to prevent, diagnose, treat and even cure common illnesses....The GAIN initiative proposes to raise $60 million in private funding for genetic studies of common diseases. The initiative does not require new expenditures of public funds nor will it be implemented at the expense of any existing or pending publicly funded biomedical research programs...."Virtually all diseases have a hereditary component, which is transmitted from parent to child through the three billion DNA letters that make up the human genome," said Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at NIH. "But progress in identifying the genetic factors that influence health or disease, or even the response to treatment, has been difficult. This initiative promises to identify rapidly the many genes in an individual that, taken together, contribute to an increased risk of illness -- or that increase the chances of a healthy life. As these genetic underpinnings become clear, researchers will be empowered to develop targeted treatments that either prevent illness from occurring or treat it effectively once it does." Also see Jeffrey Brainard, NIH Proposes New Project and Database to Study Genetic Causes of Disease, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: The National Institutes of Health announced on Wednesday a new research effort and free, public database about the genetic causes of common illnesses. The project, to be financed jointly by the NIH and biotechnology companies, will be designed to protect the publishing priority of researchers who put data in the repository. The database, to be managed by the agency's National Library of Medicine, would contain genetic data from thousands of patients with particular diseases, with details that could identify the patients removed. The NIH will require users of the database to wait nine months before publishing papers based on data that they did not deposit themselves, Elias A. Zerhouni, the agency's director, said at a news conference. That policy is meant to prevent scientists who donate data from being scooped by competitors. The database will allow researchers to comb through the DNA of ill and healthy people to explore whether the sick individuals have genes in common. The NIH will also pay to study how genes and environmental causes, like pollutants, combine to cause disease....The new work will begin this year, financed with at least $20-million from Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical company, and additional contributions from Affymetrix Inc., a biotechnology company. The research will initially focus on seven illnesses and health conditions, to be determined based on a peer review of research proposals. However, the NIH cited as possible candidates arthritis, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease. In his 2007 budget, released on Monday, President Bush proposed that the NIH spend an additional $68-million for work on other diseases. The project announced on Wednesday would be one of the NIH's few new efforts for 2007, when, under the president's proposal, the agency's overall budget would get no increase....The overall partnership between the NIH and the companies will be managed by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, an independent group that promotes similar alliances, and is to be called the Genetic Association Information Network [GAIN]....Pfizer, Affymetrix, and other contributors to the database will receive no special intellectual-property rights, according to Dr. Zerhouni. The data are considered "precompetitive," meaning that companies must perform further research on the publicly available data before they can reap commercially valuable discoveries. A similar model was followed by companies that contributed data to the HapMap project. Comment. One of the largest impediments I've seen to OA data is the fear of being scooped. Many researchers are only willing to share their data after they've published all they have to say about it themselves. I applaud the GAIN proposal as one way to solve this problem and make more data more sharable more quickly. It's likely that the benefits of sharing the data will outweigh the costs of the nine-month embargo on publishing new results based on the data --but it's not inevitable. I hope the NIH monitors the balance of these costs and benefits over time and shortens the embargo as much as it can without deterring submissions.

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School library project-kerala
by Saji S. Nair 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

Dear all, School library modernisation project of the Government of Kerala is moving ahead with innovative ideas, with active support from students and the public. The project also plans for a Handbook on maintaining school libraries. But nothing heard about inducting qualified professionals. see the news at http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/10/stories/2006021014971000.htm "School library modernisation project to continue". regards Saji S. Nair Regional Cancer Centre Library Trivandrum Kerala _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!

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Health Info Platform for Europe
by Subbiah Arunachalam 10 Feb '06

10 Feb '06

Launch of the European Health Information Platform Brian Robinson, EU focuses on health education, Government Health IT, February 7, 2006. Excerpt: The European Union has launched the European Health Information Platform, a $1.7 million multimedia initiative to improve the quality of information its citizens receive about health issues. Also known as Health in Europe, the program will create a rights-free bank of health-related reports, documentaries, radio broadcasts and print and online articles for distribution throughout the EU. -------------- Dear Guna: Please forward this to all interested in health information in India. I am away from MSSRF and I do not have the email addresses with me right now. Thanks.

