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Greetings & Canon of Parsimony
by Prafulla Chandra 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

Dear All, With the New Year is around the corner, we witness another flood of greetings from individuals. As a contribution towards reducing information overload and to save on precious Internet bandwidth and to avoid clogs in networks, shall we have just a single, generic New Year greeting message posted by the moderator of each listserve (lis-forum, corporate librarians, iatlis, nmlis, etc.). Shall we all consider this message as the greeting which conveys the collective best wishes of all members of the group to each one of us. Perhaps, we could follow the same practice in case of other major Indian festivals too. Many thanks Sincerely T.V. Prafulla Chandra Senior Editor --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NISC Export Services Pvt. Ltd. (an affiliate of NISC International, Inc. USA) S-1 Ballad Estates, St.Ann's School Road, Tarnaka, Hyderabad 500 017 Andhra Pradesh, India - Tel:+91 40 27001517 Tel/Fax:+91 40 27002538 WWW.NISC.COM A company in service to NISC worldwide. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Romila Thapar- library consortium
by vasanth raj 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

Dear sir/Madam, The eminent historian of India Romila Thapar has explained the improvements of library facilities in Indian schools and She also mentioned the need of library consortia in India.It is great that such scholar has rise the need of library consortia in India., which is very important to provide information to large masses with cost effectiveness. For further information: See the THE Hindu " Insight " 26th Dec 2004. Vaantha Raju N E-mail: gooche_19812yahoo.co.in. Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partneronline. Dear sir/Madam, The eminent historian of India Romila Thapar has explained the improvements of library facilities in Indian schools and She also mentioned the need of library consortia in India.It is great that such scholar has rise the need of library consortia in India., which is very important to provide information to large masses with cost effectiveness. For further information: See the THE Hindu " Insight " 26th Dec 2004. Vaantha Raju N E-mail: gooche_19812yahoo.co.in. http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matri… Yahoo! India Matrimony : Find your life partner http://in.rd.yahoo.com/specials/mailtg2/*http://yahoo.shaadi.com/india-matr… online .

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Tsunami
by Subbiah Arunachalam 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

Dear Friends: Christmas and the New Year are occasions for joy and happiness. But unfortunately the earthquake (which did not cause much damage in my city) and the tsunami that followed it, which had devastated the lives of tens of thousands of people in my home state and neighbouring states in India as well as millions in South and South East Asia have rudely interrupted the season of joy and merriment. 14,000 people have lost their lives according to BBC. The figure may go up. Millions have lost their homes and possessions. Chennai is coming back to normal. The government has started to deal with the situation with some seriousness. But the Met office has issued a warning that there may be another tsunami attack any time. What have we done to deserve Nature's fury of such intensity, I wonder. Arun Dear David and friends at First Voice International: We appreciate your concern. The earthquake at 0640 yesterday and the tsunami that followed after a couple of hours have devastaed the state of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. There has been heavy loss of property and possessions in many coastal villages (including Veerampattinam and Nallavadu). One of our villages, Moorthikuppam, is completly inundated and there could be a few deaths. Many fishermen who went into the sea at Veerampattinam, Nallavadu, Thankatchimadam, etc. are yet to return. We are constantly monitoring the situation through all communication channels. Fortunately, all our knowledge centres are safe although some of them are surrounded by water. Our staff and volunteers in the field stations are also safe. Arun

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‘First reports’: The importance of being certain
by Sukhdev Singh 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

Dear Friends There is a good editorial on the issue of False "First-Reported Cases" It has been published in ENT Journal, May 2004 and is available from the following link : http://www.entjournal.com/Past_Issues.htm?ID=3133 The editorial stresses the need for authors as well as journal reviews/editors to be cafeful while making a claim of a first report. They need to do a comprehensive literature search to be certain. Although most cases of false "firstedness" are inadvertent. Such false claims have at least a few undesirable consequences. For instance, the earlier work of others is not given proper credit. Additionally, the chronology of the medical record becomes confusing with the presence of multiple "first-reported cases" on the same topic. Such errors may be particularly embarrassing to authors making false claims. And journal editors' credibility takes a beating. Furthermore, for literature searches should not be limited solely MEDLINE/PubMed. These needs to comprehensive spanning to multiple databases and sources. Dr. Summers and Dr. Kaminski, has also highlighted a case where IndMED produced a more contemporary result than PubMed. IndMED is an Indexing service covering Indian Bio-Medical Journals, http://indmed.nic.in. Thanks Sukhdev Singh, NIC.

