International Information systems and Networks

INIS (International Nuclear Information System)

INIS sponsored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna started functioning in 1970. It is a cooperative, decentralized computerised abstracting and indexing system providing worldwide coverage of the literature on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The salient features of INIS are: international IR system, cooperative venture communication with participants, maximum- decentralisation and minimum centralisation, adherence to standards and rules, computer-based system, a document retrieval system, use of thesaurus for subject indexing, indexing and abstracting service with a high quality input, a dynamic and flexible system, machine readable information service, and a mission-oriented system. The INIS Atom index an magnetic tapes received from the headquarters by the national centres is used for offering current awareness, SDI service, etc. according to local information needs. India has been actively participating in INIS from the beginning: The Library and Information Services Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre; Bombay, is the national centre responsible for INIS activities.

AGRIS (International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology)

AGRIS, the International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology, was started in 1974 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations. AGRIS became fully operational in 1975 with the first issue of AGRINDEX and was modeled on the INIS pattern to facilitate information exchange and to bring together the world literature dealing with all aspects of agriculture.

AGRIS was established with the following objectives:

• Creation of a single, comprehensive, current inventory of world-wide agricultural literature reflecting agricultural research results, food production, rural development and to help users to identify problems concerning all aspects of world food supply,
• Meeting the information requirements of users requiring agricultural information by offering specialised subject retrieval services, providing documents on request, current awareness and selective dissemination of information services, and
• Collaborating with new and existing specialised secondary information services so as to increase efficiency and eliminate unnecessary duplication.’’

§  WebAGRIS: It covers the current and ongoing agricultural information projects in AGRIS and CARIS and is considered as networking for AGRIS in the future.

§  AGRIS AP : AGRIS Application Profile (AP) gives the Guidelines for Description of Information Objects for the International Information System on Agricultural Sciences and Technology.

§  AGROVOC: AGROVOC is the multilingual international agricultural thesaurus. The terms are in English, French and Spanish.

INSPEC

INSPEC, started in the year 1967 as an outgrowth of the Science Abstracts service, by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), United Kingdom. Presently it is one of the leading bibliographic information services available in English-language. It provides access to the world’s scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology.

INSPEC is available in a wide range of products:

§  Electronic Form : This includes

·   Online database for remote access to information from INSPEC Inspec Ondisc (CD-ROM)

·        Inspec Archive - Electronic Access to Science Abstracts 1898 to 1968

·        Inspec Web

§  Abstracting Journals :Physics Abstracts, Electrical and Electronics Abstracts and Computer and Control Abstracts together form the Science Abstracts series of journals from IEE. These journals together contain almost all of the 350,000 or more short summaries of published articles which also appear annually in the INSPEC database.

§  INSPEC Services:

· Document Delivery Service-Publications indexed by INSPEC are warehoused for this service.

·    IEL - IEEE/IEE Electronic Library full-text of IEEE and IEE publications with INSPEC index.

· Electronic Materials Information Service (EMIS) giving data and background text on the properties and technology of semiconductors.

MEDLARS (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System)

The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is located in the campus of NIH in Bethesda, Maryland. NLM is one of the largest medical libraries of the world. Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System (MEDLARS) was established in 1964 as a computerised storage and retrieval system at the NLM. It provides  bibliographic access to the NLM’s large biomedical literature collection. It became functional with the first computer produced issue of Index Medicus. MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine’s bibliographic database, covers the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences. MEDLINE can be accessed through PubMed and the NLM Gateway. PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine, contains over 15 million citations for biomedical articles back to the 1950’s. These citations are from MEDLINE and additional life science journals. PubMed has links to many sites providing full- text articles and other related resources.

 BIOSIS

BIOSIS, provided by Thompson Scientific. It is serving the life science community by providing researchers, students, and librarians with references to research published and found in journal articles, conference proceedings, meetings, patents, book chapters and other sources of information.

BIOSIS Products and Databases

·    Biological Abstracts (BA) : Usually referred to as an index to theworld’s life sciences journal literature, BA is an abstracting journal that covers articles from over 3,700 journals from all over the world and from subjects like botany, pharmacology, biochemistry, ecology and other biological areas.

·  BIOSIS Previews : This is a comprehensive index to life sciences and biomedical research. BIOSIS Previews contains citations from Biological Abstracts (BA), and Biological Abstracts/ Reports, Reviews, and Meetings (BA/RRM) (formerly BioResearch Index).

·    BIOSIS Search Guide : An essential tool for all users of the BIOSIS databases.

·        Basic BIOSIS : Life science database for students new to research

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center)

The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) is an online digital library of education research and information. ERIC is sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education. The mission of ERIC is to provide a comprehensive, easy-touse, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information for educators, researchers, and the general public. Education research and information are essential to improving teaching, learning, and educational decision-making. To help users find the information they are seeking, ERIC produces a controlled vocabulary, the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors.

