Professional Literature for Indian Universities - A new Initiative by the University Grants Commission
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Date
2003-02
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Publisher
INFLIBNET Centre
Abstract
For some years now, Indian Universities and Colleges have been deprived of access to journals and other professional literature. About
two decades ago, University libraries were able to subscribe to a decent number of journals in various subjects. The subscriptions have
steadily eroded since funds available to universities have not been able to cover the rising cost of the literature, and today access to
journals is all but impossible, except from a handful of major university libraries. It is clear that this trend cannot be reversed in the
conventional fashion by providing increased funding.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently undertaken a major new initiative called the UGC-INFONET, which seeks to
provide high speed internet connections, electronic access to professional literature, and the development of multimedia content to
supplement conventional learning and teaching. In the present paper we describe the part of this project which deals with the provision
of electronic access to journals and other literature for the University sector.
Major organizations like the CSIR, DAE, AICTE etc have set up consortia involving institutes under the aegis of the respective
department to have electronic access. The arrangement here involves incremental payments to be made to publishers to supplement an
already large print subscription base. This arrangement is not possible for the Universities, since the present subscription base is very
poor, and therefore arrangements which involve electronic subscriptions only are being made with publishers.
In our paper we will discuss details about the initiative, the novel aspects of the programme, the great benefits that it will bring to the
University sector, its present and future relationship with other consortia, and the role of INFLIBNET in the planning and long term
implementation of the scheme.
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Keywords
UGC, UGC-INFONET, INFLIBNET