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Library Furniture Supplier
by Librarian JUIT 26 Dec '04

26 Dec '04

Dear Mr Rajiv Sharma The Furniture and other library related materials can be obtained from J N Engineering Company A-1/32-B Chankya Place Street Number 9 Pankha Road PO Uttam Nagar New Delhi PH 559808 (old No plz add 2) Regards! On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in wrote : >Send LIS-Forum mailing list submissions to > lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >You can reach the person managing the list at > lis-forum-owner(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of LIS-Forum digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. library furniture supplier (Rajeev Sharma) > 2. Radio frequency info (Prafulla Chandra) > 3. Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004 > (Sanjay Kataria) > 4. Librarians exhorted to hone their skills (MLAI -2004 Report) > (JK Vijayakumar) > 5. ICSU Assessment Panel report on Scientific Data and > Information (Dr. T.B. Rajashekar) > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Message: 1 >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:04:27 +0530 > From: "Rajeev Sharma" <bic.crpo(a)tcil.com> >Subject: [LIS-Forum] library furniture supplier >To: "LIS-FORUM" <lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> >Message-ID: <002c01c4e71e$bce9f1a0$f1ab9385@oracle> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > >Madam/ Sir > >Please give the addresses of library furniture supplier in Delhi and NCR. > >Thanks and Regards, > >Rajeev Kumar Sharma > >Officer - Information Services >Business Information Center >------------------------------------------------------- >Transport Corporation of India Ltd. >TCI House, >69, Institutional Area >Sector 32, Gurgaon >Haryana, 122001 >India >Tel: +91 124 2381603 to 607 Ext. 104 >Fax: +91 124 2381611 >Email: bic.crpo(a)tcil.com >Visit us at: www.grouptci.com >------------------------------------------------------- > Dear Mr Rajiv Sharma The Furniture and other library related materials can be obtained from J N Engineering Company A-1/32-B Chankya Place Street Number 9 Pankha Road PO Uttam Nagar New Delhi PH 559808 (old No plz add 2) Regards! On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in wrote : >Send LIS-Forum mailing list submissions to > lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum >or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > lis-forum-request(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >You can reach the person managing the list at > lis-forum-owner(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific >than "Re: Contents of LIS-Forum digest..." > > >Today's Topics: > > 1. library furniture supplier (Rajeev Sharma) > 2. Radio frequency info (Prafulla Chandra) > 3. Harish Chandra- Sushila Chandra Best Librarian Award 2004 > (Sanjay Kataria) > 4. Librarians exhorted to hone their skills (MLAI -2004 Report) > (JK Vijayakumar) > 5. ICSU Assessment Panel report on Scientific Data and > Information (Dr. T.B. Rajashekar) > > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Message: 1 >Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 11:04:27 +0530 > From: "Rajeev Sharma" <bic.crpo(a)tcil.com> >Subject: [LIS-Forum] library furniture supplier >To: "LIS-FORUM" <lis-forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> >Message-ID: <002c01c4e71e$bce9f1a0$f1ab9385@oracle> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > >Madam/ Sir > >Please give the addresses of library furniture supplier in Delhi and NCR. > >Thanks and Regards, > >Rajeev Kumar Sharma > >Officer - Information Services >Business Information Center >------------------------------------------------------- >Transport Corporation of India Ltd. >TCI House, >69, Institutional Area >Sector 32, Gurgaon >Haryana, 122001 >India >Tel: +91 124 2381603 to 607 Ext. 104 >Fax: +91 124 2381611 >Email: bic.crpo(a)tcil.com >Visit us at: www.grouptci.com >------------------------------------------------------- >

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Google: We've fixed desktop search tool flaw
by Prof. N. Laxman Rao. 24 Dec '04

24 Dec '04

Google: We've fixed desktop search tool flaw December 21, 2004 By Dan Ilett and Graeme Wearden Special to CNET News.com Google says it has fixed a flaw that could have allowed hackers to search the contents of PCs running the company's desktop search tool. According to a statement issued Monday by the Web search company, it has rolled out a fix for the vulnerability. The flaw in the tool was discovered in late November by a Rice University computer scientist and two of his students. A Google representative said, "We were made aware of this vulnerability with the Google Desktop Search software and have since fixed the problem so that all current and future users are secure." Dan Wallach, an assistant professor of computer science at Rice University, discovered the vulnerability while working with graduate students Seth Fogarty and Seth Nielson. Wallach describes it as a composition flaw--where a security weakness is caused by the interaction of several separate components. According to The New York Times, which first reported the discovery of the flaw, Wallach, Fogarty and Nielson found that the Google desktop tool looks for traffic that appears to be going to Google.com and then inserts results from a user's hard disk for a particular search. They managed to trick the Google desktop search program into inserting those results into other Web pages where an attacker could read them. This would only work after a user had visited an attacker's Web site, upon which a Java program (as created by the Rice group) would be able to fool the Google desktop software into providing the user's search information. The program was able to do anything with the results, including transmitting them back to the attacking site. The disclosure of this flaw comes just days after research company Gartner warned businesses to steer clear of Google's desktop search tool until a more robust, enterprise-ready version is released. Security experts have also warned that virus writers could use desktop search tools to make their malware more efficient. Dan Ilett and Graeme Wearden of ZDNet UK reported from London. ===== 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(a)yahoo.com OR naglaxman(a)indiatimes.com ___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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A Must Hear: BBC Radio 4: Open Access / Open Archives / Self-Archiving
by Gerry Mckiernan 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Colleagues/ BBC: "Publish or be Damned_ Perhaps The Most Important Overview/Review on Open Access / Open Archives / Self-Archiving) Ever [:-) With All the Key Players [Yep - All!] Run Time: ~ 38 Minutes Season's Greetings! /Gerry Gerry McKiernan Open Librarian Iowa State University Ames IA 50011 gerrymck(a)iastate.edu P.S. Posted on liblicense-l [ http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0412/msg00151.html ] Thanks! Alison Macdonald ********************Peace******************************* This Tuesday evening [12-21], BBC's Radio 4 has aired a programme on the open access debate ... [snip] The programme will be repeated on Boxing Day (Sunday 26th at 5.00 pm ... ..., but it is also available, to all, on the web for a week (I'm not sure whether that's seven days from today, 21 Dec, or from Sunday, 26 Dec) at the following URL - look under _P_ for "Publish or be Damned_: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