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A Web Library of Research Output
by Library 09 Feb '06

09 Feb '06

EPW Commentary January 28, 2006 A Web Library of Research Output Data gathered and analysis carried out using public funds should be in the public domain, their dissemination is in the public interest. Here are some initial ideas about setting up a web library that ensures open access to publicly-funded social research output. V Srinivasan A large amount of social science research is carried out in the country, much of it with government, bilateral or multilateral funding, that is, public funding. Such research usually results in the production of reports, many of which contain useful data, analyses, ideas, and recommendations. But only a small portion of this output feeds into policy-making or public debate; the bulk of it is hardly circulated. Indeed, most of it is treated as virtually secret, inaccessible to the public in whose name it is carried out. Unfortunately, it is not an accepted view that data gathered and analysis carried out using public funds are a part of the public domain, and that their dis- semination is in the public interest. A scan of the websites of various government bodies illustrates this well. The ministry of social justice and empowerment and the ministry of rural development list some research reports on their sites but do not provide access to the listed reports or supporting studies. The reports of the National Sample Survey Organisation or the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, to name just two important bodies, are not available via the internet. The government has commissioned 20 studies or reports on child labour but only two or three are available on the internet. The result is that a great deal of research work is duplicated, since there is no access to previous research in the same area. Today, even if the authors of these reports wished to disseminate them widely, they lack an effective mechanism for doing so. To address this problem, the innovation centre of a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation, Society for Service to Voluntary Agencies (SOSVA), has proposed a strikingly simple solution: the creation of an internet library housing all economic, social and political studies and reports prepared with government, bilateral or multilateral aid. Such access to previous research would prevent duplication of research work in the same area and check plagiarism. The quality of research would be improved by public scrutiny. Discussion on the themes covered could also be advanced considerably. Finally, the disseminated work could feed into policy-making or public debate. SOSVA proposes that electronic copies of any study, report or document prepared using government or international funds be submitted to the web library. This proposal is along the lines of the practice followed in the US whereby a copy of any book published in the country must be deposited with the Library of Congress to receive a Library of Congress Control Number. Unless this is done, no public grant, foreign or Indian, would be deemed utilised; indeed, the comptroller and auditor general or other appropriate agency would report that the funds are deemed unutilised. Steps need to be taken to make this legally binding and administratively effective. These studies would then be posted on the web library, which would have a standard classification system and easy search tools. The advantages of such a library are the advantages of the internet: At no cost, a huge wealth of information would be available to the public. Moreover, users would not need to know of the existence of particular reports or other materials in advance; they could discover them while browsing through the library, as it were. Not only would duplication of labour be avoided, and the quality of research improved by subjecting it to public scrutiny, but the quality of debate on questions of public interest could be enhanced. That, in turn, ought to spur genuine development. The same library could also host many documents that are available today but only as hard copies, that is, in printed form, and therefore in effect accessible only to a few. The idea could be developed further and the web library need not be restricted to work undertaken by government and donor agencies. For example, the web library could include doctoral theses, documents of international non-governmental organisations, and so on. Linkages can be provided to other electronic libraries as well, to constitute a core bibliography to be available on the websites. This idea could be extended further. The web library need not be restricted to work undertaken by government and donor agencies. For example, the documents of international non-governmental organisations or agencies could be put up on this site. Links could be provided to other electronic libraries to constitute a core bibliography available on the internet. Certain technical and legal issues involved in setting up such a site may need examination. Some reports (or portions of them) may need to be withheld on grounds of "national security"; others because they reveal confidential or copyright materials. However, these questions appear fairly easy to resolve. The costs involved for setting up the web library, either as a fully owned portal facility co-hosted in a data centre or as portal hosted in a private hosting service provider, are negligible (a few lakhs of rupees) compared to the public funds spent on such research. The potential social benefits of such a web library are huge. In a sense, it could be argued that providing such access is a legitimate extension of the current efforts under the Freedom of Information Act. Although the thrust of the act is towards transparency in decision-making by government, the fundamental principle of the act, that government must throw its books open, applies as much as to information dissemination and development benefits as to decision-making. Email: sosva(a)hotmail.com http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=01&filename=9634&file… Sincerely B. Murugan Library Services M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation 3rd Cross Street, Taramani Institutional Area Chennai - 600 113 Phone: 22541229 / 22542698; Extn: 208/209 EPW Commentary