इस ब्लॉग्स को सृजन करने में आप सभी से सादर सुझाव आमंत्रित हैं , कृपया अपने सुझाव और प्रविष्टियाँ प्रेषित करे , इसका संपूर्ण कार्य क्षेत्र विश्व ज्ञान समुदाय हैं , जो सभी प्रतियोगियों के कॅरिअर निर्माण महत्त्वपूर्ण योगदान देगा ,आप अपने सुझाव इस मेल पत्ते पर भेज सकते हैं - chandrashekhar.malav@yahoo.com
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Learn More
Library consortium: INDEST-AICTE consortium
P- 04. Information Communication Technology for Libraries *
By :Usha Munshi,Paper Coordinator
Multiple Choice Questions
1 / 1 Points
Question 1: Multiple Choice
What is the full form of INDEST
0 / 1 Points
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Who is the first National Coordinator of INDEST-AICTE Consortium
1 / 2 PointsFinal Score:
Fill in the Blanks:
Unmarked / 1 Points
Question 1: Open Ended
INDEST-AICTE Consortium is a project of
Feedback: MHRD
0 / 1 PointsFinal Score:
True or False
0 / 1 Points
Question 1: True or False
The head quarter of INDEST-AICTE Consortium is IIT Kharagpur.
True False
1 / 1 Points
Question 2: True or False
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium established in 2000.
True False
1 / 1 Points
Question 3: True or False
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium operated through its National Steering Committee.
True False
2 / 3 PointsFinal Score:
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Content Learn More1. Introduction
Due to the exponential growth of literature and the financial crunch, it is difficult for a single library to acquire everything to satisfy the core interests of the institution to which the library belongs. The peripheral interest was being satisfied by using Inter library loan/document delivery. Therefore in a collective development situation, it is logical for a library to look up the other institutions for meeting its peripheral interest. Even in this situation a library can drop an item from the core item to the same ensured by another library in the neighborhood. To achieve aforesaid objectives, various library and information center networks emerged. A number of resource sharing networks that have evolved in India include Metropolitan Library network (MAN) like CALIBNET (1986), DELNET (1988), BONET, MALIBNET (1993), Country wide Network like INFLIBNET (1988 - For University libraries) and sectoral networks like BTISNET, ENVIS etc in 1980’s1. The most successful network is DELNET and INFLIBNET. The concept of Library consortia is not new. It was in the name of Library cooperation in America has existed for over a century. Library consortia first began to purchase electronic journals from publishers in the mid-nineties in USA. In India the library consortia became operational after 2000 with advent of e-resources. The Library consortia play an active role in the collection development. The accessibility to international journals in Indian universities and technical institutions has improved many folds with setting-up of a few Government-funded library consortia. Prior to setting up of these consortia, the access to e-journals was restricted to a premier institutions like IISc, IITs, IIMs and a few central universities who were subscribing to several e-resources including bibliographic databases on CD ROM, a few e-journals accessible free with subscription to their print versions and a negligible fraction of journals on subscription. In India more than half a dozen Library consortia were established by various government bodies as given in Table 1.
Table I: Library consortia in India
| |||||
Name of Consortium
|
Branch
|
Sponsoring body
|
No. of Resources
|
Year of Establishment
|
Members
|
INDEST-AICTE
|
Engineering Science and Technology
|
Ministry of HRD
|
30
|
2003
|
1225 ( 65 core, 60 AICTE supported and 1100 other members)
|
UGC-INFONET DL
|
Higher Education
|
UGC, MHRD
|
29
|
2004
|
419 ( 215 universities and 204Associate Members )
|
National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST)
|
Higher Education
|
MHRD
|
25
|
2010
|
3527 colleges,
100 universities and 55 technical institutions (for cross subscription)
|
National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC)
|
Science and Technology
|
CSIR and DST
|
34
|
2001 ( CSIR Consortium)
2009 (NKRC)
|
68 (42 CSIR and 26 DST)
|
DBT e-Library Consortium (DelCon)
|
Biotechnology
|
Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology,
|
19
(926 selective Journals)
|
2009
|
34 (16 DBT and 18 North Eastern Region (NER) Institutions
|
MCIT Consortium
|
Communication and Information Technology
|
Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MCIT)
|
4
|
2005
|
14
|
Electronic Resources in Medicine (ERMED) Consortium
|
Medicine
|
Director General of Health Services (DGHS)
|
9
|
2008
|
98
|
Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA)
|
Agriculture
|
ICAR
|
16
|
2007
|
147
|
DRDO E-JLS Consortium
|
Defence
|
DRDO
|
11 ( 551 e-journals)
|
2009
|
52
|
2. INDEST-AICTE Consortium:
The library consortium may be defined as an association or group of libraries who come together to achieve a common goal of optimum users’ satisfaction with the participation in a common activities and sharing of resources. A library consortium is a group of libraries who partner to coordinate activities, share resources, and combine expertise.Library consortia offer significant advantages to institutions in terms of lower rates, higher number of journals, document delivery etc. The sharing of resources, and collaboration on shared goals often enable libraries to deliver higher quality services than they would be able to deliver on their own.
