Silchar, May 11: The 10th Annual Meet and Workshop of INDEST-AICTE Consortium was held in NIT Silchar on recently. It was jointly organized by National Institute of Technology Silchar and INDEST-AICTE Consortium, IIT Delhi.
The Inaugural Program of the Meet started with the lighting of lamp in presence of Prof. R K Shevagaonkar, Director IIT Delhi and Chairman, National Steering Committee, INDEST-AICTE Consortium who was the Chief Guest. Prof. Narendra Choudhuri, Director, VNIT was the Guest of honor and Prof. N V Deshpande, Director NIT Silchar presided over the inaugural function. Prof. F A Talukdar, Chairman, LSC and Dean Academic, NIT Silchar welcomes the gathering and briefed about INDEST Meet. Prof. B. D. Gupta in his remark highlighted about the various functions and role of INDEST-AICTE Consortium in promoting use of e-resources in India.
There were also two technical presentations by the faculty of NIT, Silchar entitled “High performance computing and C-DAC center in North-East Region” by Dr. Lenka and on “Micro Machining” by Dr. P K Patwari. Prof. Narendar Choudhuri, Director, VNIT, Nagpur in his address explained how the education system in India had taken a new dimension and brought development in all sphere of life.
The Chief Guest, Prof. R K Shevgaonkar, expressed his delight at the response received by the workshop and appreciated the efforts of the Organizing Secretary, Dr. Kishor Satpathy for having organized the workshop despite the hurdle faced due to the tense situation in the region. In his speech, he gave emphasis on the quality of education and research, as he believes that the ranking of an Institute or University depends on quality of research output rather than producing number. Prof Shevgaonkar also described library to be a temple and one should visit library every day not only for study purpose but also to meet the like-minded people.
Prof. N V Deshpande, Director NIT Silchar in his presidential remarks spoke about the quality of education and research activity. He also deliberate upon the increasing role of libraries in teaching, learning and research programmes of the academic institutions. In the inaugural session, the proceedings of the INDEST -2014 was also released by the Chief Guest. Finally, the organizing secretary, Dr. Kishor Satpathy proposed a formal vote of thanks.
In the first day of the Technical Session, four presentations took its space in the workshop. The first two presentations were given by two IIT librarians. Among them the first paper presented by Dr. D. Jotwani, Librarian, IIT Bombay on “E-Books: Issues and Challenges”.
Dr. Jotwani gave a chronological development of e-books and explained how the printing technology of Gutenberg has been transformed in the digital era. The different business models, formats and access methods along with the issues with E-Books subscription and collection development were also highlighted in his presentation.
Second presentation was by Dr. M.N. Yadav, Dy. Librarian, IIT Chennai on Discovery Services. He explained how the Web Scale Discovery Services is important for the user for saving the search timings through a single search window.
Mr. Saji John, Vice President, Central Asia, EBSCO Services gave his product presentation on Discovery Services, E-Books and other products of EBSCO Services. The second product presentation was given by Mr. Vinay Singh, on Web of Science and products of Thomason Reuters.
The second session included two technical presentations and two product presentations by publishers. Dr. K. M. Baharul Islam, Dean Planning and Development, IIM Kashipur on “E-Resources and IPR” and Dr. B. Sutradhar, Librarian, IIT Kharagpur on “Interoperable Institutional Digital Repositories among IITs: A prototype”. In his presentation Dr. Sutradhar gave emphasis on a prototype on interoperable Institutional Digital Repositories to harvest metadata from IIT IDRs and index it in one central server. He justified the need of interoperable IDRs and shows how it helps to increase the institutional research output. He also proposed that this system may be implemented so that all the in-house resources may be archived and the content of the IDRs may be access from a central server. Dr. Islam in his presentation has highlighted the importance of IPR in the digital environment.
There were two publisher’s presentations, firstly by Taylor and Francis and then by Total Library Solutions on their products and services.
Prof. B. D. Gupta, National Coordinator, INDEST-AICTE Consortium and Chairman, ACL, IIT Delhi gave the detailed presentation about the INDEST Consortium and its activities. Immediately after presentation, floor was opened for discussion. All the members took active participation in the meeting.
In the evening a cultural program was organized by the organizing committee. Campus children of NIT Silchar performed dance, song with full enthusiasm and entertained the audience. In the program, Prof. R. K. Shevagaonkar, Director IIT Delhi astonished the audience by singing a Hindi song.
In this session there were two technical presentations and product presentations by publishers. Dr. R.N. Mishra presented paper on “E-journal: A means to Research potentiality in 21st Century”. He describes about the E-journals and the need of consortia in 21st Century for the research. The second presentation was on “A case study on Antartic Ozone hole research”, by Dr. Prabir G. Dastidar, Director, Ministry of Earth Science.
There were five product presentations from publisher and vendors about their products coverage and services. They are IEEE Xplore, Elsevier, Rapid Radio Solution, Wiley, and Informatics.
The session started with the welcome note by Dr. Neeraj Chourasia, IIT Delhi. This was followed by the remark of Prof. F.A. Talukdar, Dean, Acd. & Chairman, LSC, NIT Silchar.
Dr. B Sutradhar, Librarian, IIT Kharagpur summarized the proceedings of the different session that took place in the workshop.
In the keynote address, Dr. J N Satpathi, President, IASLIC, Kolkata had stressed for forming a National Consortia by merging different consortia existing in India. Shri S. Gopal Krishna from Ministry of HRD, New Delhi in his address focused on INDEST activities & stressed for greater role by INDEST Consortium. Prof Rajat Gupta, Director, NIT Srinagar in his remark appreciated the role on INDEST Consortia in providing resources to the researcher community in a discounted rate.
The Vice-Chancellor of Assam University Prof. Somnath Dasgupta in his valedictory address focused on inter-library cooperation & networking. Dr. N V Deshpande in his Presidential remark appreciated the INDEST Consortium for organizing the event for first time in the North Eastern Region.
Finally, the vote of thanks was given by Dr. Kishor Satpathy, Organizing Secretary of the workshop. Dr. Satpathy had elaborated how the event came to shape with the help of people from the various departments of the institute, sponsors from the state and from the other part of the country. In the function, few institutions were given best award based on their usages of e-resources, which was based on the no. of downloads made by these institutes.(SP News)
