I have couple of objections to make to Dr. Balakrishnan's response. 1. I don't think anybody will expect that he can find number of books available by searching for documents. No professional site should provide that kind of interface to find the number of items available. 2. The site presents outdated information in some places, which let the users believe that the site is not updated from long time. For example, there is a "current status" link in the main page, which links to http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/status.html. That page has a link to "Centre and Language wise Report" at the end of the page, which links to http://www.new.dli.ernet.in/ status_centre.htm And it is an outdated document dated 10-10-2006. I don't think any user will expect that there will be another link in the site which gives the latest information after seeing that. 3. The right way to find the current status is to visit http:// www.new.dli.ernet.in/cgi-bin/status.cgi, which I think is updated every day. 4. It is not appropriate to blame the person who asked the question. It just indicates that it is hard to find things in the website and usability and accessibility of the website needs to be improved. I spent many hours looking at the site without finding this information for many hours. Thanks, Anand Chief Web Programmer Open Library http://demo.openlibrary.org On 10-Nov-07, at 8:53 AM, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

Friends:

Prof. N Balakrishnan has provided a clarification to Mr Anup Kumar Das, who had posted a message to this list on 6 November (from Puna Das).

Subbiah Arunachalam

=====

Dear Arun: The guy is again wrong regarding the CDAC Kolkatta books and has not spent even a minute looking at the web site- Please go to www.new.dli.ernet.in and just click on the left hand side on the search button leaving all fields default- you will get the total number of books as on that date- Next if you choose scanning centre as cdac Kolkatta then you will find 3565 books totaling more than 1.6 million pages- all these are common sense and you must make sure th guys without exploring do not make unsavy comments- we are professional and have done what no one has done so far- Put one million books on the web-

Balki

Regards Balki

...

Dear Balki:

There is some concern expressed about the Million Books project. I am forwarding a mail I received today. Best wishes.

Arun

--- Puna Das wrote:

...

Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 06:49:01 +0000 (GMT) From: Puna Das To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in CC: digilib_india@yahoogroups.com, atanu.garai@gmail.com Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] CMU Million Book Project

Dear Colleagues

Atanu wanted to point out so called ‘current status’ of Digital Library of India project. This is very unfortunate that the tech-savvy DLI team could not provide us latest statistics on its site. The statistics available here is more than a year old. Another point I would like to raise, DLI’s Kolkata Mega Scanning Centre could not provide us access to a single book they have scanned using tax-payers money. To my estimate, less than 25% scanned documents are available through DLI websites. How can we please help out this overburdened project team having a blurred vision?

Thanking you

Anup Kumar Das CSSP, JNU New Delhi-110067 Email: puna_05@yahoo.co.in Ph. 011-26704400

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