The idea of the creation of the library consortia, took shape at the “National Seminar on Knowledge Networking in Engineering & Technology Education and Research” held at IIT Delhi in December 2000 under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development. The seminar was coordinated by Dr. Jagdish Arora and it was attended by more than 150 participants from engineering and technological institutions from all over the country. Based on the feedback, ministry decided to set-up the expert group in April 2002 for the consortia –based subscription to electronic resources for Technical Education System in India under the chairmanship of Prof. N. Balakrishnsan from IISc, Bangalore. The “Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium” was set up in 2003 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on the recommendation of an Expert Group appointed by the Ministry. The IIT Delhi was designated as the Consortium Headquarters to coordinate its activities2. The Consortium was re-named as INDEST-AICTE Consortium in December 2005 with the AICTE playing a pivotal role in enrolling its approved engineering colleges and institutions as members of the Consortium for selected e-resources at much lower rates of subscription. The Consortium enrolls engineering and technological institutions as its members and subscribe to electronic resources for them at discounted rates of subscription and favorable terms and conditions.
The consortium website at http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/indest hosts searchable databases of journals and member institutions to locate journals subscribed by the Consortium, their URLs and details of member institutions.
3. Objectives
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has the following objectives:
i) To provide electronic resources for the Centrally Funded and other academic institutions in Engineering, Science and Technology of India at highly discounted rates.
ii) To support and impart training to the users and librarians in the member institutions on subscribed electronic resources with an aim to maximize the usage of subscribed electronic resources.
iii) To improve scientific productivity of member institutions in terms of quality and quantity of publications.
4. Administrative Structure of INDEST-AICTE Consortium
The Consortium operates through its headquarters set up at IIT Delhi under a National Steering Committee (NSC) notified by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD). It consists of Director, IIT Delhi as its ex-officio Chairman and Chairman, AICTE as its Co-Chair. Members are drawn from its beneficiary core and self-supported institutions. Other members are Director (Technical Education), MHRD; representatives from the National Knowledge Resource Consortium (CSIR and DST) and DESIDOC; and Member Secretary, AICTE. The committee is responsible for taking major policy decision as well as their execution.
In the year 2009, National Advisory Committee (NAC) was established by the National Steering Committee to advice the NSC about various issues faced by the consortium. Some of the major issues handled were like the rationalization of Elsevier subscription based on the usage for core I member institutions, subscription model of Elsevier for NITs, new IITs, IISERs and other core institutions. NAC also helps in e-resources selection, review of e-resources, and subscription of e-resources for engineering colleges. The advisory committee played a key role in the decision making of the NSC for new model for NITs. In order to make a participatory culture, Consortium invited participating institution from time to time to discuss various issues faced by the consortium for individual institution. Meetings were held at the consortium headquarters with respect to NITs, IITs, new NITs and IISERs. The feedback of individual institutions played a key role in decision making and helped in negotiating the terms with the publishers.
A negotiation committee was also established by the National Steering Committee (NSC), to negotiate the terms, conditions and price of e-resources. The consortium involved the coordinators of all other major national consortia for the negotiation as well as the NSC meeting to have a common understanding of terms, conditions and price of e-resources.
A National Review Committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Joint Secretary (Technical Education) with an overall responsibility for making policies, monitoring the progress, coordinating with UGC and AICTE for promoting the activities of the Consortium. However the committee has been in dormancy for over last 5 years.
The National Coordinator for the consortium was appointed by the Technical Bureau of MHRD in the year 2003. He was responsible for all the operation of the consortium. The National coordinator was member’s secretary of the National Steering Committee, National Advisory Committee and the Negotiation Committee. Since the inception of the consortium, Dr. Jagdish Arora was the National Coordinator and continued in this role up to August 2007. Prof. G.P. Agarwal took charge as National Coordinator of the consortium from Dr. Arora and served this post for five years beginning September 2007 to end of August 2012. Since September 1, 2012 Prof. B.D. Gupta has taken charge as the National Coordinator.
5. Membership
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has three types of members based on funding, namely (i) core members supported by MHRD, (ii) AICTE supported members and (iii) self-supported members. However, some of the core and AICTE supported members can join as self-supported members. The membership fee for joining the consortium was Rs. 2000 for type (ii) & (iii) members. The consortium did not charge membership fees from the MHRD supported academic institutions. The basic objective of the consortium was to provide the e-resources to the academic institutions of the country. Table 2 gives the number of members from 2003 to 2013 under three types of funding.
Table :2 – Number of members since 2003 in different type funding
| |||||||||||
Category of Members
|
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
|
2013
|
Core Members MHRD supported
|
37
|
37
|
37
|
37
|
37
|
37
|
42
|
48
|
55
|
62
|
65
|
AICTE Supported members
|
60
|
64
|
63
|
60
|
60
|
60
|
60
|
60
|
60
|
60
|
0
|
Self-Supported
|
18
|
74
|
110
|
334
|
527
|
535
|
597
|
895
|
1007
|
116
|
132
|
Total
|
116
|
176
|
211
|
432
|
625
|
637
|
699
|
1003
|
1122
|
238
|
197
|
5.1. Core members
All centrally funded Technical Institutions including IITs, IISc, ISM, IISERs, NITs, SLIET, NERIST, IIMs, NITIE, NITTTRs, IIITs and NIFFT were the core members of the Consortium. The Ministry provided funds for providing differential access to electronic resources for its core members through the Consortium Headquarters at IIT Delhi. As per Table 2, in 2003, the number of core members was 37. In 2009, the number increased to 42 with addition of IISERs. In 2013 the total number of members increased to 65 with addition of new IITs, new NITs, and new IIMs. The consortium has always made continuous effort to include all the centrally funded technical institutions in the INDEST-AICTE consortium.
