Digital Library Collection Policy by Maulik Gandhi | eBook

ABSTRCT

This paper discusses collection development policy, development methodology, information
organisation, access and information retrieval, legal issues, management, purpose and philosophy. It
sets out some key points involved and the detailed plans required in the process, offers pieces of
advice and guidance for the practicing librarians and Information scientists. Digital Libraries are
being created today for diverse communities and in different fields. Digital library collections have
become an attractive and feasible proposition for library and information professionals around the
world. The paper ends with a call to integrate digitization into the plans and policies of any
organization to maximize its effectiveness.

History of Indian National Library Part 1

Calcutta Public Library (CPL)

Calcutta Public Library was established in 1836. It was not a Government institution. It was running on a proprietary basis. Every person subscribing Rs. 300/- in one payment or three instalments was to be considered a proprietor. Poor students and others were allowed to use the library free of charge for a specified period of time. The then Governor General, Lord Metcalf transferred 4,675 volumes from the library of the College of Fort William to the Calcutta Public Library. This and donations of books from individuals formed the nucleus of the library. Prince Dwarkanath Tagore was the first proprietor of the Calcutta Public Library.

Both the Indian and foreign books, specially from Britain, were purchased for the library. In the report of 1850 we find that the library started collecting books in Gujarati, Marathi, Pali, Ceylonese and Punjabi. Donations were regularly made by individuals as well as by the Government of Bengal and North Western Provinces. The Calcutta Public Library had a unique position as the first public library in this part of the country. Such a well-organised and efficiently run library was rare even in Europe during the first half of the 19th century. Because of the efforts of the Calcutta Public Library, the National Library has many extremely rare books and journals in its collection.

To be continue...........

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JISC and Oxford University Library Services

JISC and Oxford University Library Services hosted a meeting in Oxford on Thursday to mark the conclusion of JISC's Libraries of the Future Campaign. The event took place in the afternoon, with a series of challengingly short presentations from a set of well-known librarians and commentators: Sarah Thomas, Bodley's Librarian at Oxford; Chris Batt – former Chief Executive of the Museums, Libraries & Archives Council; Santiago de la Mora, of Google Books (Europe); Peter Murray-Rust, Reader in Molecular Informatics at Cambridge; and Robert Darnton, Harvard University Librarian. The event was amplified - in the way JISC is now becoming very good at – with bloggers and microbloggers in place, a Twitter-feed beamed onto one of the three projection screens; a Second Life version of the event (featuring the usual Star Wars cast of avatars) displayed on another; and a live video-stream of the event available from JISC's website. In fact, it was possibly overamplified, as I realised at one point when I checked the website to see not only that a particular colleague was obviously present in the audience somewhere behind me, but that his laptop screen was also in view (fortunately displaying only innocent windows, as far as I could see). Next moment, a tweet appeared on the Twitter-feed screen exclaiming about the fact that people's screens were visible. While there are some obvious benefits to amplification, the splitting of attention that it engenders can sometimes seem to defeat the point of having a conference, which is an opportunity for concentration. I expect we will move towards a happy medium in due course, and JISC is leading the way in helping us find it.

There were several useful insights. Sarah Thomas presented the Bodleian as intertwining past and future with the interesting phrase used in its literature about the New Bodleian, Rediscovering our radical past. Chris Batt thought that librarians should turn themselves into 'Knowledge Warriors' (and a glance at the Second Life audience suggested some had already done so). Santiago de la Mora, talking about Google having digitised seven million books, estimated that 75% of books in library collections were in-copyright but out of print, and so off-web. Google wanted to 'bring them back to life'. Peter Murray-Rust's presentation was eagerly awaited, since he had prepared for it by blogging as he did his research over the last couple of weeks. I had sent him a comment, of which he reproduced only the first paragraph in his blog (which gave my theory as to why so few librarians had responded to his requests for views). The piece he omitted sketched out my interests in how libraries need to be plural and address issues of multiple scale, and what this means for library leadership. It said the following:

We have many opinions within our group about the future of libraries. Lorcan Dempsey, who leads the Research Division, talks about them a lot on his blog, as do my colleagues and I who work with our 'RLG Partnership' - an international grouping of research libraries, museums and archivists – in hangingtogether.org. Some recent library future-gazing has been prompted by the recent visit to OCLC in Dublin Ohio by Richard Ovenden, Associate Librarian at the University of Oxford, whose Distinguished Seminar presentation was commented on in our blog by Merrilee Proffit. Merrilee mentions the recent Taiga Provocative Statements document, and our own Information Contexts document of almost two years ago.............

Read more on http://hangingtogether.org/?p=652

University Library Twinning

The library of the Technische Universität München (TUM) has recently twinned itself with Thammasat University Library in Thailand. It provides a link to the Library Twinning Declaration from its home page:

Thammasat University Thailand and Technische Universität München
Modern academic libraries have a central role in providing information for study and research in a world that is evolving from an information society model towards a communication society of sharing and interaction.
Cooperation and support are cornerstones of the efficient development of standards and best practice.
In the spirit of a global professional fellowship, Thammasat University Thailand and Technische Universität München are proud to announce a special alliance of both their university libraries.
In the context of this library twinning declaration TUT and TUM library are committed to

furthering friendship and understanding by dialogue between their staffs

sharing knowledge and experience for the benefit of their patrons

The library managements involved want to encourage among their members of staff

a mutual interest and understanding of the working environment of each other's libraries

a mutual concern for the improvement of each other's services

an exchange of correspondence and information to enhance the professional activities of each other's libraries

We believe such a formal relationship would be beneficial to the libraries, their staffs and patrons and facilitate the exchange of professional information and programmes between the two libraries.
Together we want to address common issues to improve the local knowledge infrastructure and be a part of the cutting edge of library service development.
By this declaration the libraries of Thammasat University Thailand and Technische Universität München evidence their mutual willingness to give their full support to a thriving and efficient cooperation.
On behalf of the libraries
Ms Srichan Chancheewa
Director Thammasat University Libraries
Reiner Kallenborn
TUM University Librarian

TUM Library has similar relationships with Nanyang Technological University Library, Singapore, and Dublin City University.

When I worked at Edinburgh University Library, it partnered with Johns Hopkins University in a similar spirit of mutual cooperation, under a Partnership Agreement. The two libraries also expressed a wish for staff exchanges and saw each other as 'preferred partners' for bids to grant-awarding bodies. Such agreements can be useful, though can also be subject to the vagaries of changing senior personnel at the twinned institutions (and so can evaporate when the parents of the twins leave or move on). I'd be interested to know of twin arrangements which have created significant value which survives to new generations of library managements. In particular, how do the twins progress their mutual concern for the improvement of each other's services, and is there any sharing of infrastructure to advance this? As we consider the appropriateness of particular scales for particular objectives, twins are the smallest-scale consortia that can exist. Are there benefits to that, and what are they? And is a library which is twinned with three different partners in different countries effectively in an international consortium of four?

Source: http://hangingtogether.org/?p=674