January 28, 2006 A Web Library of Research Output Data gathered and analysis carried out using public funds should be in the public domain, their dissemination is in the public interest. Here are some initial ideas about setting up a web library that ensures open access to publicly-funded social research output. V Srinivasan A large amount of social science research is carried out in the country, much of it with government, bilateral or multilateral funding, that is, public funding. Such research usually results in the production of reports, many of which contain useful data, analyses, ideas, and recommendations. But only a small portion of this output feeds into policy-making or public debate; the bulk of it is hardly circulated. Indeed, most of it is treated as virtually secret, inaccessible to the public in whose name it is carried out. Unfortunately, it is not an accepted view that data gathered and analysis carried out using public funds are a part of the public domain, and that their dis- semination is in the public interest. A scan of the websites of various government bodies illustrates this well. The ministry of social justice and empowerment and the ministry of rural development list some research reports on their sites but do not provide access to the listed reports or supporting studies. The reports of the National Sample Survey Organisation or the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, to name just two important bodies, are not available via the internet. The government has commissioned 20 studies or reports on child labour but only two or three are available on the internet. The result is that a great deal of research work is duplicated, since there is no access to previous research in the same area. Today, even if the authors of these reports wished to disseminate them widely, they lack an effective mechanism for doing so. To address this problem, the innovation centre of a Mumbai-based non-governmental organisation, Society for Service to Voluntary Agencies (SOSVA), has proposed a strikingly simple solution: the creation of an internet library housing all economic, social and political studies and reports prepared with government, bilateral or multilateral aid. Such access to previous research would prevent duplication of research work in the same area and check plagiarism. The quality of research would be improved by public scrutiny. Discussion on the themes covered could also be advanced considerably. Finally, the disseminated work could feed into policy-making or public debate. SOSVA proposes that electronic copies of any study, report or document prepared using government or international funds be submitted to the web library. This proposal is along the lines of the practice followed in the US whereby a copy of any book published in the country must be deposited with the Library of Congress to receive a Library of Congress Control Number. Unless this is done, no public grant, foreign or Indian, would be deemed utilised; indeed, the comptroller and auditor general or other appropriate agency would report that the funds are deemed unutilised. Steps need to be taken to make this legally binding and administratively effective. These studies would then be posted on the web library, which would have a standard classification system and easy search tools. The advantages of such a library are the advantages of the internet: At no cost, a huge wealth of information would be available to the public. Moreover, users would not need to know of the existence of particular reports or other materials in advance; they could discover them while browsing through the library, as it were. Not only would duplication of labour be avoided, and the quality of research improved by subjecting it to public scrutiny, but the quality of debate on questions of public interest could be enhanced. That, in turn, ought to spur genuine development. The same library could also host many documents that are available today but only as hard copies, that is, in printed form, and therefore in effect accessible only to a few. The idea could be developed further and the web library need not be restricted to work undertaken by government and donor agencies. For example, the web library could include doctoral theses, documents of international non-governmental organisations, and so on. Linkages can be provided to other electronic libraries as well, to constitute a core bibliography to be available on the websites. This idea could be extended further. The web library need not be restricted to work undertaken by government and donor agencies. For example, the documents of international non-governmental organisations or agencies could be put up on this site. Links could be provided to other electronic libraries to constitute a core bibliography available on the internet. Certain technical and legal issues involved in setting up such a site may need examination. Some reports (or portions of them) may need to be withheld on grounds of “national security”; others because they reveal confidential or copyright materials. However, these questions appear fairly easy to resolve. The costs involved for setting up the web library, either as a fully owned portal facility co-hosted in a data centre or as portal hosted in a private hosting service provider, are negligible (a few lakhs of rupees) compared to the public funds spent on such research. The potential social benefits of such a web library are huge. In a sense, it could be argued that providing such access is a legitimate extension of the current efforts under the Freedom of Information Act. Although the thrust of the act is towards transparency in decision-making by government, the fundamental principle of the act, that government must throw its books open, applies as much as to information dissemination and development benefits as to decision-making. Email: mailto:sosva@hotmail.com sosva(a)hotmail.com http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=01&filename=9634&file… http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2006&leaf=01&filename=9634&file… Sincerely B. Murugan Library Services M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation 3rd Cross Street, Taramani Institutional Area Chennai - 600 113 Phone: 22541229 / 22542698; Extn: 208/209

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