Each core members had varied teaching programmes, therefore, core members were grouped in different categories to extend differential access to e-resources based on their requirements and specializations. Initially the category of institutions were basically used to denote the level of usage of e-resources, conceived to be highest amongst institutions in Category I, modest in Category II and lowest amongst the Category III. The rates of subscription, number of simultaneous users and number of resources offered to various categories of institutions were worked out based on their usage/suitability to the respective categories of institutions. With the establishment of IISERs, new IITs, new NITs and new IIMs, the number of categories were increased to V (with subcategories IIIA and IIIB in Category III, IVA and IVB in Category IV) as described below:
- Category I comprises eight institutions including IITs and IISc;
- Category II comprises 23 institutions including 20 NITs, Indian School of Mines (ISM), Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology (SLIET), and North East Regional Institute of Science and Technology (NERIST);
- Category III comprises 13 institutions including (category III A comprises 5 IISERs and Category IIIB comprises 8 New IITs);
- Category IV comprises 13 institutions including IIMs, new IIMs, IIITs and National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) includes IVA – IIMs, IVB - IIITs and NITIE, IVC - New IIMs;
- Group V comprises 4 institutions including 3 NITTTRs and NIFFT.
In Category I institutes had a long history of teaching and very many research programmes and these were seven IITs (in Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai and Roorkee) and one IISc, Bangalore. Category I institutes subscribe to 25 e-resources through the Consortium which is the largest as given in Table 3. Category II to V institutes through the Consortium subscribe to e-resources as low as 3 to a high of 9. Table -3 gives the e-resources distribution among different core members for 2012.
Table – 3: Grouping and E-Resources distribution of the Core Member Institutions for 2013
S. No.
|
Electronic Resource
|
No. of journals
|
Accessible to Category
|
No of Institutes
|
Full-Text E-Resources
| ||||
1.
|
ABI/INFORM Complete
|
4975
|
I & IVA
|
15
|
2.
|
ACM Digital Library
|
44
|
I-IV
|
39
|
3.
|
AIP/APS Journals
|
23
|
I, IIIA
|
13
|
4.
|
ASCE Journals
|
33
|
I, II & V
|
28
|
5.
|
ASME Journals
|
24
|
I, II & V
|
28
|
6.
|
EBSCO Business Source Complete
|
11350
|
I & GIV-A
|
13
|
7.
|
Emerald Insight
|
150
|
I & IVA
|
13
|
8.
|
IEC Standards
|
6929
|
I
|
8
|
9.
|
IEL Online
|
241
|
All except III
|
45
|
10.
|
Nature
|
1/27
|
I, II & III
|
44/34
|
11.
|
OSA (Optics Infobase)
|
21
|
I
|
8
|
12.
|
Science Direct
|
2500
|
I&II & IVA
|
50
|
13.
|
Springer Link
|
1499/1300
|
I, II, IVB & V
|
32
|
Factual/Statistical databases
| ||||
14.
|
Capitaline
|
I & IVA
|
13
| |
15.
|
CRIS INFAC Ind. Inf.
|
IVA
|
6
| |
16.
|
Euromonitor GMID
|
I & IVA
|
13
| |
17.
|
Insight
|
IVA
|
6
| |
Bibliographic Databases
| ||||
18.
|
INSPEC
|
I
|
8
| |
19.
|
MathSciNet
|
I & III
|
21
| |
20.
|
SciFinder Scholar
|
I
|
8
| |
21.
|
Scopus
|
I
|
8
| |
22.
|
Web of Science
|
I
|
8
| |
Source: INDEST Consortium Annual Report, April 2012 to March 2013.
| ||||
5.2. AICTE Supported members
Since March 2003, AICTE provided financial support to the Government/Government aided institutions and Technical Universities/ University Departments having programmes in engineering and technology. The Consortium provided IEL, ASCE, ASME and/or ASTP to 60 institutions with AICTE support based on the courses they offer from 2003 to 2011. These included 37 engineering and technology colleges and 23 universities having engineering departments/faculty. All 60 Institutions offer postgraduate course in engineering and technology.
5.3. Self-supported Member
The Consortium also helped the technical institution of the country by offering the e-resources on self-support mode. It invited AICTE approved and UGC-affiliated institutions of India to share the benefits of the Consortium. It offered low subscription rates and attractive terms of agreement with the publishers. Prior to the consortium it was very difficult to afford such high quality e-resources through their own negotiation. The consortium brought a sea change in whole technical education. The small engineering colleges could afford e-resources which ultimately helped their education and research. Year-wise number of members of the consortium is given in the Table-2 since the establishment of the consortium. The self-supported membership started with 18 members in 2003. In 2005 AICTE joined hand with ‘INDEST Consortium and got renamed as ‘INDEST-AICTE Consortium’. AICTE played a pivotal role in enrolling its approved engineering colleges and institutes as member of the Consortium with 6 e-resources (IEL Online, ASCE, ASME, Springer Link, DEL, and ESDU).
There was a huge jump in the membership from 2006 onwards. AICTE promoted the provision of e-resources with their existing rule for subscription of print journals for individual institutions. In 2007 over 23 e-resources were negotiated by INDEST-AICTE Consortium for the self-supported institutes. The rates of subscription each year are posted at INDEST-AICTE Consortium web site for subscription renewal. There was a constant increase in the number of institutions up to 2011. Over six year the number of engineering colleges serviced were about 1000.
In 2012, AICTE proposed mandatory e-resources for the AICTE affiliated engineering colleges. AICTE negotiated the price with the publishers and asked each institutes to subscribe the e-resources directly through publisher’s websites. The total number of institutions subscribing to e-resources increased to 1500, whereas the consortium provided e-resources to 132 institutes.