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Congratulations to Prof. Chandrasekhar Rao, who joined as Dean, BRAOU
by Prof. N. Laxman Rao. 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

hello professional friends we all are proud of Prof Chandrasekhar Rao, who had been appointed as Dean, faculty of soc. sc, BRAOU. hardly very few LIS teaches were appointed as Deans. It is really great achievemet for Prof VCR. on behalf of my self, IATLIS and all othe professionals, i congratulate him and wich him all the success in his endeavours. probably u may be aware that he i also incharge of comper centre andfirs person to introduce courses through e-earning. all the best to Prof. VCR laxman rao --- chanrasekhar v <vcsra0(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > Dear Professional colleagues, > Our University has appointed me as Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences. I > reported to the duty today. The Faculty of Social Sciences consists of > seven departments: economics, history, political science, public > administration, sociology, public relations and library & information > science. The appointment is for a period of three years. > > - Prof. V Chandrasekhar Rao > Head, Dept. of Lib & Inf Sci > Dr B R Ambedkar Open University > Prof. G Ram Reddy marg > Road No.46, Jubilee Hills, > Hyderabad - 500 033 > > > > --------------------------------- > Do you Yahoo!? > Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. ===== 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(a)yahoo.com OR naglaxman(a)indiatimes.com ___________________________________________________________ ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun! http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

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Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All
by Subbiah Gunasekaran 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

