It has been a while since you have had ScienceDirect & Scopus at your university through the initiative of the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. It is our goal to help you maximize your investment in ScienceDirect as quickly and as simply as possible.

In this endeavor to optimize utilization of these resources at your university, we have the pleasure of bringing to your attention, an important initiative that we hope all universities will be willing to participate in.

A research study commissioned by Elsevier revealed that one of the best practices followed by successful libraries to market their resources is through the library website. The library website becomes the starting point for a researcher to find the information that he needs. A well-defined library website leads the user to the desired resource Hence this activity is accorded high priority by library management. Elsevier India would like to work in close coordination with the HEC and with all Institutions in Pakistan accessing ScienceDirect and Scopus to help attain the maximum utilization of all resources in your library.

Elsevier believes that you will come forward in participating in this competition. Please read on to find out what competitors at our previous competition had to say regarding this at Korea.

1. “Thanks to this homepage contest sponsored by Elsevier, we had a chance to review that our library homepage is really focused on our users and we believe our end-user’s interest of electronic journals and expectation of the library’s role has been increased by promoting our new homepage to our users.” – Librarian, Cheonan University
2. “Currently, our big challenges are how we could increase the usage of more than 6,000 electronic journals available through KESLI consortium, and how the librarians could effectively promote online resources in the libraries to their end users. In this point of view, the homepage contest sponsored by Elsevier has given a chance to promote effectively e-journals.” – Team member of KESLI

At this point of time, Elsevier is running competitions in other parts of the world and would very much like that your university becomes part of this initiative.

ASSISTANCE

• Some of you already have very good websites and the attached leaflet will provide you with more tips on “How to design Library Websites to maximize Usability”.
• What to consider when designing the library website:
  • Consistency
  • Orientation & Navigation
  • Hypertext & Linking
  • Layout
  • Aesthetics & Graphics
  • Flexibility & Efficiency of Use
  • Matching the System & User Activities
  • Accessibility
  • Usability Testing
• Each confirming participant will be given a detailed power point presentation on guidelines and other necessary information. If necessary a telephonic discussion will be also had with each participant

THE PRIZES

1. The TOP library website will be awarded. The coordinators / Institutional representatives as designated by the Higher Education Commission will be the recipients of the award. The prize winner gets an 4GB APPLE I-POD NANO
2. The runner-up will get a USB drive

OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS

1. Participants need to confirm their participation 20th January, 2005 by e-mail/phone/letter.
2. The period of the competition will be till 31st March 2006.
3. The cost of designing and implementation will not be borne by the Higher Education Commission or Elsevier.
4. The selection committee will comprise of the HEC Commission nominees and select librarians from around South Asia.

It has been a short while since you have had Scopus at your university through the initiative of the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan. In our endeavor to optimize utilization of these resources at your university, we have the pleasure of bringing to your attention; two initiatives that we hope all universities will be willing to participate in.

• HIGHEST USAGE OF SCOPUS COMPETITION

• The university recording the highest usage of Scopus from the period February till June 2006. The coordinator as designated by the HEC, will be awarded a sponsorship for an international conference (details to be provided later).
• The university recording the second highest usage of Scopus from the period February till June 2006 will be awarded the second prize. The coordinator designated will be awarded a Scopus USB drive.
• The prizes will be decided on the number of active users of Scopus during a month in the period, relative to the student and faculty members of the university.
• The prizes will be decided on the usage statistics provided by our Usage Research Helpdesk
• Please confirm your participation by 20th January, 2006.

• SCOPUS TRUE BLUE QUIZ COMPETITION

• This is a competition to test your user’s awareness of the Scopus Database and how it can help him/her in the research process.
• A set of 8 questions will need to be answered. Amongst correct entries, a lucky winner will be declared. Each lucky winner will take away a USB drive. The librarian/coordinator, who collects the maximum number of entries will also get a prize.
• Posters will be sent to you for driving awareness of this campaign and users will be required to visit our website for participating. Tracking will be done at Elsevier’s end.
• Please confirm your participation by the 20th of January 2006.
• The competition will be on from the 20th January 2006 – 15th March, 2006.

The latest ISI Journal Citation Report shows how Blackwell journals continue to publish highly relevant research in their fields. The average percentage increase in Impact Factor from 2003 to 2004 was 12.5%, and Blackwell now publishes 139 journals that rank within the top ten of their subject category. In addition many journals are expanding the amount of research they publish by increasing the number of issues published per annum, or the number of pages per issue.

The following journals have confirmed that they will transfer their publishing arrangements to Blackwell from 2006. We are still in negotiation with several other societies and will confirm any additions later in the year. View the list of transferring journals and new titles (all new in Synergy in 2006 and therefore likely to be new to PERI users) at

After the successful implementation of the first phase of workshops conducted under the Digital Library Program for the Federal Area in late May, the second phase of workshops has also been successfully conducted. Introductory Workshops on Digital Library were held in ten public sector universities in the Punjab region from the 13th to 29th of September,2005 under the title of the event ‘Introduction to Digital Library Resources and their Effective Usage’.

All sixteen public universities in Lahore and interior Punjab were invited to host a one day workshop at their respective campuses, out of which ten universities confirmed participation. Participants included faculty members, librarians / network specialists and graduate / postgraduate level students.

