Career Guidance Programme

Career Guidance Programme for Library and Information Science Students at K.E College Mannanam, Kottayam on 12 May 2012. Read more : http://liskeralaseminars.blogspot.in/

INFOPORT: INFLIBNET Subject Gateway for Indian Electronic-Resources

A Subject Gateway to Indian Electronic Resources developed by the INFLIBNET Centre was launched by Prof. Mahendra P Lama, Vice Chancellor, Sikkim University during the inaugural session of 8th PLANNER 2012 on 1stMarch, 2012. 

The InfoPort is designed and developed by the INFLIBNET Centre to serve as a comprehensive gateway to all Indian scholarly content. The gateway open-ups the Indian scholarly content scattered over the Internet through an integrated interface that support search, browse and multiple listing. 

The resources covered in the infoPort are organized under ten major categories (000 to 999) according to the Dewey Decimal Classification. Resources in the InfoPort are also arranged alphabetically by subjects. 

The Info-Port is now accessible at: http://infoport.inflibnet.ac.in/

Google starts ranking journals

Google announced a new feature to its Scholar service. This was no prank. It was the genuine debut of a new tool called Google Scholar Metrics. The service follows the same principle that has made Google's web search engine so successful - when you are unsure what a user is looking for, give them a list of options ranked by a metric of popularity. In this instance, the users are academics ready to submit their next breakthrough but are uncertain which journal to choose. The solution Scholar Metrics offers is a database summarizing the sway of the distributors of scholarship "to help authors as they consider where to publish their new research".

Here's  how it works. http://www.significancemagazine.org/

DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books

The Directory of Open Access Books ( http://www.doabooks.org/)  is a service of OAPEN Foundation. The OAPEN Foundation is an international initiative dedicated to Open Access monograph publishing, based at the National Library in The Hague. DOAB is being developed in close cooperation with Lars Bjørnshauge and Salam Baker Shanawa (director of SemperTool), who were also responsible for the development of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). SemperTool develops and maintains DOAB system.

DOAB supports the OAI protocol for metadata harvesting (OAI-PMH). Service providers and libraries can use the protocol to harvest the metadata of the records from DOAB for inclusion in their collections and catalogues.  

  

1.5 million pages of ancient texts to be made accessible online

     The University of Oxford and the Vatican announced a plan to collaborate in digitizing 1.5 million pages of rare and ancient texts, most dating from the 16th century or earlier. The project is expected to span about 4 years and was made possible by a donation of £2 million (approximately $3.1 million) from the Polonsky Foundation—a charitable organization that supports higher education, medical research, and other general matters in the arts and sciences.

     Specifically, the texts will include pages from Oxford's Bodleian Libraries and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV). The digitized pages will include early printed books—called incunabula—from Rome and the surrounding area; Greek manuscripts including early church texts and works by Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Hippocrates; and Hebrew manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. "With approximately two-thirds of the material coming from the BAV and the remainder from the Bodleian, the digitization effort will also benefit scholars by uniting virtually materials that have been dispersed between the two collections over the centuries," a statement from Oxford read.

     The aim of the project, as envisioned by the Polonsky Foundation is "to democratize access to information, [seeing] increasing digital access to these two library collections, among the greatest in the world, as a significant step in sharing the wealth of resources on a global scale." This is not the Polonsky Foundation's first gift to digitize rare and ancient texts, either. An earlier gift to the Bodleian Libraries from the Foundation allowed the Oxford libraries to upload images of 280,000 fragments of Hebrew manuscripts, called the Cairo Genizah Collection, which are now available to search and view for free online.

 courtesy : http://arstechnica.com/