OCLC (Online Computer Library Centre)

In the year 1967 OCLC (Ohio College Library Centre) was founded to develop a computerised system, OCLC emerged as an international network from a regional computer system for 50 Ohio Colleges. In the year 1981, the name of OCLC, was changed to Online Computer Library Centre. The founder is Frederick G. Kilgour and the headquater at Dublin,Ohio US. Present President and CEO is Skip Prichard. The main objective of the OCLC is to have more access to information and reduce costs by offering services to libraries and users. The vision of the OCLC is to be a leading global library cooperative, helping libraries, and users with economic access to knowledge through innovation and collaboration.

The following are some of the OCLC services :

· Cataloguing and Metadata Service provides online cataloguing, copy cataloguing, record supply and collection sets, etc.

·    Collection Management service helps in achieving the collection goals of the member libraries

·        Digital collection and preservation service is designed to protect and share the digital collection.

    FirstSearch is the powerful reference service for locating references and full text articles.

·    World Cat : The world's largest bibliographic database, Operated by OCLC. Many OCLC services are based on WorldCat. It lists resources from stone tablets to e-resources and MP3s, DVD and websites. It provides libraries with rich source of cataloguing records. As of February 2021, WorldCat contained over 512 million bibliographic records in 483 languages, representing over 3 billion physical and digital library assets, and the WorldCat persons dataset (mined from WorldCat) included over 100 million people.

RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network)

RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) is a bibliographic information system, developed by the Research Libraries Group (RLG). The Research Libraries Group (RLG) was a U.S.-based library consortium that existed from 1974 until its merger with the OCLC library consortium in 2006. The members of RLG use RLIN system for cataloguing, authority work and archives and manuscript processing. RLIN also refers to a computer interface program that is used to work with RLG’s bibliographic records for finding, creating, maintaining, and contributing records in RLG union catalogue. RLIN included bibliographic data representing JACKPHY (non-Roman) scripts. RLIN was generally used only by library specialists; in 1993 RLG developed Eureka as a user-friendly interface for use by non-librarians.

National Information systems and Networks

NISCAIR (National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources) :

NISCAIR came into existence on October 1, 2002, following the merger of two CSIR institutions viz. Indian National Scientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC) and National Institute of Science Communication (NISCOM). In 2021, the institute was merged with National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies to form National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research. Two important current National Level Projects of NISCAIR viz.TKDL and NSDL. 

• Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL):  Recognising the need for and importance of documenting the existing knowledge, available in public domain on various traditional systems of
  medicines, NISCAIR (Under CSIR), AYUSH (Department of Ayurveda, Yoga, and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy) and DIPP (Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion) collaborated to establish Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) on Ayurveda. TKDL includes search interface providing full-text search and retrieval of TK information on International Patent Classification (IPC) and keywords in multiple languages.
  
• National Science Digital Library (NSDL):  Under NSDL Project, electronic access to digital resources of curriculum related material in science and technology will be provided to students in
  remote areas. NSDL will be implemented by NISCAIR with the active participation of UGC and Ministry of Human Resource Development. In the first phase, NSDL will cover the students of undergraduate level in Indian universities and colleges.

DESIDOC(Defence Scientific Information and Documentation Centre):
DESIDOC started functioning in 1958 as Scientific Information Bureau (SIB). It was a division of the Defence Science Laboratory (DSL) which is presently called as Laser Science & Technology Centre (LASTEC). The Defence Scientific Information & Documentation Centre (DESIDOC) is a division of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which had its beginning in 1948 became a division of Scientific Information Bureau (SIB) in 1959. The present director of DESIDOC is Dr K Nageswara Rao. DESIDOC maintains the Defence Science Library (DSL) is headed by Sh. Tapesh Sinha, a well-equipped library housing 262,000 documents. It also provides access to various databases, and other reference material.

Publications :

• Defence Science Journal
• DRDO Newsletter
• DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology (earlier DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology (DBIT).

SENDOC (Small Enterprises National Documentation Center) :

SENDOC was set up in 1970 at Small Industries Extension Training Institute (now known as National Institute of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises), Hyderabad, to revitalize the micro, small and medium enterprises in India and developing countries by providing their required information. The objectives of the Centre are to collect, store and disseminate techno-managerial information pertaining to MSMEs and to conduct need and demand based training programmes. The libraryof the SENDOC possesses 70,000 books, 18,000 back volumes of journals, 30,000 reports and others.

