Dear Friends, Read this blog : http://hcurocks.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/open-access-scholarship/ I am happy to share this blog post about Open Access and Vidyanidhi Digital Library by one of the early champions of Open Access including ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertations) movement in IndiaProf. Ram Ramaswamy, Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad. Prof. Ramswamy (then professor and Dean at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) with whom I had the privilege of interacting during my efforts way back in 2003, to enlist the support of different universities in India to join hands with Vidyanidhi Digital Library initiative (www.vidyanidhi.org.in). He was one of those academics who showed lots of enthusiasm and championed the cause of Open Access and ETDs. Though JNU did not join Vidyanidhi (despite several efforts and meetings), Prof. Ramaswamy gave away all his students theses to Vidyanidhi. Please also do not forget read his blog about S.R.Ranganathan http://hcurocks.wordpress.com//?s=ranganathan&search=Go We need more academics and VCs who blog and share their thoughts on scholarship issues. May his tribe increase! In line with his belief about making things happen and to reach academic books reach a wider audience, Prof. Ramaswamy is also associated with the Scholars Without Borders initiative - http://www.swb.co.in/ which has been striving to help deliver books across the world. Let me take this opportunity to share the vignettes of Vidyanidhi. Vidyanidhi began championing the cause of Open Access and ETD way back in 1999 and the Vidyanidhi project funded by the then NISSAT was initiated in 2000. We expanded with funding from Ford Foundation in 2003. Vidyanidhi is one of the earliest and long-standing online digital libraries. We are online since 2001 (contrary to the claims by Mahatma Gandhi University Library that their online theses library-www.Mgutheses.org is the first though started in 2008☺ It is the decennial of Vidyanidhi! We have been online without a break for 10 years. So we can perhaps claim that it is one of the longest surviving online libraries in India. We are still the largest digital library of Indian Theses with more than 12,000 full texts available online. We were the first online library to offer a Unicode compliant system to access Indian Language Database and automatic transliteration of Kannada and Hindi metadata. It is due to our championing and advocacy efforts that the UGC adopted the ETD policy in 2005 and current move towards the ETD repository initiative. Shalini -- Dr. Shalini R.Urs Executive Director and Professor International School of Information Management University of Mysore Manasagangotri Mysore - 570006 Phone : + 91 821 2514699 Fax : + 91 821 2519209 www.isim.ac.in ISiM - Management School of IT. Technology School for IM -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.