MGUL Moments...: August 2010

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Dr. R. Raman Nair bagged Chattambi Swami Award

Mahatma Gandhi University Librarian Dr. R. Raman Nair has bagged the Chattambi Swami Award instituted by the Attukal Devi Temple Trust. The award is for his initiative to preserve and disseminate the digital archives on the saint.

The award carries a cash prize of Rs. 30,000 and a citation. Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran will distribute the award on Tuesday at a function to be held as part of the birth anniversary of the Swami at the Chattambi Swami Smarakam, Thiruvananthapuram.

The Chattambi Swami Archive Project was designed for conserving published and unpublished works, letters, diaries, notes, memoirs, photographs and other data related to Swami and his associates.

It will be made open world wide through the Internet. Raman Nair along with his wife, had authored the first research based on Chattambi Swami recently.

News Courtesy: The New Indian Express, 31 August 2010

News Courtesy: Deshabhimani, 31 August 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Inauguration of ICT Lab & Workshop on Effective Use of World Wide Web

Dr. Rajan Gurukkal , Hon. Vice Chancellor of MG University inaugurated the Workshop on Effective Use of World Wide Web For Research stating that libraries have to play a very crucial role in ensuring quality of higher education and research. He also stated that the purpose of libraries is to preserve the integrity of civilization, and that it has a moral obligation to adhere to its purpose despite other influences. The Library is infinite in its capacity to contain, connect and disseminate knowledge. Librarians should connect people with accurate information, select, organize and facilitate creation of content and anticipate, identify and meet the needs of the user community. He pointed out the example of Jawaharlal Nehru University and said that an university library should become the live centre of the campus where people meet and discuss and the place should be inviting and open from 8 AM to 11 PM at least and if possible 24 hours, 365 days so that a student or teacher who want to use the knowledge collection of the university at any time of the day during his work gets access to its. The ICT lab of the library was also opened by the Vice Chancellor.

Dr. Sabu Thomas, Professor of Chemistry and the Syndicate member of MGU giving presidential address opined that libraries are not getting their due recognition in the academic systems of India. He also emphasized the need for effective implementation of ICT based technologies in the libraries to extend services to the expected users’ table and also stressed the need to train librarians and library users for the networked environment. He also stressed the need to relate to teaching learning programmes to the library so that students will explore knowledge by themselves and experience the pleasures of Knowledge discovery.

The workshop was led by Shri. K Rajashekaran from KILA, Thrissur who was one of the best trainers in ICT available in India. .He demonstrated the immense possibilities offered by WWW and the techniques and the methods to extract maximum benefit from web based systems. The need for individuals to develop their own “art of online searching” was stressed by him in the programme. Sri. Bijulal, M V from the faculty of School of International Relations presented an evaluation of the workshop commenting that such training can increase the positive use of web for education and research and influence the quality of work. Sri. G. Sreekumar, Public Relations Officer, Dr. R. Raman Nair, and Smt. Laila T Babu from MG University Library, and (Student) spoke on the occasion.