Some of the important services provided by the Centre are:

Inter-library lending of documents

Lending of books

Reference Services (preparation of bibliographies) and literature search

Newspaper clippings (on select items)

Technical enquiry

Reprographic Services

ENVIS(Environmental Information System) :

Recognising the importance of environmental information for sustainable development and formulation of environmental management polices, Government of India set up ENVIS in 1982 under the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF). Long-term and short-term objectives of ENVIS Programme are as follows :

    Long-term objectives:

• To build up a repository and dissemination centre in Environmental +Science and Engineering;
  
• To gear up the modem technologies of acquisition, processing, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information of environmental nature; and
  
• To support and promote research, development and innovation in environmental information technology.

    Short-term objectives:

• To provide national environmental information service relevant to present needs and capable of development to meet the future needs of the users, originators,processors and disseminators of information;
  
• To build up storage, retrieval and dissemination capabilities with the ultimate objective of dissemination of information speedily to the users;
  
• To promote national and international co-operation and liaison for exchange of environment related information;
• To promote exchange of information amongst developing countries.

INFLIBNET: Information and Library Network

INFLIBNET is helping in automation and modernization of university library system. It is providing universities high-speed line for accessing e-journals. It has become a major player in enhancing scholarly communication in India. INFLIBNET development was started under University Grant Commission (UGC) India in 1991. Initially it was started as a project under Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA). INFLIBNET became an independent Inter University Centre in 1996. The headquarter of INFLIBNET is situated in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The present director is Prof J P Singh Joorel. Primary objectives of INFLIBNET are :

• To promote and establish communication facilities to improve capabilities in information transfer and access, that provide support to scholarship, learning, research etc.
  
• To linking libraries and information centres in universities, deemed to be universities, colleges, UGC information centres, institutes of national importance, R&D institutions etc. Avoiding duplication of efforts.
  

Activities :

• The Centre has developed Windows based library management software named 'SOUL'. The library automation package 'SOUL' is installed and required training is provided. 'SOUL' has been well received by the university libraries.
• UGC is modernising universities campuses with the state-of-the art campus wide network and setting up its own nation wide communication network named UGC-INFONET.
  
• The Centre also assists participating libraries in database development, develop utility tools for retrospective conversion of union catalogues, develop software tools for multilingual database of union catalogue, etc.
  
• To enhance the skills of university library staff for implementation of INFLIBNET Programme, Centre conducts several training programmes and workshops on 'the application of computers in libraries and information services'.
  
• INFLIBNET Centre in collaboration with different universities organises a national convention, 'CALIBER' (Convention on Automation of Libraries in Education and Research) every year.
  

DELNET: Developing Library Network

DELNET (Developing Library Network) earlier known as Delhi Library Network till 2001 started in the year 1988 and registered as a society in 1991. Initially, it was sponsored by NISSAT, DSIR and currently is being promoted jointly by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India and India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi. Delnet (http://www.delnet.nic.in) provides ILL Online, Retrospective conversion, Referral Services, Document Delivery Services, Training Programmes, Creation and Maintenance of Bibliographic Databases, E-mail Service, and Internet Connectivity Service. Apart from these services, DELNET provides some useful software products namely 

DELSIS – a powerful library networking software;             DEL-DOS –for creating MARC (Machine Readable Catalogue) Records of books; NICNET(National Informatics Centre Network): NICNET stands for National Informatics Centre Network. NICNET, has institutional linkages across all the Ministries /Departments of the Central Government, State Governments, Union Territories, and District administrations of the country. National Informatics Centre (NIC) is an institution under the Government of India. NIC was established in 1976 under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. It provides solutions in the area of e-governance particularly for the sectors that fall under Government of India. It supports NICNET. NICNET produced the enabling facilities for supporting added activities, projects and programmes in the special work areas. ERNET (Education and Research Network) ERNET stands for Education and Research Network. The Research & Development projects are initiated by ERNET groups. The core groups of ERNET have worked towards the development of products and technology transfer to the industry. The following are some of the ongoing projects:

• Wide area Quality of Service Network Test bed
• Bringing Europe's electronics infrastructure to expanding frontiers
• Setting up of vocational centers for skill creation for the disabled children in the area of Information Technology
• Community Information Centres Vidyavahin(CICVVs)

     Types of Library

    

Public Library

A  Public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is generally funded from public sources (such as taxes) and operated by civil servants. Public libraries exist in many countries across the world and are often considered an essential part of having an educated and literate population. The most widely accepted definition of a public library was formulated by UNESCO in 1949, which was revised in 1972 and again revised in 1994, and is known as the UNESCO Public Library Manifesto. According to UNESCO, public libraries are the “local gateway to knowledge, provide basic condition for lifelong learning, independent decision-making and cultural development of the individual and social group.

