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UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium-An Overview

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 UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium- An Overview
A.Muthuraj1
Mphil, Research Scholar
Bharathidasan University
Tiruchirappali.
T.Rajkumar2
Mphil, Research Scholar
Bharathidasan University
Tiruchirappali.
Abstract
The last few years, the UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium has been
providing Indian Universities with electrical access to national and international scholarly
journals. The journals covering the areas of Physical science, Natural Science, Social
Science and Humanities and the long standing need of university community for access to
scholarly publications. In this paper discuss about UGC INFONET Digital Library
Consortium.
Keywords:
Digital Library, E-Resources, Consortium
Introduction
Library cooperation amongst institutions for sharing their library resources is best
practised for decades. Traditionally, the primary purpose of establishing a library consortium
is to share the resources including books and periodicals. The mode of cooperation has the
transformation of new information technology from print based environment to digital
environment. The UGC launched two ambitious programmes for the Academic community in
universities. The first initiative, namely “UGC- INFONET Connectivity Programme”
provides for Networking of University Campuses. The second initiative called the “UGC-
Infonet Digital Library Consortium” provides access to selected scholarly electronic journals
and databases in different disciplines.
Digital Library

“Digital Libraries are electronic libraries in which large numbers of geographically

distributed users can access the contents of large and diverse repositories of electronic objects
in the form of text, images, maps, sounds, videos, catalogues, government, scientific and
other data stored in hypertext, hyper media and multimedia compositions like CD-ROMs,
Online databases etc”- Yerkey and Jorgensin.
Consortium

A Consortium could be describes as a group of organizations who come together to

fulfill a combined objective that usefully requires co-operation the sharing of resources. And
need to have a clear mutual goal in order to ensure their success. The main should be to
deliver” more than the sum of the individual parts”. A library Consortium formation can be
local, regional, state, national and international level.

INFLIBNET
Ø Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre is an autonomous Inter-
University Centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India.
Ø It is a major National Programme initiated by the UGC in March 1991 with its Head
Quarters at Gujarat University Campus, Ahmadabad.
Ø Initially started as a project under the IUCAA, it became an independent Inter-
University Centre in June 1996.
Ø INFLIBNET is involved in modernizing university libraries in India and connecting
them as well as information centres in the country through a nation-wide high speed
data network using the state-of-art technologies for the optimum utilisation of
information.
Ø INFLIBNET is set out to be a major player in promoting scholarly communication
among academicians and researchers in India.
UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium
Ø The UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium was formally launched in
December, 2003 by Honourable Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, the President of India soon
after providing the Internet connectivity to the universities in the year 2003 under the
UGC-INFONET programme.
Ø The Consortium provides current as well as archival access to more than 7500+ core
and peer-reviewed journals and 10 bibliographic databases from 26 publishers and
aggregators in different disciplines.
Ø The programme has been implemented in phased manner. In the first phase that began
in 2004, access to e-resources was provided to 50 universities who had Internet
connectivity under the UGC- INFONET Connectivity programme of the UGC
Ø In the second phase, 50 more universities were added to the programme in the year
2005.
Ø So far 209 Universities including 14 National Law schools and central universities
that come under the purview of UGC have been provided differential access to
subscribed e-resources.
Ø These e-resources covers almost all subject disciplines including arts, humanities,
social sciences, physical sciences, chemical Sciences, life sciences, computer
sciences, mathematics and statistics, etc.
Ø The programme is wholly funded by the UGC and executed by the INFLIBNET
(Information and Library Network) Centre, Gandhinagar.
 Ø The benefit of subscription to e-resources would also be extended to the colleges, to
begin with the College for Potential with Excellence (CPE) and autonomous colleges.
Ø The Consortium has also launched its "Associate Membership Programme" wherein
private universities and other research organizations are welcomed to join the
Consortium for selected e-resources.