Universities that took active part in organizing the workshop included:

1. Government College University, Lahore
2. University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore
3. University of Health Sciences, Lahore
4. Virtual University of Pakistan, Lahore
5. University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences, Lahore
6. Lahore College for Women University, Lahore
7. National College of Arts, Lahore
8. University of Sargodha, Sargodha
9. University of Agriculture, Faisalabad
10. Islamia University, Bahawalpur

The Digital Library Team coordinated with the Institutional representatives of all the Universities, conducting on-site evaluations of facilities available and ensuring necessary logistical support was provided. Workshops were conducted by two resource persons from the Digital Library Team which allowed for necessary coordination for successful delivery of workshops.

The official Digital Library website was introduced to participants, presenting a focal point for categorization and dissemination of information. Other promotional material such as posters, pamphlets and bookmarks were distributed to increase awareness and propagate information about the resources available through the program. The British Library Program was introduced and basic concept for ordering documents discussed at each presentation.

The workshops proved to be a beneficial step towards strengthening the efforts of collaborative research in Pakistan and understanding the technologies involved in achieving the same. During the third phase of these awareness building trainings, two resource persons will be covering educational institutions in the Sindh region. The NWFP region has been catered to in the previous month of August, whereby on site facilities have been evaluated and technical problems ironed out.

The Digital Library Program is continuously evolving its services by providing resources tailored to the needs of its users. JSTOR is a current addition in the library’s vast collection of scientific journals and is presently being provided to twenty seven public sector universities in Pakistan.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization in the US dedicated to helping the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technologies. JSTOR's mission is to: (1) build a reliable and comprehensive archive of important scholarly literature, and (2) dramatically improve access to these journals. Through the development and enhancement of this searchable, interdisciplinary archive, JSTOR's objective is to help all participants in the scholarly community - libraries and publishers, faculty and students - to be more productive, while simultaneously reducing system-wide costs and increasing convenience.
JSTOR's focus is on becoming a trusted archive. They do not publish current issues of the journals. They believe it is possible to work with publishers in a complementary way that will be to everyone's benefit. In their agreements with publishers they have established a lag period, which they call the moving wall, that defines the point at which the JSTOR archive stops, and "current" issues start. The moving wall is a fixed period of time ranging, in most cases, from 2 to 5 years. In any event, as each year passes, another year is added to the archive, thus guaranteeing that the archive is being constantly updated and refreshed.
The JSTOR Archive now contains the non-current issues of core research journals in ten collections (Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences II, Arts & Sciences III, Arts & Sciences IV, Arts & Sciences Complement, Language & Literature, General Science; Ecology & Botany, Business and Music).

The Digital Library Program is continuously evolving its services to facilitate end user access to scientific information. Not only does the Program focus on providing resources that cater to the research requirements of end users in Pakistan, but it also strives at providing technical support to ensure the visibility and usability of these resources.

A priority initiative of the Digital Library Program has been to introduce a one-window search interface known as the ELIN@ system. The Higher Education Commission and the (INASP) International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications have linked up with Lund Libraries, Sweden, to adapt and extend their existing Electronic Library Information Navigator (ELIN@) system so that it can be used by universities in Pakistan.

The pilot project will be launched later on this year in September in three main universities in Pakistan, which will not only provide users with a unified, user friendly search interface, but will also allow the HEC to analyze and monitor usage within all participating institutions. Library staff will benefit by being provided with administration tools to systematically managing their resources.

Activities outlined for the successful implementation of ELIN@ require rigorous awareness building and training activities to be performed and have been planned for execution in the coming months. The awareness building activities will involve developing relevant promotional material to disseminate information regarding the benefits of ELIN. Training activities will initially be conducted in the three Universities that will be allowed access and fern out gradually in all the other educational institutions once the pilot project shows promising results. Universities selected for the pilot project phase include Quaid-e-Azam University, University of Punjab and Bahauddin Zakariya University.

The impact of ELIN@ implementation in Pakistan is expected to increase the visibility of Publisher content significantly and hence, increase the usability of the resources being supplied through the Digital Library Program. The tool will allow the Higher Education Commission to analyze and monitor usage within all participating institutions and also identify the resources for which future investments can be made.

Introductory Workshops on Digital Library were held in nine public sector universities in the Islamabad / Rawalpindi region from the 23rd – 28th of May, 2005 under the title of the event ‘Introduction to Digital Library Resources and their Effective Usage’. All twelve public universities in Islamabad / Rawalpindi were invited to host a one day workshop at their respective campuses, out of which nine universities confirmed participation. Participants included faculty members, librarians / network specialists and graduate / postgraduate level students.

Universities that took active part in organizing the workshop included:

1. Allama Iqbal Open University
2. Bahria Institute for Management & Computer Sciences
3. Federal Urdu University for Science & Technology
4. International Islamic University
5. Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences
6. Quaid-e-Azam University
7. National University of Modern Languages
8. National University of Science & Technology
9. University of Arid Agriculture.

The Digital Library Team coordinated with the Institutional representatives of all the Institutions, conducting on-site evaluations of facilities available and ensuring necessary logistical support was provided. Each workshop was conducted by two members of the Digital Library Team which allowed for simultaneous trainings to be arranged. The official Digital Library website was launched and introduced to participants, presenting a focal point for categorization and dissemination of information. Other promotional material such as posters, pamphlets and bookmarks were distributed to increase awareness and propagate information about the resources available through the program.

The workshops proved to be a vital mechanism for disseminating information about the Digital Library Resources. Previously, participants were uncertain of where to find information regarding resources that were available to them through their respective Institutions. The promotional material supplied and demonstration of the Digital Library website helped in clarifying where the information was to be sought.

Also, a majority of the participants were not confident about effective online searching and displayed gaps in understanding about the usage of some of the multidisciplinary databases. However, group discussions showed a marked improvement in their understanding and practical query-specific exercises allowed them to build on their existing skills.