Functions of Public Libraries:

• ·         Help the life-long self-education of one and all;
• ·         Furnish up-to-date facts and information on all subjects to one and all
• ·         Preserve the cultural heritage of the country
• ·         The care of a collection of books means protection and preservation of collection.
• ·         To make them accessible in real sense so that the right person can get right information at the right time.

   Examples :

Ø  Delhi Public Library, Delhi.

Ø  Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library, Patna

Ø  Connemara Public Library, Chennai

 Academic Library

Academic library is the library which is attached to academic institutions like schools, colleges and universities. An academic library serves more specifically the students, research scholars, teachers and staff of the academic institution. Main objective of an academic library is to give maximum learning materials to its clientele so that they may be fully educated in their respective level. Academic libraries are categorized into school libraries, college libraries and university libraries. An Academic Library has been defined as: “A library is associated or attached with any educational institution to support its educational programmes”.

Functions of Academic Library :

·         The library supports and facilitates faculty teaching activities.

·         The library helps undergraduates develop research and information literacy skills.

·         The library provides active support that helps increase the productivity of faculty research and scholarship.

·         The library pays for resources faculty members need, from academic journals to books to electronic databases

·         The library serves as a repository of resources; in other words, it archives, preserves, and keeps track of resources.

Examples :

Ø  Jawaharlal Nehru University Library

Ø  St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata

Ø  Delhi Public School Library, New Delhi

Special Libraries

Special libraries were intended to serve a particular institution that has a specific role to play and they were therefore mainly “one subject” libraries. Special libraries include corporate libraries, law libraries, medical libraries, museum libraries, news libraries, and non-profit libraries. Special libraries are also sometimes known as information centres.  Harrod’s Librarians’ Glossary of Terms defines that a, “Special library is a collection of books and other printed, graphic or recorded material dealing with a limited field of knowledge and provided by a learned society, research organization, industrial or commercial undertaking, government department or even an educational institution.

Functions of special Library :

·         Performs exhaustive literature search to compile comprehensive lists;

·         Selects, procures, organizes, stores and retrieves current information required by the users;

·         Analyses, synthesizes and evaluates available information;

·         It provides Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) service to the users as per their subject interest and requirement; 

Examples :

Ø  Research Organisations –

Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi

Ø  Libraries of Societies and Institutions –

U.P. Historical Society, Lucknow

 Government Library

Beginning from the twentieth century, the responsibility of governments increased in several areas of national growth and development for the welfare of the people. This again created the need for library support for various types of information to deal with the work of different ministries and departments of governments.

Functions of Govt. Libraries

·         government libraries have a responsibility to collect all government publications of their respective ministries and departments. They organise special services at short notice in supplying appropriate material to senior level officers and provide short and condensed reports for them.

Examples :

·         The Central Secretariat Library (CSL), founded in 1891 is one of the oldest government libraries of the country.

National Library 

A National Library is a library specifically established and funded by the government of a country to serve as the pre-eminent repository of information for that country. National libraries collect and preserve the nation’s literature. Most national libraries receive, by legal right (or copyright, or deposit), one free copy of each book and periodical printed in the country.

Functions of National Library :

·         It works as a national depository library for all literary work published in the country.

·         It freely collects copies of all published material in the country under legal provision or by law.

·         It compiles national bibliographies to disseminate information about literary output of the country.

·         It works as an apex body of the national library system and coordinates with other libraries in the country.

·         It also exchanges data and documents at national and international level.

Examples :

Ø  National Library of India-Kolkata,

Ø  British Library-London,

Ø  Library of Congress- Washington

 Physical Library

A physical library (aka traditional library) is a viewed as a learning place that houses collections of books, periodicals, newspapers and other publications in print media and used for education, learning and awareness. Physical libraries exist in various sizes ranging from single-room size library to multi-rooms, multi-floors, or multi-floors and multi-building libraries.

 Electronic Library

The Electronic Library System enables users to obtain open digitized data from anywhere in the world by online access. A library which comprises collections of ‘born-digital’ electronic resources is called an electronic library. The word ‘electronic’ connotes ‘electronic media’ - such as a computer disk, CD, DVD, magnetic tape. We use electronic media to store information in digital format. The Electronic Library System was developed on the basis of the following five concepts: Digital, Network, Interactive, Multimedia, Scalable.

 Digital Library

The term digital library is more inclusive; it covers mixed collections – collections of digitised materials which have physical counterpart plus electronic collections that are ‘born-digital’ – as well as digital services such as digitisation and electronic reference service. The term digital library was first popularized by the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries Initiative in 1994. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals or organizations. An early example of a digital library is the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC).