Dear Memebers: Please read the article below. Thanks Guna ----------------------- Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All By Wade Roush January 2005 Wikipedia is the worlds newest, largest, most varied, most participatory, and most controversial encyclopedia. It is composed and edited entirely by volunteer netizens; as of November 2004, there were some 29,000 Wikipedians writing for it in 109 different languages. The sites massive archive, including 380,000 articles in English alone, puts even Britannica to shame. If you dont see an article addressing your passion for miniature-teapot collecting, dont fret. Just write one. Among Wikipedias many unusual aspects is that its cocreator, Larry Sanger, is a professional epistemologista philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge and who, like many before him, once questioned the possibility of knowing anything with certainty. Sanger says that as a bookish teenager growing up in Anchorage, AK, he decided to model himself after Descartes and become a devout doubter, believing only the things that he could directly perceive or that could be logically derived from what he perceived. These were the thoughts of a 17-year-old, smiles Sanger, whos now 36. But eventually, he says, he began to realize that some truths cannot be observed: If the very project of seeking the truth required that I assumed something, then I would assume that. This more pragmatic view sustained him through his college and graduate years as a philosophy student and even became the focus of his dissertation. But by that time, Sanger says, he was also becoming intrigued by the Internet and its possibilities as a publishing medium. And this convergence of interests helped him to realize that a newly invented type of website called a wikia forum that allows a user to add content...but also allows that content to be edited by any other user, to quote the Wikipedia definitioncould be used to assemble the contributions of thousands of amateurs into a reasonably truthful online encyclopedia. How? The subject of an encyclopedia is received knowledge, Sanger says, not absolute knowledge. The former, he says, consists of the sort of claims one can make in the form It is generally known that.... It could be false, but it could still be generally known, in the sense that people thought it was true. This idea underlay the nonbias policy that Sanger instituted for Nupedia, the expert-written online encyclopedia he was hired to edit in 2000. The policy says that contentious subjects should be described in a way that fairly represents every partys point of view. Wikipedia kept the policy when it spun off of Nupedia, and Sanger cites it as a main reason for the new sites success. Nonbias is a difficult ideal to live up to. Indeed, the most common complaint against Wikipedia is that it is unreliable; since anyone can publish or edit any article instantly, theres nothing except the diligence of other contributors to keep favoritism, misinformation, vandalism, or sheer stupidity out of the encyclopedias pages. But Wikipedias staff of volunteers is better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved, Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry is going to be instantly noticed and corrected. But theres a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeplythe fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in revert wars in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says hes afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedias quality. Sanger may be speaking from the heart. He left Wikipedia in 2002 when funding for his position ran out and no longer contributes, in part because of the lingering sting of some particularly nasty revert wars. He now lives in a suburb of Columbus, and lectures in the philosophy department at Ohio State University, his alma mater. To build a public encyclopedia, you dont need faith in the possibility of knowledge, he says. What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/forward30105.asp?trk=nl Dear Memebers: Please read the article below. Thanks Guna ----------------------- Larry Sangers Knowledge Free-for-All By Wade Roush January 2005 Wikipedia is the worlds newest, largest, most varied, most participatory, and most controversial encyclopedia. It is composed and edited entirely by volunteer netizens; as of November 2004, there were some 29,000 Wikipedians writing for it in 109 different languages. The sites massive archive, including 380,000 articles in English alone, puts even Britannica to shame. If you dont see an article addressing your passion for miniature-teapot collecting, dont fret. Just write one. Among Wikipedias many unusual aspects is that its cocreator, Larry Sanger, is a professional epistemologista philosopher who explores the very nature and sources of knowledge and who, like many before him, once questioned the possibility of knowing anything with certainty. Sanger says that as a bookish teenager growing up in Anchorage, AK, he decided to model himself after Descartes and become a devout doubter, believing only the things that he could directly perceive or that could be logically derived from what he perceived. These were the thoughts of a 17-year-old, smiles Sanger, whos now 36. But eventually, he says, he began to realize that some truths cannot be observed: If the very project of seeking the truth required that I assumed something, then I would assume that. This more pragmatic view sustained him through his college and graduate years as a philosophy student and even became the focus of his dissertation. But by that time, Sanger says, he was also becoming intrigued by the Internet and its possibilities as a publishing medium. And this convergence of interests helped him to realize that a newly invented type of website called a wikia forum that allows a user to add content...but also allows that content to be edited by any other user, to quote the Wikipedia definitioncould be used to assemble the contributions of thousands of amateurs into a reasonably truthful online encyclopedia. How? The subject of an encyclopedia is received knowledge, Sanger says, not absolute knowledge. The former, he says, consists of the sort of claims one can make in the form It is generally known that.... It could be false, but it could still be generally known, in the sense that people thought it was true. This idea underlay the nonbias policy that Sanger instituted for Nupedia, the expert-written online encyclopedia he was hired to edit in 2000. The policy says that contentious subjects should be described in a way that fairly represents every partys point of view. Wikipedia kept the policy when it spun off of Nupedia, and Sanger cites it as a main reason for the new sites success. Nonbias is a difficult ideal to live up to. Indeed, the most common complaint against Wikipedia is that it is unreliable; since anyone can publish or edit any article instantly, theres nothing except the diligence of other contributors to keep favoritism, misinformation, vandalism, or sheer stupidity out of the encyclopedias pages. But Wikipedias staff of volunteers is better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved, Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry is going to be instantly noticed and corrected. But theres a second complaint against Wikipedia that bothers Sanger more deeplythe fractiousness among Wikipedians themselves. Sanger says participants often become embroiled in revert wars in which overprotective authors undo the changes others try to make to their articles. He says hes afraid that this kind of behavior drives away academics and other experts whose contributions would otherwise raise Wikipedias quality. Sanger may be speaking from the heart. He left Wikipedia in 2002 when funding for his position ran out and no longer contributes, in part because of the lingering sting of some particularly nasty revert wars. He now lives in a suburb of Columbus, and lectures in the philosophy department at Ohio State University, his alma mater. To build a public encyclopedia, you dont need faith in the possibility of knowledge, he says. What you have to have faith in is human beings being able to work together. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/01/issue/forward30105.asp?trk=nl http://clients.rediff.com/signature/track_sig.asp http://ads.rediff.com/RealMedia/ads/adstream_nx.cgi/www.rediffmail.com/inbo…

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Invitation for a Lecture
by Sangeeta Kaul, Network Manager, DELNET 23 Dec '04

23 Dec '04

DELNET Developing Library Network cordially invites you to the lecture on UNESCO : Communication & Information in Asia by Dr. Susanne Ornager Advisor for Communication & Information in Asia & Pacific, UNESCO on Monday, January 3, 2005 at 6:30 p.m. at India International Centre (Conference Room I) 40 Lodhi Estate, New Delhi-110003 Dr. Gulshan Rai Executive Director, ERNET India Ministry of Communications & IT, Govt. of India has kindly agreed to preside RSVP 24610802

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