J&K’s Department of Libraries and Research today rolled out the maiden initiative of linking up with National Digital Libraries of India (NDLI) to provide free worldwide access to the students and academicians in the State to around 1.5 crore downloadable e-books and journals. The unique initiative was launched on the sidelines of a workshop on ‘Digitized Libraries’ organized by the Department of Libraries and Research here this morning.The Workshop was inaugurated by the Minister of State for Education, Ms Priya Sethi.Director Libraries and Research, Mukhtar-ul-Aziz, Professor IIT Kharagpur, ParthaPratim Das, Chief Librarian NDLI, N Gopal Chattopadhayay and other senior officers of the Libraries Department were present on the occasion.National Digital Libraries of India is an online repository of the e-books under the aegis of Union Human Resource Development Ministry. It has been developed by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.
The repository hosts content in multiple languages on multiple subject domains including technology, science, humanities, agriculture and others with educational material available from primary to PhD level. The learning resources include e-books, journals, articles, thesis, manuscripts, audio and video lectures. To integrate J&K’s libraries with the online repository of National Digital Libraries of India, the state’s Libraries Department has already launched a massive digitization programme under which all the libraries in the State are going to be digitized in a phased manner. The National Digital Libraries of India will be also imparting training to the staff of the Libraries Department in J&K regarding the use of online services.
Speaking at the inauguration of the Workshop, Ms Priya Sethi said in the age of internet, massive changes are occurring in life and it has become necessary to adopt and take benefit from new technological inventions and digital interventions.
She said the new initiative will help the students to get online access to the best possible educational resources within and outside the country. “Once our libraries are fully digitized, joining hands with NDLI will contribute a lot in facilitating the teaching-learning process and the research work,” she said.
Speaking on the occasion, Director Libraries, Mukhtar-ul- Aziz said the department has computerized all District and some Tehsil level libraries in the state so far and in the process to make all state libraries fully digitized in a more user-friendly way. The aim of this project is to integrate all national libraries, which will be centrally linked with central server to facilitate J&K students to take advantage of the massive learning resources available online.
ParthaPratimDass in his speech said that project of MHRD was started in April 2015 with an aim to consider the needs of students and to put all those needs on single platform. MHRD came up with this idea and this program also aims at to make people aware how to access the program. He also said that virtual learning is to be introduced to the students to help them to understand the difficult concepts of various subjects.