Virtual Library

Virtual Library is another kind of Digital Library which provides portal to information that is available electronically elsewhere. This is referred so to emphasize that the Library does not itself hold content. Libraries in a virtual space using computers and computer networks. For example, subject gateways that search remote locations for information. Virtual library has no physical counterpart such as CD, DVD and computer disk. Virtual Libraries thus combine materials in electronic format with an electronic network which ensures access to and delivery of those materials. The Virtual Library was first conceived and run by Tim Berners-Lee.

Reference

• IGNOU. Library and Society. BLIS-01. Block 2. Unit 5-8.New Delhi: IGNOU, 1999. Print
• Isaac, K. A. Libraries and Librarianship. Madras: S Viswanathan Printers and Publishers Ltd, 1987. Print.
  
• http://www.lisbdnet.com/types-libraries-academic-public-nationalspecial-library/
  
• http://www.netugc.com/librarians-in-different-types-of-libraries
  

  

Library and Modern Society

Library and Modern Society

https://youtu.be/da_nSJ2B2qk

Library is a store house of knowledge , source of all kind of information. Library is a collection of such materials which are easily accessible for reading, viewing listining and reference. A library provides physical documents like book, manuscripts, publications etc. on the other hand digital documents also like DVD, CD, e-books, cassets etc.

“Library -- from the Latin liber, meaning "book." In Greek and the Romance languages,  the corresponding term is bibliotheca. A collection or group of collections of books and/or other print or nonprint materials organized and maintained for use (reading, consultation, study, research, etc.). Institutional libraries, organized to facilitate access by a specific clientele,  are staffed by librarians and other personnel trained to provide services to meet user needs."(Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science (ODLIS).

In The Librarian’s Book of Lists (Chicago: ALA, 2010), George Eberhart offers this definition: "A library is a collection of resources in a variety of formats that is (1) organized by information  professionals or other experts who (2) provide convenient physical, digital, bibliographic, or  intellectual access and (3) offer targeted services and programs (4) with the mission of educating, informing, or entertaining a variety of audiences (5) and the goal of stimulating individual learning and advancing society as a whole." (p.1)

Purpose of Library : The purpose of a library can be stated as is explained in this section:

i. Libraries are for the lending of books: Indeed, the earliest libraries were just this – a small business, museum or other place would take it upon themselves to educate their neighbours by lending out their collection of books. As collections increased, these places would need innovative means to organize and provide access to such books and innovative people to do the innovative work – thus librarians were invented.

ii. Libraries are for educating people of all ages: Since reading inevitably increases the brainpower of communities, an educational role for libraries seems fairly obvious. In academic and school libraries, this role is the most obvious and apparent, since the institutions that host them are largely educational ones.

iii. Libraries are for preserving and/or promoting community culture: The cultural role of libraries is supported through the country governance. The cultural role for libraries is largely a supportive one at best and does not speak to the value a library has in the community.

Functions of Library : The functions of library are as follows:

1.To acquire and conserve the whole of the national production of documents utilizing the existing library facilities fully

2.To collect all the documents concerning that nation published throughout the world, irrespective of language of publication.

3. To build up a complete collection, self-sufficient on all aspects, of all subjects related to its country.

4. To store information on the nation, minutely and fully catalogued; classified and arranged which should be capable of answering any enquiry about the country.

5. To take the full responsibility for ensuring that a copy of the whole of national production of documents is preserved in its original form.

Role of Libraries in formal and non-formal Education :

In every formal education be it school, college or university , there should have library attached to it. At the earlier stages of education the education system should be done to supplement classroom teaching. At later stages the focal point of learning should gradually shift from the classroom to library. Apart from School, College and University libraries the public libraries to have a responsibility to support formal education. For this purpose the public library must stock books and other material of an academic nature suitable for students and teacher.

In non-formal education where the help of the teacher is minimal, it is the library that is the main resource. Student here have by and large to acquire knowledge through self-study. The development of a sound public library system is an essential pre-requisite for the successful implementation of all non-formal education programmes. Everyone should have access as a matter of right to the public library. A public library should try to discharge this responsibility by acquiring books and journals suited to the needs of the students of non formal education in its area.

Library and Modern Society

In modern soceity some changing  factors have radically changed the conventional functions of the library. The changes that are occurring in different facets of human life in modern society can be seen  in the following aspects:

a) Pressures exerted by the population explosion, particularly in India, produce societal pressures through increasing urbanization, mobility of population, group dynamics, etc.

b) Socio-economic changes affect occupational patterns, incomes, prices, value, inflation, growth dynamics, and economic developments at the macro and micro levels

c) Political changes affect political structures and systems, political parties, their growths, the activities of members of parliament and state assemblies, power structures, etc

d) Educational changes affect learning and teaching processes at all levels of education, learning and teaching materials, educational technologies, etc.

e) Industry and business are affected by changes in production and distribution,
technology transfer, assessment and application, marketing and sales, etc.

f) Government and administration are affected through changes in planning, policy-making, governance, execution and management, etc.