Electronic Resources

The Consortium subscribes to electronic resources covering all major subject

discipline being taught in universities. It includes wide variety of materials e.g. e-journals,
bibliographic databases, reviews published by scholarly societies, university presses,
institutional and commercial publishers. The Consortium subscribes to 19 full-text e-
resources and 10 bibliographic databases from 23 publishers and aggregators. The member
institutions are provided differential access to these resources based on their needs and
activity profile as per the recommendation of the National Steering Committee. The resources
subscribed by the Consortium can broadly be divided into the following

Two categories:

i) Full-text Electronic Resources

Full-text electronic resources contain complete articles along with their bibliographic
details. The consortium subscribes to full-text e-resources from scholarly societies, university
presses, commercial publishers and aggregators including American Chemical Society,
American Institute of Physics, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Cell
Press, Springer Link, JSTOR, Project Muse, etc. All full-text resources subscribed by the
Consortium contain electronic journals.
ii) Bibliographic Databases
Bibliographic databases contain references to articles published in journals,
conference proceedings or chapters in books. Most bibliographic databases contain abstracts
of the articles along with links to their full-text. A list of full-text resources and bibliographic
databases subscribed under the Consortium of library.

INFLIBNET Centre, Ahmadabad

UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium

Sl.No Electronic URL No. of Main Subjects

Resources journal
s
1 ACS http://www.pubs.acs.org/ 50 Chemistry
2 AIP http://www.scitation.org/ 19 Physics
3 APS http://www.journals.aps..o 13 Physics
rg/
4 Annual http://arjournals.annualrevi 50 Biomedical, Life, Social
Reviews ews.org/ Science
5 CUP-STM http://journals.cambridge.o 300 All Subjects
rg/
6 Economic http://www.epw.in/ 2100 Economics, Politics,
Political Culture,
Weekly Sociology
7 Emerald – http://iris.emeraldinsight.c 30 Education, Engineering,
Lib.Sci om/ Lib.Sci, Marketing
8 Hein Online https://www.wshein.com/ Law, Legal
9 Institute of http://www.iop.org/EJ/ 77 Physics
Physics
10 JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/ 140 Arts & Science Collections
11 Manupatra http://www.manupatrafast. Law(Taxation, Legal)
com
12 Nature http://www.nature.com/ 1 Biotechnology
13 OUP http://www.oxfordjournals 300 Science, Social Science,
.org Law, Medicine
14 Portland Press http://www.portlandpress.c 8 Biochemical
om/pp/ default.htm
15 Project Euclid http://projecteuclid.org/ 21 Mathematics &Statistics
16 Project Muse http://muse.jhu.edu/journal 389 Humanities and Social
s science
17 RSC http://www.rsc.org/ 75 Chemical Sciences
18 Wiley Online http://olabout.wiley.com 1500 Life , health, physical
science, social science&
humanities
19 Westlaw India http://www.westlawindia.c 9 Law
om
20 Taylor & http://journalsonline.tandf. 2671 Science, Engineering,
Francis co.uk/ Humanities
21 Springer Link http://www.springerlink.co 2700 Science, Engineering,
m/ Humanities
22 SIAM Journals http://epubs.siam.org/ 17 Applied Mathematics and
Computational Sciences
23 Science Direct http://www.sciencedirect.c 2500 Physical Sciences, Life
om/ Sciences, Health Sciences,
Engineering
24 RSC Archive http://pubs.rsc.org 97 Chemical Sciences,
Engineering, Medicine
 Bibliographic Databases
25 ISID http://isid.org.in/ 64 Industry, Trade,
Technology, Employment,
Public health, Mass medias
26 JGate 44,610 Engineering and
http://jgateplus.com/
Technology
27 MathSciNet http://www.ams.org/maths 550 Mathematical
cinet Reviews
28 SciFinderSchol http://www.cas.org/SCIFI 20 Chemistry and Related
ar NDER/ Sciences
SCHOLAR/index.html
29 Web of http://www.webofknowle 4,700 Science, Social Science,
Science dge.com/ Arts, Humanities

Conclusion

The UGC INFONET Digital Library consortium is to provide access to qualitative

electronic resources including Full- Text and Bibliographic databases to academic institutions
at lower rates of subscription. The consortium headquarter is assigned to function as a
resource centre with an aim to cater to the needs of its member for resources accessible to
them in electronic media or are available in print media.

References
1. Adhok Babu, T. (2005). Planning of Consortia for E-Journals. XXI National Seminar
on IASLIC .

2. Books, T. (2011). UGC- NET Library and Information Science. Chennai: Almighty
Book Company.

3. www.inflibnet.ac.in/econ/guidelineforugcinfonetdlc.pdf.

4. Komrelli, P. (2014). E-Resources in UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium: A

Profile. International Journal of Digital Library Services , 273-274.

5. Rohatgi, A. (2015). Textbook of Library and Information Science. New Delhi:

Wisdom Press.

6. www.inflibnet.ac.in.

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