Dr. Gopakumar has placed a right view for us to mull upon. I would blame the supervisors/guides who are supervising the works of such students. They need to think of the values that they are inculcating among the new generation of professionals. Long, unworked, questionnaires; irrelevant questions to the topic of study have become commonplace in the questionnaires these days, and at least two questionnaires a month are received. Most of the times I insist to reduce them to only one page else I opt not to answer. Some of them respond positively to my request (so what it means that the questionnaires are not designed properly). I appreciate them and find time to provide information. A recently received questionnaire taking shelter of RTI Act was a height of it and myself and my colleague in the library were shot down with this 'new idea' in obtaining information! Dr. Tadsad has contributed to Dr. Gopakumar's views and I expect many to follow. Keeping our professional values aside, we have to honour RTI Act and we do require providing information within the scope of RTI Act. However, the RTI Act compels us to deliver the information as it exists - either in print form or electronic form. ONE MUST NOT 'CREATE' NEW INFORMATION FOR A QUERY. My experience as PIO of a public authority also makes me comfortable in providing the information within the scope of the Act without spending much time on it. We must not say 'no' to the query (else there are punishment!), but take scope in consideration. With this communication (it is longer) I think all those who are responsible to provide information would have some clue on how to reply to such specific queries. The query - live example - below was on an institutional repository. I have clubbed the queries and reworded for brevity for a common answer: 1. Objectives 2. Contents available 3. Disciplinewise details of contents 4. Is it OAI-PMH Compliant? 5. Details of persistant identifier or handle system 6. Specifications of software The only answer to all six queries was: 'visit http://drs.nio.org/' (Reason: if the information that is available in public domain provide the path). So also was answered with other link - Mandate: visit roarmap.eprintst.org/325/ 1. Year of establishment 2. Which consortium it belongs 3. What are acceptable document formats 4. Number of elibigle content depositors 5. Standards in controling subject headings 6. Unique author control/identifier 7. Details of infrastructure 8. Staff responsible for managing repository 9. Repository managed with non-library staff 10. Budget and financial details 11. Value added services The only answer to all 11 queries was "Information not available". Because such information is not documented - at least in our case (under RTI Act, one is bound to provide information that exists in documentary form)! So the lesson is a fellow who is trying to screw we professionals using RTI Act, should be replied that way only! 1. Control on various versions of articles 2. Authority for deposition I provided a bibliographic information to a published article where this info is available, and if needed this to be supplied at additional cost of Rs.2 per page as per RTI Act 1. Which is metadata schema 2. Who does technical management 3. Who can access contents There was an interesting RTI case and the Commissioner had given a historical decision that public authorities are not bound to reply to the questions (with when, which, what, who, etc) in the name of seeking information. So such queries/questions were out of the scope of the definition of information (2.f) of the RTI Act. 1. Institute hardware infrastructure The IT head 'compiled' the information in couple of pages to supply the same, I have asked for document delivery charges as above. I hope this can be a good case study! Regards, - Tapaswi -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] On Behalf Of Gopakumar Velayudhanpillai Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 6:47 PM To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Data collection through Right to Information request - Is it right to do so? Dear friendsI am posting this to know about your opinion on a tendency found among research scholars now a days. I have been getting questionnaires of PhD research under the Right to Information Act. As you are aware most of these questionnaires are of minimum 8 to 10 pages and the questions are mostly to be answered on a personal level. Right to Information is a statute designed and promulgated with a specific cause to bring transparency to the governance and its machinery. But this seems to be misutilized by many for personal purposes. One example is this. Data collection for research is the real task in research and you have to enjoy this with utmost sportsman spirit. If there are occasions were you are not getting minute data which are essential, you may use this method. I am more worried about this as this tendency is more among library science professionals. Dr GOPAKUMAR V. University Librarian,Goa University Taleigao Plateau, Goa. PIN 403 206 Personal webpage http://www.vgkumar.weebly.com/ gopakumar.v@rediffmail.com Office Phone: 08326519012 Mobile No: 09447056713 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.