6. Services and Activities
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium is not only helps in purchase of electronic resources, there are several other activities that the Consortium performs to achieve optimal utilization of electronic resources. Some of the important services and activities of the Consortium include the followings:
6.1 Selection of Electronic Resources
The Expert Group appointed by the Ministry initially selected and evaluated the e-resources being subscribed by the Consortium. The National Advisory Committee constituted by NSC in 2009, regularly met and reviewed the e-resource subscription of all member of the Consortium. Some new electronic resources were added and some other removed based on the demands from the member institutes after due evaluation and approval by the National Steering Committee.
6.2. Resource Sharing
As INDEST-AICTE Consortium did not subscribe to all resources for all its members, the document delivery and inter-library loan was, therefore, crucial to the success of the Consortium. The J-Gate Custom Content for Consortium (JCCC), designed especially for the Consortium, provided content-level access to all the electronic journals subscribed by all IITs, IISc and IIMs (14 institutions) by the Consortium or by these institutions individually beginning 2003 up to the year 2011. Besides IITs, IISc and IIMs, the JCCC was made accessible to all other core members of the Consortium including new IITs, IISERs, NITs, SLIET, ISM, NERIST, IIITs and NITIE. The service facilitated generation of automated inter-library loan requests directly by a user to one of the IITs, IISc and IIMs. While all requests for articles subscribed by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium were routed to IIT Delhi (Consortium Headquarters), requests for e-resources subscribed by individual IITs, IISc and IIMs were routed to the respective institute(s).
The Consortium was looking for a centralized product for creating a union catalogue of all the consortia run by Government of India. The consortium is in contact with other consortium like NKC, UGC-Infonet DL consortium etc to have a common document delivery from 2015 onward.
6.3. Promoting Use of e-Resources
The Consortium took several steps to ensure utilization of resources in all member institutes to justify the amount of money spent for the e-resources. The Consortium continuously monitored the usage of e-resources. Each year various committees of the Consortium studied the usage statistics before taking any decision. The Consortium maintained a comprehensive Website on its activities, services and resources. A template webpage was developed and distributed to all members institutions. The soft copies of the tutorials were made available through the Consortium Website. The Website also provides links to web based online tutorials available for these resources. The consortium informed the members to utilize the e-resources in case of there was poor usage of any e-resources.
6.4 Training of Users
Training programmes were a crucial requirement that the Consortium had to fulfil to facilitate optimum use of subscribed e-resources. Training programmes acted as a bridge to facilitate better communication amongst members of the Consortium and to find answers to common problems. Such programmes made users competent to conduct their own searches effectively. Proper training made library staff competent enabling them to provide quality services. “On the job” training programmes were preferable not only because they benefited large number of users but also solved localized technological problems by the experts available at the time of imparting training.
Training to members of the INDEST-AICTE Consortium was a decentralized activity. All IITs, NITs and IIMs conducted training programmes in their respective regions with financial support from the Consortium. Moreover, all member of Consortium were also required to conduct training programmes in their respective institutes for the benefit of their users. The Consortium signed a tripartite agreement with the publishers of e-resources with a local vendor as third party responsible for providing training on resources at campuses of various member institutes. All institutes were requested to take benefit of this arrangement and organize training programmes on various resources within their institutes.
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium kept a close liaison with all its members. All technical and administrative contacts of each member institutes are regularly updated on the consortium website. Besides, the Consortium has held Annual Meeting and Workshops since 2003 for the benefit of its member.
6.5. NLIST: The Joint Project of INDEST-AICTE Consortium & UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium (2010-2012)
The Programme of subscription of e-resources through Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was being jointly executed by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, IIT Delhi and UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre (NME-ICT/N-LIST) and provided for:
i) Cross subscription to e-resources subscribed by the two Consortia, i.e. subscription to INDEST-AICTE Consortium resources for universities and UGC-INFONET resources for INDEST-AICTE institutes, and
ii) Access to selected e-resources to colleges.
Under this programme (i) above, INDEST-AICTE Consortium subscribed the following e-resources for 2012:
i) 27 Nature titles for 34 Institutions (8 IITs/IISc, 5 IISERs, 8 New IITs, 13 selected NITs)
ii) Project Muse for 34 Institutions (8 IITs/IISc, 5 IISERs, 8 New IITs, 13 selected NITs)
iii) Annual Reviews for 34 Institutions (8 IITs/IISc, 5 IISERs, 8 New IITs, 13 selected NITs)
iv) Taylor & Francis for 21 Institutions (8 IITs/IISc, 5 IISERs, 8 New IITs)
v) IEEE ASPP for 73 Government Engineering Colleges/department of Universities
vi) Web of Science for 100 Universities
vii) JSTOR for 62 core institutions For 2013
7. LICENSE AGREEMENT AND FAIR USE
All electronic resources available through the Consortium are governed by license agreements. All the terms and conditions for subscribing these resources are spelled out in license agreements that are signed with each publisher by the Consortium on behalf of its member institutes. The Consortium takes utmost care to protect the rights of the users as well as the member Institutes before signing an agreement. It is observed that the terms and conditions of e-resources varies amongst various publishers. Some of the publishers initially were asking the members and the Consortium to sign on a contract, which was not agreeable to the Consortium. In fact, some of e-resources were not considered because of unfavourable license agreement.
7.1 License Agreements and Guidelines for Fair Use
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium website provides information on “Licenses and Fair Use” to sensitize users as well as librarians on issues of licenses and agreements that the Consortium signs with the publishers. The website provides details on what authorized users can do and what they cannot do. While most of the publishers allow inter-library loan, electronic delivery of articles are not allowed. The consortium website put the sample license agreement of individual publisher in order to educate its users as well as the library administrators.