Libraries, through their books, are actually repositories of information and knowledge. Information is indispensable for any human activity aiming at social progress. The basic information role of the library is to collect material containing information through appropriate methods. It is primarily in this sense that a library is described as an information centre. But a library also has an information role in the sense of providing information relating to the socio-economic needs of the people. In short, a library should be so equipped and organised that it will be able to serve its community with all types of information that may be in actual or potential demand. Thus in modern soceity the library occupies a prominent place:  While other institutions are designed to meet one or a few of the needs, the library is able to meet all of them in equal measure. It plays an important role in supporting the educational and research activities of society, promoting culture, disseminating information, catering to the spiritual and ideological instincts in man and building up a value system for him and providing recreation.

Reference :

• Isaac, K.A-(1987). Libraries and Librarianship : A Basic Introduction, S. Vishwanthan Printers and Publishers Pvt. Ltd., Madras (pp. l-35).
• Khanna, J.K. (1987). Library and Society; Research Publications: Kurukshetra:
  (pp.7-79) (pp.7-79)
• India. Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs. (1959). Report of Advisory
  Committee for Libraries, Manager of Publications: Delhi.
  

 

  Recent Trends in Library Cataloguing

      Cataloguing is the core of every library, a basic tool of retrieval in any document collection. The word‘ Catalogue’ has been derived from the Greek expression ‘Kata-Logos’. It means a list, register or complete enumeration of something. The list can be books, maps or other items arranged in definite systematic order in a library.

            The history of cataloguing is indeed a fascinating area of study. The seventh century BCE Babylonian Library of Asurbanipal was led by the librarian Ibnissaru who prescribed a catalogue of clay tablets by subject. The 16^th century proved a productive period influenced by great bibliographers like Gesner, Treflerus, Maunsell etc. As librarian Gottfried van Swieten introduced the world first card catalogue (1780) as the Perfect of the Imperial Library , Austria. The 19^th Century marks the beginning of Code making. Among them some are :

•         British Museaum Cataloguing Rules which is also known as Panizzis 91 rules (1841)
•          Cutter’s Rules : Charles Ammi Cutter published “Rules for a Dictionay Catalogue in           1876 which considered as “ Landmark Work”in the history of cataloguing code
•          Classified Catalogue Code : Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan  published the first                 Indian Library Code (CCC) in 1934. The code marked for its simplicity, clarity, and           brevity.

 AACR & ISBD :

An International Conference, the International Conference on Cataloguing Principles (ICCP) held in Paris in 1961, which asserted the importance of drawing up a code of rules based on sound theoretical principles rather than on ad hoc solutions to practical problems. This led to the production of the Anglo-American Cataloguing rules in 1967 in two different versions: the British text and the American text After some major revision AACR2 published in 1978 and AACR-2R appeared in 1988. One of the areas that needed urgent attention for standardization was the area of description of items. In 1969 IFLA sponsored an international meeting of cataloguing experts at Copenhagen which led, in 1971, to the publication of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD). This was further developed for various non-book materials, leading to the publication in 1977 of a generalized version of ISBD, called ISBD(G). The ISBD defines nine areas of description. Each area, except area 7, is composed of multiple elements with structured classifications.

0: Content form and media type area

1: Title and statement of responsibility area, consisting of

1.1 Title proper

1.2 Parallel title

1.3 Other title information

1.4 Statement of responsibility

2: Edition area

3: Material or type of resource specific area (e.g., the scale of a map or the numbering of a periodical)

4: Publication, production, distribution, etc., area

5: Material description area (e.g., number of pages in a book or number of CDs issued as a unit)

6: Series area

7: Notes area

8: Resource identifier and terms of availability area (e.g., ISBN, ISSN)

OPAC:

One of the most significant developments has been emergence of the Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) which is basically the gateway to a library's collection. This is an interface through which users can search a library's catalogue, and can also perform a number of other operations, such as borrower record checking, reservation of items, online renewal, and so on. Although OPACs made their first appearance in the mid-1970s, it was only at the beginning of the next decade that libraries in significant numbers began to switch from card to automated catalogues. The four major component of OPAC are :

• The user interface allows a user to interact with the system.
• The main catalogue database file is something like the card catalogues, each card being converted into a bibliographic record.
• The index file, called the inverted file, which may be conceived as a back-of-thebook index file containing all the index terms (here, authors name, title words or full titles, keywords, subject headings, and so on) and appropriate pointers pointing to appropriate record(s) in the catalogue database.
• The display/print format directly relates to cataloguing and to AACR2.

