WORKSHOP ON INFORMATION RETRIEVAL THROUGH e-JOURNAL GATEWAYS

National Workshop on Building Open Access PhD Theses Digital Libraries Using Nitya D’Arch - November 2-3, 2010

Open Access Online PhD Theses is highly connected to the purpose of universities and the value of scholarship. It advances the university's interest and fulfills its mission to share the knowledge it produces. In India the first university to take initiative in this regard is Mahatma Gandhi University. The launching of the Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU) Open Access Digital Archive of PhD Theses (www.mgutheses.org) in 2008 by Former President of India H E Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam and the live presence of the archive in the web for the last two years is a success story among Indian universities. It is accessible from anywhere at any time through the URL http://www.mgutheses.org since its launching in 2008.

With all the encouragement and instruments provided by UGC during the the last decadeIt MGU Archive is still the only successful full text Open Access archives of dissertations hosted in the web by any Indian University. The archive has been selected as one of the Very Best Web Resources for Education and Research by INTUTE, the European Consortium of universities funded by Government of UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). MGU has also become the first signatory among Indian universities to adopt UGC’s Regulation on E-Theses and contribute data to the UGC’s national Open Access archive of theses at INFLIBNET.

The present Workshop is intended to encourage other universities and research institutes in India to bring results of academic research to public domain and also familiarize Nitya D Arch and the multilingual technologies for full text archiving used in developing the MGU Digital Archives of PhD theses that can be easily adopted by any university or research institute for any Indian language. Nitya D’ Arch facilitates multilingual data input, advanced Boolean query building, and deep indexing which facilitates retrieval of specific pages/sections. The workshop will discuss various problems hidden in the process of digitization of dissertations and introduce tetsed techniques and solutions. It will be an  opportunity for implementers and developers from Indian universities to gain both technical and theoretical insight in Theses Digitaization, technologies for Indian languages, and providing Open Acces to results of public funded research.

No registration fee will be charged for the participants who are selected to undergo the programme in the first batch. But selection will be based on merit of the participants benefits of  this capability building for the sponsoring institute. Cost of boarding, lodging, travel and other expenses are to be born by the sponsoring institution.

For Registration, Contact: Dr. R. Raman Nair, Mahatma Gandhi University Library

Priyadarsini Hills, Kottayam- 686560. Telephone: 0481 273080, 273018, 9387826738

For related programs and announcements, please visit the blog: http://mgutheses.wordpress.org and also the news section of the MGU theses Archive at mgutheses.org from where the Workshop brochure and Registration Form can be downloaded.

Download Registration Form and brochure

Delegates of International Syriac Conference visited MGU Library

Delegates of 7th International Syriac Conference visited Mahatma Gandhi University Library on September 16, 2010. They spend the morning using reference collections, literature collections and getting familiar with the, resources and services. They were fascinated by the MGU Online digital Archive of PhD Theses and the multilingual search mechanism it was having. Those delegates who knew Indian languages searched the Online Archive using Hindi and Malayalam scripts also. They retrieved the theses related to theology and Syriac. Delegates group consisted of representatives from all over the world. Dr. Raman Nair presented copies of Malayalam version of ‘Communist Manifesto’ to those who knew Malayalam, which a group led by him translated and published under Creative Commons Attribution License .Prof. Vielle of oriental institute,Belgium was so impressed by the OPAC (Online Public Access catalogue) and MGU PhD Theses Archive in the Internet while searching documents of Arnos Pathiri. Prof. Christophe Vielle, Coletle Pasquet, Prof. Martin Tamcke, Prof. Jurgen Tubach, Prof. Rainer Voigt, Jean Paul Deschler, Sebastian .P. Brock, Fr. Jacob Thekkeparambil etc. were among the visitors.

SEERI established for advanced teaching and learning of the Syriac language and heritage. Every 4th year, SEERI (St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute), Kottayam is the venue for International Syriac Conference.

                          Dr.Raman Nair chats with Prof.C.Vielle of Oriental             Institute,Louvain,Belgium

 

A close look at the online theses of MGU by delegates in the ICT Lab

Click here for more photos

Register for Free Online Access to all SAGE Journals until October 15, 2010

The next generation of SAGE Journals Online (SJO), SAGE's award-winning journal platform, is now live! To celebrate, free online access to must-have content back to 1999 is available until October 15, 2010. Experience the enhanced user-friendly features and functionality, including:

* Redesigned main portal page
* Expanded discipline search and browse across 50+ disciplines
* Abstract previews on tables of contents and search results
* Popular article lists for most-viewed and most-cited articles
* Pivot searches for article keywords
* Feature hideaway options for author affiliations, related links, and other functions
* Tag-along navigation of content features as users scroll down the article page
* Pop-up references provide full citation information within the full-text of an article

As an existing SAGE Journals Online registrant, simply activate this trial on your existing account. Click the “REGISTER TODAY” link below and “Sign In” using your User name and your password (if you’ve forgotten your password, simply follow the link on the page to receive a new one).

Register Here

Registration only takes a couple of minutes. You’ll then have access to more than 290,000 articles from 560+ journals on SAGE Journals Online—one of the largest and most powerful collections of business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technical, and medical content in the world.