7.2. Print-independent Subscription:
Subscription to e-resources were print-independent in most of the cases except Elsevier’s Science Direct, AIP/APS, Taylor and Francis, Springer and Emerald Xtra. In the year 2010, advisory committee devised a usage based model for Elsevier’s Science Direct to rationalize the notional subscription amount among old IITs and IISc Bangalore (8 institutes). Under this agreement the print subscription was replaced by a flexible e-subscription. As per the decision, the subscription amount of Elsevier for all core category I institutes remained constant and the subscription amount was distributed among the participating institutions based on the usage statistics. Each institute could swap title to make the subscriptions amongst the category members as unique. By changing from print to e-resources only, each institute also got appreciable discount.
7.3. Governing Laws and Jurisdiction
The consortium made concerted effort that all the contract agreement with publishers were governed by the laws of India. The consortium also made effort to get the following arbitration clause signed by each publisher:
“Any dispute or difference whatsoever arising between the parties out of or relating to the construction, meaning, scope, operation or effect of this contract or the validity or the breach thereof shall be settled by arbitration in accordance with the Rules of Arbitration of the Indian Council of Arbitration/or any other Indian organisation and the award made in pursuance thereof shall be binding on the parties." The place of the arbitration shall be in New Delhi (India) and carried out in the English Language.
8. USAGE ANALYSIS
Librarians are using statistics to meet user needs and make every rupees count. Usage statistics are valuable tool to know the use of an e-resource. In the print world, it was difficult to know the usage of the printed journals. Due to the advent of computer network technology and various protocols, now it is easy for a library to know the extent of use of the e-resources and its journals. Since the Consortium invests its budget in the acquisition of electronic resources for the individual institute, it is necessary to know the utility of e-resources. The Consortium is responsible for analyzing and demonstrating their cost-effectiveness.Usage statistics also play an important role in decision making for selection/continuation of e-resources.Most publishers maintain detailed usage statistics compliant to an international standard called “COUNTER” or “SUSHI” for resources offered by them to the Consortium. The usage statistics for member institutes are regularly obtained from the publishers and are made accessible amongst its member on the Consortium Web Site through an interface called e-RAMS (Electronic Resource Access Management System). Institutions with low usage are requested to optimise their usage. Based on the usage statistics, the committee reviews the continuation/discontinuation of e-resources. In last few years consortium has discontinued few resources due to their poor usage among members. The usage statistics were also used in the negotiation of e-resources.The consortium is now planning to harvest the usage statistics from the publisher website directly to the E-RAMS to remove the human intervention of data manipulation if any. The usage statistics of e-resources by member institute has generally shown an increasing trend for most e-resources from 2003 to 2011 and further analysis of usage data is given below.
8.1. Usage of E-Resources for Various Group Core Members from 2003 to 2012
It is observed from Table 4 that the number of downloads ranges from 56 thousands (Group V institutes) to 1.53 crores (Group I institutes) for the year 2012. The lower usage was in case of NITTTR/NIFFT because of their lower number of users. In case of Group IV (i.e. IIMs), the usage was very high because of the usage of factual databases like Capitaline, Euromonitors, CRIS INFAC etc as described in the Table 3. It is also clear from the Table 4 that the usage of various core institutes varied widely i.e. Group I, II & III though these institutes have similar teaching and research programmes. It may be inferred that the usage of e-resource for old core members are getting saturated. The usage of bibliographic data for example Compendex and INSPEC in ei village were gradually decreasing. As a result the Consortium removed the Compendex and replaced it by Scopus. Due to the poor usage some of the e-resources were discontinued. The Consortium used the usage statistics to decrease the price of some e-resources during negotiations. The usage of e-resources for IIMs were calculated from 2004 to 2008 since most of the management resources were added in 2004. The usage of Group III were considered from 2009 as IISERs got access through the consortium in 2009. IISERs were provided MathScinet in 2009, from 2010 onwards they got access to MathScinet, AIP/APS, JCCC, Science Direct, and Springer link (as self-supported). The usage of e-resources for IISERS and new IITs are increasing rapidly.
Table 4 : No. of Downloads from 2003 to 2012
(for All Core Members and All E-Resources)
| ||||||||||
2003
|
2004
|
2005
|
2006
|
2007
|
2008
|
2009
|
2010
|
2011
|
2012
| |
Group I (IITs / IISc)
|
4355
|
8968
|
19051
|
26144
|
24276
|
25720
|
20921
|
22338
|
18060
|
15203
|
Group II (NITs)
|
374
|
739
|
918
|
1019
|
1572
|
1782
|
2026
|
2243
|
2539
|
3360
|
Group III (IISERs & New IITs)
|
109
|
224
|
515
|
770
| ||||||
Group IV (IIMs)
|
36
|
4916
|
20091
|
31925
|
28577
|
29569
|
24580
|
19032
|
14233
|
7802
|
Group V IIIT, NITTR/NIFFT
|
NS
|
NS
|
NS
|
NS
|
NS
|
20
|
20
|
34
|
56
|
254
|
JCCC
|
38
|
41
|
55
|
69
|
84
|
61
|
138
|
196
|
69
|
NS
|
Source: INDEST Consortium Annual Report, April 2012 to March 2013.
| ||||||||||
The Science Direct, IEL Online and Springer link are highly used e-resources in compared to other resources like ASCE and ASME. The usage of Capitaline was highest for the Management e-resources as it is news like database. The e-resources like ABI INFORM Complete, EBSCO and Emerald are highly used. The usage for Bibliographic databases were increasing except the Ei village. The usage of specialised bibliographic databases like Mathscinet and Scifinders are increasing over period of time. Due to the introduction of Scopus in the Consortium, usage of Web of Science has decreased in comparison to the initial year of subscription like 2005 and 20067.