STANDARDS FOR CATALOGUING

There are basically two types of standards used in cataloguing. The first one is the International Standard ISO 2709, or its equivalent national standard. The second set of standards relates to the content designators which are represented in most bibliographic formats by tags, indicators and subfield codes. MARC was the first such standard, though now there are several such standards and many of them come from the MARC family, viz. AUSMARC, UKMARC, INDIMARC, UNIMARC, and so on.

CATALOGUING NETWORKS

The United States led the world in setting up cataloguing networks and bibliographic utilities such as OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network) and WLN (Western Library Network). Among these OCLC is the pioneer and is the most highly used bibliographic utility service. OCLC, the world's largest library information network, offers the following services that help libraries further access to information and reduce information costs:

·         WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalog)

·         The OCLC system

·         OCLC FirstSearch® service

·         OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online® service

·         OCLC Access Services.

 CATALOGUING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Nowadays the ever-expanding growth of information and information technology, increasing volumes and multiple formats of information, changing user expectations and behaviours brought about even higher levels of challenges for cataloguers. To pursue professional ethics in creating timely and high quality records, cataloguers need to develop a new mindset to deal with the increased complexity in cataloguing. Cataloguing of Internet resources can be done by using a set of tools called ROADS. ROADS stands for Resource Organization And Discovery in Subject-based services. It is a set of software tools designed to help create information gateways on the Internet. ROADS allows Internet resources to be fully described, allowing the end user to judge their relevancy before trying to access them and it is properly organized. The organization and description of resources adds value to an information gateway. ROADS allows you to create a database of resource descriptions (also called templates). New technologies require new skills. The modern cataloguer has to be multi-skilled, computer literate, able to operate different in house library systems, able to use the online packages, such as MARC21 standard online, WEB Dewey, Web LC, Search interfaces.

RDA

Since mid-2010, Resource Description and Access (RDA) have been introduced as an alternative to past cataloguing practices for the electronic environment. RDA is built on the traditions of the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC) recognized during the 1990s that AACR2 was not a code that would serve 21^st century users. It was structured around card catalogs and linear displays of citations, and well-formed metadata that could be used by computer systems. RDA will provide a set of guidelines and instructions on formulating descriptive data and access point control data to support resource discovery. Being developed as a web based product RDA is especially designed for description and access for digital resources. An important feature of RDA will be its independence from the presentation of data. It will provide guidance on the recording of data, the content, and not on how it might be organized on the screen. That means that RDA-based cataloguing can be readily accommodated in many other than MARC encoding standards and metadata schema, thus intended to be independent of any cataloguing code. As a result, the more user-friendly presentations of bibliographic data can be introduced.

FRBR

From 1992-1995 the IFLA ( International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions ) Study Group on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) developed an entity-relationship model as a generalized view of the bibliographic universe, intended to be independent of any cataloging code or implementation. It represents a more holistic approach to retrieval and access as the relationships between the entities provide links to navigate through the hierarchy of relationships. 

FRBR comprises groups of entities:

·     Group 1 entities are defined as the products of intellectual or artistic endeavours that are named or described in bibliographic records: work, expression, manifestation, and item.

·   Group 2 entities are those responsible for the intellectual or artistic content, the physical production and dissemination, or the custodianship of the Group 1 entities: person, corporate body, and family2

·   Group 3 entities represent an additional set of entities that serve as the subjects of works: concept, object, event, and place.

Group 1 entities are the foundation of the FRBR model:

• Work is a "distinct intellectual or artistic creation.
• Expression is "the specific intellectual or artistic form that a work takes each time it is  'realized.'"
• Manifestation is "the physical embodiment of an expression of a work. As an entity, manifestation represents all the physical objects that bear the same characteristics, in respect to both intellectual content and physical form."
• Item is "a single exemplar of a manifestation. The entity defined as item is a concrete entity."[2] Each copy of the 1996 pressings of that 1996 recording is an item. When we say, "Both copies of the London Philharmonic's 1996 performance of the Ninth are checked out of my local library," we are generally referring to items

FRBR outlines the relationship between many different interpretations or expressions of the work. Each expression can be published in various formats or manifestations. Each manifestation may be reproduced many times, each of which is called an item. Thus, FRBR is a conceptual entity-relationship model. (ER-model)

Relationship :

FRBR is built upon relationships between and among entities. "Relationships serve as the vehicle for depicting the link between one entity and another, and thus as the means of assisting the user to ‘navigate’ the universe that is represented in a bibliography, catalogue, or bibliographic database”.

·        Equivalence relationships : Equivalence relationships exist between exact copies of the same manifestation of a work or between an original item and reproductions of it, so long as the intellectual content and authorship are preserved. Examples include reproductions such as copies, issues, facsimiles and reprints, photocopies, and microfilms.

