World Digital Libraries: An international Journal

The article focuses on the initiatives of Government of Gujarat (GoG) to publish categories of publications through the websites of various departments and other entities on open access domain since February 2000. The GoG has been trying to improve the quality of its websites and policies of information management. However, it is essential to bring all the documents published by GoG which are available on open access domain at one place to provide better access in vernacular language to its large number of users or citizens. The article discusses the current practice of GoG to manage the documents, such as government resolutions, notifications, and circulars through websites, the searching and retrieval mechanism, language of user interface, online visitors to the various websites, etc. Further, the article discusses the mechanism to create a digital library through Greenstone Digital Library Software (GSDL) in vernacular language. It also presents the One-Stop-Search model which enables the users to search the documents through Gujarati (vernacular) language interface.

The transformation of research to e-research emphasizes on the value of research data. Development of re3data.org, a unique registry for research data preservation across countries, is a great opportunity for researchers. This registry has been using a tool to identify the most effective repository resources for desired research. The primary objective of this article is to explore research data understanding in the Indian research community and the auxiliary objective is to depict an overview for present development of research data preservation in Indian repositories.

Technological developments imply a genuine transformation of the entire landscape of modern-day society. Information is power and its preservation and dissemination is a treasure for generations to come. The digital content, available today, is throwing serious challenges among the information industry to preserve and provide secured access; Open Access Digital Library Software, such as DSpace, E-prints, and Greenstone, etc., is capable of meeting such challenges. The library and information science (LIS) professionals have been imparted various training platforms to learn pedagogy of such software. DSpace is one of the most prominent and globally used institutional repository software. This article presents an effort to understand the impact of DSpace training programmes/workshops on LIS professionals.

The study has been conducted with a purpose to make an assessment of the usage of a selected set of e-book collections with an objective to work out the similarity or difference in their use across selected states of northern India. An effort has also been made to see whether the users use a single or a combination of e-book collections. Seven sampled universities were surveyed personally by the investigator for collecting data about the questions under investigation. A questionnaire was used as a data collection tool. The investigator also availed of the telephonic and e-mail communication and had a face-to-face interaction with respondents to collect prompt responses, substantiate the responses, and remove ambiguities thereof. Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) was analyze the data on an empirical basis. Chi Squared (χ²) Test has been used to derive association between the variables and test the level of significance. It has been found that only one e-book collection, the ‘CAB e-Books’ is being subscribed and that too by only 42% of the libraries. Thus, the e-book collections has not yet gained popularity among the users of north Indian agricultural libraries, as this e-book collection is found to be used only by 58.33% of users. However, the libraries where the e-books are being subscribed regularly register a comparatively high usage than the ones where it is not as it is found that majority (77.30%) of users therein use e-books on a ‘daily’ basis. Krishikosh, the recently initiated e-book platform in India is fast gaining its popularity. It is also statistically verified that there is a significant association between ‘use of e-book collections’ and the ‘State’ & ‘University’ as two variables; that is, the usage of the e-book collections under study varies quite significantly from state to state and from university to university (p < 0.01).