8.2. Usage of E-Resources for AICTE Supported Institutions
The AICTE institutions have registered an increase in usage of most of the e-resources subscribed for them in terms of number of research articles downloaded from 2004 to 2011. There is a comparative decrease in usage of ASCE and ASME as compared to IEL Online.
9. Economics of INDEST-AICTE Consortium
The factors that determine economic viability and cost effectiveness of consortia based subscription to e-resources are: its membership, intensity of usage, successful migration from print to electronic version (with discontinuation of print) and cost avoidance. These factors are discussed below in detail.
9.2. Average Cost of an Article/Record
The Consortium has analysed the cost of an article /download or record since its inception as an economic parameter. This parameter has been used to take decision in reviewing the continuation/ discontinuation/ negotiation of pricing of existing e-resources. The detailed analysis was published in the Annual Report 2012-137. Using the usage parameters some of the e-resources were discontinued from the Consortium in 2011 and 2012. The average cost of a download varied among different types of institutes. It also varied from types of e-resources (i.e. full text, factual and bibliographic databases). The Category I institutes (IITs and IISc) were getting access to bibliographic database from 2003 onwards. In 2005 the average cost per downloads for INSPEC and COMPENDEX was Rs. 2.71, where it reached Rs.2090 in 2009. Based on this information, Compendex was replaced by Scopus in 2010. Some of other bibliographic databases are subject specific like MatSciNet and Scifinder Scholar where cost increased from Rs.7.30 to Rs.67.75 in last 5 years. The trend clearly showed that bibliographic databases were less cost effective since full-text databases were preferred over bibliographic databases and were used more extensively in comparison to bibliographic databases. It may be noted that the bibliographic databases never gives the full text articles. It only gives the number hits and number of sessions etc. It was also observed that the per download cost was encouraging for the level I institutes due to its higher usage across the e-resources subscribed for them. The average per download cost for Group II (NITs/NERIST/SLIET/ISM) was Rs. 58.79 in 2005 where in 2011 it was Rs.40.87. It showed that there was increase in downloads in the group II institutes. The IISERs started with few resources in 2009 with average cost per download Rs. 344.64. In 2012 it was about Rs.36.52. Since these Institutes were growing in its faculty strengths and research scholars, there was a positive increase in usage of e-resources. The IIMs have the lowest average per download cost. In 2005, it was Rs. 0.59. In 2012, the average per download cost was Rs.3.40.
The average per download cost for AICTE supported institutions for 2005 was Rs. 23.93, where in 2012, it was Rs.26.67. The cost per download for various e-resources for self-supported institute was Rs.23.13 to Rs.408 for the year 2011.
9.1. Annual Increase in Rates of Subscription: Print Journals vs e-Journals
Members of the Consortium have the benefit of price cap for the print as well as the e-journals on the annual increase in the rates of subscription from 3% to 5%. While the usual increase in price of e-resources vary from 10 to 15% for an institute butthe increase for the Consortium ranges from 3-5%. Due to Global Economic Crisis, some of the publishers like ASTM and AMS froze their price for the year 2010 and 2012. Members of the Consortium have enjoyed the cap on increase in print journal price from 5% to 6% from various publishers, namely, Elsevier Science, Emerald group Publishing etc.As per the agreement with the publishers, some publishers refund the extra amount above the specified percentage (5-6% price cap) to the member institutes. Since now most of the institutions were going for the e-subscription, the price cap remained constant.
9.3. Cost Avoidance and Cost Recovery
Cost avoidance on account of lower rates of subscription for the members of the Consortium was calculated in terms of difference between cost paid by the Consortium for member institutions for e-resources and cost payable by individual institutions in case the resources were subscribed by them on their own. Figure 1 depicts that there was a notional saving of Rs. 1018.04 crore considering the fact that the same resources on list price would have cost Rs1045.3 crore as against Rs 27.25 crore paid by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium for 2011 for its core members.
The cost recovery is calculated on the presumption that if the electronic resources were not available through the Consortium, articles downloaded from these resources by the member institutes would have been sourced on inter-library loan / document delivery at a cost of US $ 15.00 per article (Average cost of article taken from a study conducted by the American Research Libraries (ARL)). The cost recovery by member Institutes with Rs. 2974.09 crores as cost of articles downloaded by them as against Rs. 27.25 crores spent for subscription to e-resources recording a gain of Rs. 2946.84 crores in terms of cost of research articles downloaded in excess.
The cost avoidance in case of AICTE supported institutions was Rs. 59.06 Crores where consortium spent 3.47 crores and Rs.56.24 has been recovered as cost of an article downloaded. The cost recovery in case of AICTE supported institutions was Rs. 130.11 Crores where consortium spent 3.47 crores and Rs.126.64 was recovered as cost of an article downloaded for the year 2011.
The cost recovery in case of Self-supported institutes was Rs. 785.82 Crores where consortium spent Rs.51.01crores and Rs.734.80 was recovered as cost of an article downloaded for the self-supported Institutes for the year 2011.