• Derivative relationships : Derivative relationships exist between a bibliographic work and a modification based on the work. Examples include

1. Editions, versions, translations, summaries, abstracts, and digests

2.  Adaptations that become new works but are based on old works

3.  Genre changes

4.    New works based on the style or thematic content of the work

·     Descriptive relationships : Descriptive relationships exist between a bibliographic entity and a description, criticism, evaluation, or review of that entity, such as between a work and a book review describing it.

FRAD and FRSAD 

    Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD), formerly known as Functional Requirements for Authority Records (FRAR) is a conceptual entity-relationship model developed by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) for relating the data that are recorded in library authority records to the needs of the users of those records and facilitate and sharing of that data. The Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records (FRANAR) was established in April 1999. It was charged to continue the work of FRBR by developing a conceptual model for entities described in authority records. The primary purpose of the Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD) conceptual model is “to provide a framework for the analysis of functional requirements for the kind of authority data that is required to support authority control and for the international sharing of authority data. The model focuses on data, regardless of how they may be packaged (e.g., in authority records)”. The IFLA Working Group on the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Records (FRSAR) was formed in 2005 to address subject authority data issues and to investigate the direct and indirect uses of subject authority data by a wide range of users. The FRSAR Working Group (2005 to present) and the FRANAR Working Group (1999 to 2009) both worked in parallel to develop models within the FRBR framework. By the time FRANAR released its final report in June 2009, FRSAR also had released its first draft report of the Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD) for world-wide review. The model is intended to support global sharing and reuse of subject authority data.

·         The conceptual model of FRSAD

Work : Work is a "distinct intellectual or artistic creation (IFLA 1998)

Thema : Is anything that can be the subject of a work. This is the abstract idea of the aboutness of a given work. Thema is independent of language and disciplines (FRSAR 2007).

Nomen : Any alphanumeric, sound, visual, or any other symbol, sign or combination of symbols by which a thema is known, referred to or addressed (FRSAR 2007).

BIBFRAME

BIBFRAME (Bibliographic Framework) is a data model for bibliographic description . In 2011, the Library of Congress (LC) began a project to end libraries isolation from the semantic web through the creation of a new communication format, called BIBFRAME “BIBFRAME Framework as a Web of Data,” 2012), as a successor to the MARC formats. The development of BIBFRAME has been a complex one as its creators try to balance the need to capture the data encoded in MARC, the constraints of RDF, and input from the community it hopes to serve. In addition, there are other schemas available for libraries’ use, such as Schema.org (“Schema.org Homepage”), the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM) (“CIDOC_CRM Homepage”), and the Europeana Data Model (EDM) (“Europeana Data Model Documentation”).

Illustration of BIBFRAME 2.0 model, with three core levels of abstraction (in blue)—Work, Instance, Item—and three related classes (in orange)—Agent, Subject, Event.

 FRBRoo

This document is the definition of the object-oriented version of the FRBR1 family of conceptual models2, harmonised with CIDOC CRM, hereafter referred to as FRBRoo (FRBR-object oriented), a formal ontology that captures and represents the underlying semantics of bibliographic information and therefore facilitates the integration, mediation, and interchange of bibliographic and museum information. The first draft of FRBRoo was completed in 2006.[2] The model expresses the attributes and relationships in the entity–relationship model of FRBR, formulated as an extensions of the CIDOC-CRM. Version 2.4 of the FRBRoo model was released in November 2015.

Conclusion

In this section we have discussed various mile stones in the study of library cataloguing. Internet, WWW, the concept of digital library have added a new dimension and growing challenges in library cataloguing. Rapid emergence of new   formats, increased rate of updates of cataloguing rules, cataloguing for diverse user environments become the result of new challenges for library cataloguing in this 21^st century. The cataloguers should invest their time for self-development and skill-improvement to fulfill the requirements of these innovations in the field of library cataloguing.

References

•        Zeng, Žumer, and Salaba, eds. (2010). Functional Requirements for Subject Authority Data (FRSAD): A Conceptual Model

•        Tillett, Barbara. "What is FRBR?" (PDF). Library of Congress. Retrieved 5 August 2017.

•        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_Requirements_for_Bibliographic_Records#cite_ref-1

•        Van Malssen, Kara. "BIBFRAME AV Modeling Study: Defining a Flexible Model for Description of Audiovisual Resources" (PDF). Library of Congress. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 August 2014. Retrieved 1 August 2014.

•        ISBD: International Standard Bibliographic Description (PDF). IFLA series on bibliographic control. 44 (Consolidated ed.). München: K.G. Saur. 2011

•        "RDA Steering Committee". rda-rsc.org. Retrieved 2017-04-30.

•        Gorman, Michael. "RDA: The coming cataloguing debacle" (PDF). Retrieved 31 January 2011.