The World E-Book Library Association is the world’s largest eBook provider. Founded in 1996, the World E-Book Library Association is a global coordinated effort to preserve and disseminate classic works of literature, serials, bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference works in a number of languages and countries around the world with a mission to aid students and educators by providing them the world's most complete collection of electronic text books, and documents on-line as well as offer a variety of services and resources that support and strengthen the instructional programs of education, elementary through post baccalaureate studies.
New
Website of HEC - National Digital Library
The Digital Library Team is proud to announce that
its official website has been launched on 20th May’2005. It
is after a thorough and continual effort that this website has been
designed and developed so that it covers the maximum amount of information
and content about the resources being offered by the Digital Library
Program.
It can be accessed
using the following URL: http://www.digitallibrary.edu.pk/.
This link can also be found on the main page of the Higher Education
Commission’s official website.
This website contains
complete information regarding participating institutions and the
resources that are available. Publisher information is made readily
available and subject strengths are outlined for easy reference. Each
participating institution has its own page carrying information about
registered resources and contact details for representatives.
The website offers
a user-friendly interface and covers detailed content information
for digital library users, general users, librarians, researchers
and students. Any new organizations seeking to acquire the Digital
Library Resources can refer to an eligibility criterion that is made
available on the Website and submit a form for membership.
Workshop
on Online & Offline Information Resources in Chemical Sciences, HEJ
- Karachi
The drift from off-line to on-line resources has
come about as a gradual change. Modern information & communication
technologies are becoming an increasingly flexible medium for purposes
of delivering and retrieving information. This compendium of technologies,
when combined with high quality information resources, can provide
benefits to our country by developing a ‘knowledge based’
economy.
In order to promote
this initiative, a four day long workshop was held by the Digital
Library Team in HEJ, University of Karachi from April 4th-8th, 2005.
The purpose was to impart a thorough training program for participants
and create awareness of the available resources through the PERI project
and other American Society Publishers and their effective access and
utilization. Specific Chemistry Resources were discussed in much detail
to provide the participants with a comprehensive understanding of
the focused and relevant subject areas.
Effective searching
methodologies were identified and practically explained with reference
to specific databases in order to develop the participants understanding
and searching skills. Soft copies of all presentations were made available
and information about copy write laws was provided to the participants
to increase their awareness of ethical resource usage.
Dr. Iqbal Chaudry,
Acting Director HEJ, in his welcome address mentioned that information
is the foundation upon which the future generations of our Country
stand, and said that “The time for change has come. I would
like to see these resources being used in order to sustain this positive
movement towards availability of information”. He highlighted
the importance of the Digital Library Program and its benefit to our
research community as a facilitator of this communication change.
He showed immense appreciation for Dr.Atta-ur-Rehman’s Vision
and congratulated him on his ongoing achievement of building the capacity
of Pakistan’s research sector by providing access to the world’s
highest rated scientific publications.
Participants of the workshop consisted of professionals from diverse
backgrounds, including scientists, senior faculty members and librarians.
They represented educational institutions and other research and development
organizations from all over Pakistan.
The overall goal of
the workshop was achieved and feedback displayed higher understanding
and interest from the participants. The Digital Library team looks
forward to arranging many more such workshops to help the PERI initiative
progress and indeed help build a knowledge based economy driven by
high quality research.
Easy to Find Thousands of E-Journals and
Hundreds of Databases
ELIN@ (Electronic
Library Information Navigator) integrates data from publishers, databases
and open archives. University and research libraries participating
in HEC’s Digital Library Programme have begun
to overcome the 'first generation' access challenge to be able to
query databases and indexes of journal articles and then to download
the required full text documents. Alongside this access however, we
see new challenges arising. Specifically, how can we maximize the
use of limited and costly Internet connections - bandwidth - and how
can we efficiently search across a wide variety of resources and thousands
of title.
The Higher Education
Commission and the International Network for the Availability of Scientific
Publications (INASP), the main partner in the HEC Digital Library
Programme, have linked up with Lund University Libraries, Sweden,
to adapt and extend their existing Electronic Library Information
Navigator (ELIN@) system so that it can be used by universities in
Pakistan that are available through different packages and from different
publishers.
ELIN@ compiles metadata
from millions of information resources so they can be searched through
a single user interface with cross searching and merged search results.
access. A key characteristic of the system is the use of open standards
that allows all kinds of data sources to be accommodated in the system.
For the planning of
a strategy for ELIN implementation in Pakistan, a week-long workshop
was held at Lund, Sweden, which was attended by project coordinator
at the HEC, Kamran Naim, and Raja Abdul Razak, system specialist.
The National University of Rwanda and Makerere University in Uganda
were also represented in the workshop- as the ELIN@ pilot project
is being implemented in a range of different environments, the largest
of these being the Pakistan pilot project.
The pilot project for
ELIN@ Pakistan will be launched soon in the University of Punjab,
the University of Karachi and Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad. Following
the pilot project, ELIN will be installed on the PERN Network, to
allow every computer within a university connected to this network
with a high speed search interface for a range of publishers currently
participating in the Digital Library Program. As well as providing
a unified, user friendly search interface, ELIN@ Pakistan will allow
the HEC to analyse and monitor usage within all participating institutions.