10. Research Output of Core members
Providing access to e-resources to the faculty and researchers was not a purpose in itself but it was only a means to trigger a stronger research and academic culture in institutions recipient of this benefit. Scopus was considered to be a filtering mechanism that indexes qualitative research output based on citations received by it. The source articles appeared in Scopus for all INDEST members in 2003 could serve as a yardstick to measure current research output of these institutes. The data collected for all the core member institution from 1996 to 2011. The whole period was distributed in two parts. One was before 2003 i.e. 1996 to 2002 and another after 2003 i.e. from 2003 to 2011. The Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) was calculated for both periods. The comparative figure of CAGR for two periods is presented in the Table 7. It is evident from the Table that except IISc Bangalore and IIT Kanpur, the compounding rate of growth of publication was increasing more than 10% after the establishment of the consortium where it was about less than 10% for other institutes. The number of research publication for IISc in 2011 was 1957 where in 2003 it was 571. Though the number of publications has increased substantially, the CAGR remained constant. Other institutes were greater beneficiaries of INDEST-AICTE Consortium. The biggest beneficiaries were NITs. After the establishment of INDEST-AICTE consortium, the number of research publications increased multifold. The growth rate after 2003 was as high as 59% in case of NIT Calicut and other institutes showed annual compounded growth more than 30%. However, the number of publications cannot be considered as sole criteria for measuring productivity of institutions. Other criteria that may also be considered include: number of faculties, number of research scholars, patents, research projects, research reports, honours and awards, etc.
Table : 7 - Compound Annual Growth Rate of number of publications of member institutes before and After the inception of INDEST – AICTE Consortium
| ||||||
Institute
|
1995-2002
|
2003-11
|
Institution
|
1995-2002
|
2003-11
| |
(1)
|
(2)
|
(3)
|
(1)
|
(2)
|
(3)
| |
IISc, Bangalore
|
7%
|
7%
|
NIT Kurukshetra
|
16%
|
28%
| |
IIT Kanpur
|
6%
|
7%
|
NIT Warangal
|
17%
|
22%
| |
IIT Kharagpur
|
9%
|
13%
|
NIT Karnataka
|
6%
|
38%
| |
IIT Delhi
|
5%
|
10%
|
NIT Jaipur
|
3%
|
28%
| |
IIT Madras
|
-1%
|
14%
|
NIT Nagpur
|
36%
|
17%
| |
IIT Bombay
|
7%
|
12%
|
NIT Jalandhar
|
32%
|
22%
| |
IIT Roorkee
|
9%
|
20%
|
NIT Calicut
|
-2%
|
59%
| |
IIT Guwahati
|
76%
|
31%
|
NIT Surat
|
NA
|
56%
| |
NIT Trichy
|
35%
|
35%
|
NIT Hamirpur
|
NA
|
37%
| |
NIT Jamshedpur
|
NA
|
34%
|
NIT Bhopal
|
6%
|
35%
| |
NIT Rourkela
|
14%
|
34%
|
NIT Durgapur
|
26%
|
24%
| |
NIT Allahabad
|
0%
|
40%
|
NIT Srinagar
|
0%
|
95%
| |
11. Archival Access/back-up of e-resources
Unlike in print media, the electronic access is made available for the period of subscription. The electronic access generally gets terminated as soon as the subscription period is over even for the period for which subscription was paid. Most publishers have made offers for archival back-up or access to electronic resources if Consortium decides to discontinue subscription to their resources. The offers made by the publishers fall under one of the following categories:
i) Perpetual Access to Resources for Subscribed Period: Publishers like Elsevier have a policy to provide perpetual access to their subscribed resources for the period of subscription. Some other publishers like Springer, Taylor and Francis, IEEE, Science Citation Index provide the perpetual access
ii) Back-up CD ROM made available during Subscription Period: Backup on CDROM is being supplied along with its web-based access for resources like ABI/Inform Complete and Proquest’s Science.
iii) Back-up Data (raw) to be supplied on CD ROM on Termination of Subscription: Several publishers, like EI Village and Springer agreed to provide their data on CDROM on discontinuation of service.
All publishers have been requested to provide full-text data on CD/DVD in a standardized format on completion of every year with the search and browse capabilities in-built. They are also expected to help us install these CDs/DVDs on our servers so that the data could be used instantaneously as the need arises.
12. SUMMARY AND FUTURE ENDEAVOURS
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has been providing the e-resources since 2003 with its collective strength of participating member institutes and has negotiated highly discounted rates of subscription coupled with most favourable terms of license agreements. Consortium was offered very attractive prices from the vendors not only because of combined strength of its members, but also due to the eagerness of publishers to enter the Indian market. The rates offered to the Consortium were lower by 50 per cent to 90 per cent depending upon the category of institution. Moreover, the rates have come down further with increase in the number of AICTE approved engineering colleges. The INDEST-AICTE Consortium, initiated discussion with AICTE to make e-resources more popular for the private engineering college to increasing its negotiating power and to get further discount in the rates. Due to funding issue INDEST has discontinued some of the bibliographic databases for the year 2014. Ministry is planning to constitute a joint negotiation committee for the year 2015 onwards to have a common pricing for all the institutions.
Future plans of INDEST-AICTE Consortium include (i) considering a discovery solution for the INDEST-AICTE Consortium member as well as for the other member institutions of other consortium of India, (ii) establishment of National coalition of all Library Consortia to have a common e-resource policy for India, (iii) frame an archival policy of the e-resources of consortia as well as the individual library of the country, (iv) negotiate the eBooks for the member Institutions through consortia, (v) setting-up mirror servers, local hosting and (vi) to obtain national licenses for important e-resources with access spread out to as many educational institutions as required. Some of the issues like budget management, catalogs – NextGen, catalogs - union, digital initiatives, licensing – new, licensing – renegotiations, interlibrary loan, open access, print collections –cooperative collection development, print collections– shared storage, research projects, training, e-book purchase and other priorities are under constant discussion among the member institutes and other consortia
REFERENCES
- Sahoo, Bibhuti Bhusan. “Need For A National Resource Sharing Network in India: Proposed Model”. in Workshop on Information Resource Management 13th-15th March, 2002 at DRTC, Bangalore
- India, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Bureau of Technical Education. Report of the Expert Group appointed by the Department of Secondary Education and Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2002.
- Perry, Katherine A. Where are library consortia going? : Results of a 2009 survey. Serials – 22(2), July 2009. pp.
- Arora, Jagdish & Trivedi, Kruti. INDEST-AICTE Consortium: Present Services and Future Endeavours.DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology, Vol. 30, No. 2, March 2010, pp. 79-91
- Arora, Jagdish & Agarwal, Pawan. In Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium: Consortia-based subscription to electronic resources for technical education system in India, edited by S.M. Salgar, et al. In Proceedings of CALIBER 2003, Ahmedabad, 2003. pp. 271-90.
- Arora, Jagdish. Managing electronic resources through consortia: An overview. In Library and Information Networking: NACLIN 2005, edited by H.K. Kaul&Gayathri Sen. Proceedings of the National Convention on Library and Information Networking held at PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, 2005, DELNET, New Delhi. pp. 144-71.
- INDEST-AICTE Consortium. INDEST Consortium Annual Report, April 2012 to March 2013. INDEST Consortium, New Delhi, 2012.
Websites Visited
- http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/indest/ (accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/econ/ (accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://www.nmlermed.in/ (accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://delcon.gov.in/index.htm (accessed on 13February 2014)
- http://mcitconsortium.nic.in/ (accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://www.nmlermed.in/main.htm/(accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://nkrc.niscair.res.in/indexpage.php (accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://dsl.drdo.gov.in/ejournals/index.htm(accessed on 13 February 2014)
- http://www.worlib.org/vol09no1/kar_v09n1.shtml(accessed on 13 February 2014)
10. http://www.malibnetonline.com/(accessed on 13 February 2014)
11. http://delnet.nic.in/index.htm(accessed on 13 February 2014)
12. http://www.envis.nic.in/about.html(accessed on 13 February 2014)
13. http://www.btisnet.gov.in/(accessed on 13 February 2014)
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_consortium(accessed on 13 February 2014)
Web links
Web Links
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|
Did You Know?
1.4.2 Interesting Facts
1.4.2 Interesting Facts
No.
|
Interesting Facts
|
1
|
The idea of the creation of the library consortia, took shape at the “National Seminar on Knowledge Networking in Engineering & Technology Education and Research” held at IIT Delhi in December 2000 under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development.
|
2
|
The “Indian National Digital Library in Engineering Sciences and Technology (INDEST) Consortium” was set up in 2003 by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) on the recommendation of an Expert Group appointed by the Ministry. The IIT Delhi was designated as the Consortium Headquarters to coordinate its activities2. The Consortium was re-named as INDEST-AICTE Consortium in December 2005 with the AICTE playing a pivotal role in enrolling its approved engineering colleges and institutions as members of the Consortium for selected e-resources at much lower rates of subscription.
|
3.
|
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium operates through its headquarters set up at IIT Delhi under a National Steering Committee (NSC) notified by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD). It consists of Director, IIT Delhi as its ex-officio Chairman and Chairman, AICTE as its Co-Chair. Members are drawn from its beneficiary core and self-supported institutions. Other members are Director (Technical Education), MHRD; representatives from the National Knowledge Resource Consortium (CSIR and DST) and DESIDOC; and Member Secretary, AICTE. The committee is responsible for taking major policy decision as well as their execution
|
4
|
In the year 2009, National Advisory Committee (NAC) was established by the National Steering Committee to advice the NSC about various issues faced by the consortium. Some of the major issues handled were like the rationalization of Elsevier subscription based on the usage for core I member institutions, subscription model of Elsevier for NITs, new IITs, IISERs and other core institutions. NAC also helps in e-resources selection, review of e-resources, and subscription of e-resources for engineering colleges.
|
5
|
The INDEST-AICTE Consortium has three types of members based on funding, namely (i) core members supported by MHRD, (ii) AICTE supported members and (iii) self-supported members.
|
6
|
Scopus is a database, which provides the largest abstracts and citations of research literature and quality web sources. Designed for quick, easy and comprehensive search, Scopus also provides superior support for the literature research process. All the data and information in Scopus are updated daily.
|
7
|
The consortium offered e-resources are ABI/INFORM Complete, ACM Digital Library, AIP/APS Journals, ASCE Journals, ASME Journals, EBSCO Business Source Complete, Emerald Insight, IEC Standards, IEL Online, Nature, OSA (Optics Infobase), Science Direct, Springer Link, Capitaline, CRISIL Research, Euromonitor GMID, Insight, Scopus, MathScinet, Scifinder Scholar, web of Science etc.
|
8
|
The consortium also an active partner in subscription of e-resources through Centrally Sponsored Scheme of National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology (NME-ICT) of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was being jointly executed by the INDEST-AICTE Consortium, IIT Delhi and UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre (NME-ICT/N-LIST) (2010-2012)
|
9
|
Usage statistics parameter was used for the usefulness of various e-resources and decisions were taken to continue/discontinue the e-resources for various institutions since its inception.
|
10
|
The research output of participating institutions has increased substantially after the establishment of the consortium.
|
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