The implementation of ELIN@ Pakistan will further enhance the pioneering
services delivered through the Digital Library Programme.
HEC has recently acquired
the Web of Knowledge research platform of the Institute of Scientific
Information (ISI) for selected universities across the country.The
Web of Knowledge provides simultaneous access to a variety of leading
research databases. In addition to journal data, researchers can also
fully view information on patents, conference proceedings, chemical
reactions and evaluated websites. It assists scholars to stay up to
date with developments in their fields as well as locate new sources
of grants and funding by searching relevant web content. Librarians
can use citation data to manage and maintain journal collections.
Its capabilities as a tool that provides an integrated research environment,
includes its functionality for searching in a simplified and streamlined
manner throughout the platform. The full text available is reviewed
and selected by Thomson Scientific subject experts who ensure that
journals are peer-reviewed and meet stringent quality requirements.
The collection of
back files of scientific research within Web of Science will include
records dating back to 1975.
HEC has acquired the
Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) that covers approximately 8,700
journals and 200 open access journals in diverse disciplines. In addition,
Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and Essential Science Indicators (ESI),
powerful evaluation tools that enable highly focused analysis of over
7,500 science and social sciences journals, measure performance and
help in tracking trends have also been provided to the selected institution.
Furthermore, institutions have been provided with 'End Note', an information
management tool for publishing and managing bibliographies according
to industry standards. End Note provides users with help in database
searching to build personal reference libraries and import and format
bibliographies with ease.
A comprehensive three-day
workshop was held at HEC in January, 2005 in which Mr. Mark
Wheeler, Manager Education and Technical Support, was flown
in from Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Singapore to train
HEC Master Trainers on how to effectively access and the Web of Knowledge.
The Digital Library
office of the Higher Education Commission and the National Academy
of Sciences USA have provided access to the publications of American
Scientific Societies negotiated under the collaborative 'Digital Library
Content Acquisition and Training' programme.
Access to ELSEVIER
(Science Direct) is also available now through HEC - Digital Library.
Science Direct is the world's largest electronic collection of science,
technology and medicine full text and bibliographic information. 25%
of the world's scientific contents is available in Science Direct.
Following is the list
of more high quality contents, which HEC has recently acquired.
American Physical Society (APS)
American Association of Physics
Teachers (AAPT)
American Society of Microbiology
(ASM)
American Society of Civil Engineering
(ASCE)
American Society of Agricultural
Engineering (ASAE)
Association for Computing Machinery
(ACM)
Optical Society of America (OSA)
American Society of Mechanical Engineering
(ASME)
ELSEVIER (Science Direct)
Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE)
In March - 2005 a
training workshop was held by "Martin Belcher"
- Senior Programme Manager - INASP. The goal of the workshop is to
work with the HEC Digital Library team to develop the required knowledge
and skills to plan and implement a training programme in HEC institutions
on the effective use and management of the HEC digital library and
accompanying information resources.
A Workshop was held
by Perdeep Kumar on 24th and 25th of February’
2005 for the Digital Library Project. The training was on the resource
knowledge and usage of “Elsevier (Science Direct)”, the
world's largest electronic collection of science, technology and medicine
full text and bibliographic information. The workshop was attended
by Digital Library Coordinators for all regions. This first phase
of training was conducted HEC headquarters, Islamabad. The second
phase of the training is to be arranged by Mr. Perdeep in India
HEC
And NAS Enter Into Collaborative Programme To Enhance Digital Library
S&T Content
The Higher Education
Commission has entered into a collaborative programme with the National
Academy of Sciences (USA) to enhance the content of the Digital Library
resources. Funded under the joint Ministry of Science and Technology
(Pakistan) and State Department (USA) “Pak-US Cooperation in
Science and Technology” Programme, the project involves the
negotiation and acquisition of scientific literature and academic
(journal) databases from selected American Scientific Societies to
meet the specific information requirements of the research sector
in Universities in Pakistan.
Following an extensive exercise conducted by the HEC to review the
current situation in institutions in Pakistan with respect to the
supply and availability of scholarly literature, the resource requirements
for the research sector have been identified. The expansion strategy
of the Digital Library has focused on meeting these specific requirements,
with national development objectives driving the acquisition of content
for the library.
The “Pak-US Cooperation in Science and Technology” programme
had provided an excellent opportunity to meet the needs of the S&T
research community in Pakistani institutions with the provision of
content from certain American Scientific Societies. The National Academy
of Sciences has kindly consented to be the lead US Collaborator for
the project, and will use their existing relationships with the societies
to negotiate preferential licensing agreements for institutions in
Pakistan. The formal launch of the programme will be taking place
on September 28th 2004, and following the progress of negotiations
the HEC and NAS aim to activate access to resources by January 1st
2005.
Access to the resources will be provided to public-sector higher education
institutions who require access for the conduct of teaching and whose
delivery is relevant to the identified research priorities of institutions.
