A.K Jain, the head of AKMU , IARI shared his experience of implementation of Koha - Open Source ILS - Integrated Library System and CeRA - Consortium for e-Resources in Agriculture.
1. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
1
CeRA, Koha and the Open Access to
Agricultural Information
By
Dr AK Jain
Head, AKMU, IARI, New Delhi (head_akmu@iari.res.in)
29-30 October 2014
Workshop on “Open Access to Agricultural Knowledge
for Inclusive Growth and Development”
Organized by
National Academy of Agricultural Research Management
( In Association with GFAR-FAO),
at NAARM, Hyderabad-500030
2. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Homepage of CeRA websites
www.cera.jccc.in (till Feb. 2014)
(http://cera.iari.res.in)
CeRA User Manual (available
in http://cera.iari.res.in)
http://jgateplus.com (wef Mar. 2014)
3. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Journals / Database in CeRA
Journals
• Total Subscribed : 2154
• Open Access : 510
• Library Subscribed : 709 (vary)
• Total Journals : 3373
Database / Services
1. Web of Science : One
2. CABI database : One
3. Ezproxy : One (Remote Access)
147 Institutions of NARS get access to CeRA
4. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Enhanced Knowledge in Agricultural Research revealed
through Increased Number of Downloads of Articles in
CeRA
> 7.0 million articles downloaded during Jan-2008 –Dec-2013
Cost Saved (based on downloads) > Rs.750 Million
9. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Union Catalog
To create Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC) of 12 library
resources with OCLC partnership
AgriCat has been
developed as a group
catalogue of 12 partner
libraries, provides versatile
search and retrieval facilities,
virtualizes the complete
experience of physically
visiting the library and
facilitates sharing of library
resources which can be
accessed on 24x7 basis at
http://www.egranth.ac.in/ or
http://www.agricat.worldcat.org
10. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
AgriCat for Users
Search in 3 levels Worldwide libraries, AgriCat Libraries and
Individual Library.
Many searching options
Detailed Bibliographic Information
Preview of the items
Search Libraries, Lists, etc.
Library full details like website link, Catalogue link, Address, Recent
Collection, Total Collection etc.
Features for Registered user :
Creating mini library using the feature MyList. Creating various
lists subject wise or so and add items to them.
Getting updates on e-mail
Creating a MyWatch List (i.e. to track updates on interesting
lists created by other users)
Saving searches in MySaved Searches for further use.
The information on the reviews and tags added by the user is
also available at the profile page.
18. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
AgriCat 2.0
We have to pay membership fee of about Rs. 12 lakh annually to OCLC for
12 partners which is at highly subsidized rates.
There is shift in OCLC’s business policy and they have closed Asia-South
East region. Support may not be guaranteed in future.
To meet such contingencies and lower the cost for NARS Libraries, we had
already planned our own indigenous AgriCat 2.0 based on Koha which we have
adopted for NARS.
AgriCat 2.0 is combining the library resources of 38 partners & may be extended
to more libraries in future.
AgriCat 2.0 has all the features
of AgriCat plus advantage of
being integrated with day to day
ILMS of libraries, thus, having
shorter learning curve for new
members.
Koha being open source
software is cheaper & easier to
maintain – sustainable for large
system like NARS.
19. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Digital Library
Digitization and creation of open access Institutional Repositories
including rare books, old journals and institutional publications
KrishiKosh
KrishiKosh is digital repository platform capable of Decentralized
Management of Content but Centralized Hosting and maintenance for
convenience of multiple users.
Each institution has its own repository with full control without
botheration of maintaining hardware/software which is centrally
managed at IARI.
KrishiKosh Institutional repository of NARS provides free access to
institutional knowledge through an alternative route in addition to
commercially subscribed digital contents by CeRA.
At present KrishiKosh has 15 million digitized pages in 36,000 digital
items (volumes) like old books, old Journals, reports, proceedings,
reprint, research highlights, training manuals, historical records.
Iincluds 9,314 theses taken from Krishi Prabha plus digitized at
various centers. While migrating from Krishi Prabha, value addition
has been done by making theses full Text searchable.
20. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
KrishiKosh uses
PDF/A format
(ISO19005-1:2005)
which is
international
standard format not
dependent on
Adobe and suitable
for archiving as it
has all the
dependencies build
into the document
for proper display
even with the
future
technologies.
KrishiKosh
provides ready
software platform,
similar to ‘Cloud
Service’ for
individual
institution’s self-managed
29. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Agrotags
Keyword assignment is an important step towards
semantic enabled search for any repository.
Agrotags which is designed by IIT, Kanpur for tagging
agricultural documents is a carefully selected subset of
Agrovoc and is much smaller: about 2100 as against
40,000 words.
This subset is further refined and validated by looking
at manually assigned keywords from AGRIS database.
Agrotagger is a software tool for automatic generation
of keywords for agricultural documents which has
been integrated with KrishiKosh to provide more
intelligent search.
30. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
ICAR adopts Open Access Policy
• Each ICAR institute to setup an Open Access Institutional Repository.
• ICAR shall setup a central harvester to harvest the metadata and full-text of all the
records from all the OA repositories of the ICAR institutes for one stop access to all the
agricultural knowledge generated in ICAR.
• All the meta-data and other information of the institutional repositories are copyrighted
with the ICAR. These are licensed for use, re-use and sharing for academic and research
purposes. Commercial and other reuse requires written permission.
• All publications viz., research articles, popular articles, monographs, catalogues,
conference proceedings, success stories, case studies, annual reports, newsletters,
pamphlets, brochures, bulletins, summary of the completed projects, speeches, and other
grey literatures available with the institutes to be placed under Open Access.
• The institutes are free to place their unpublished reports in their open access repository.
They are encouraged to share their works in public repositories like YouTube and social
networking sites like Facebook ®, Google+, etc. along with appropriate disclaimer.
• The authors of the scholarly articles produced from the research conducted at the ICAR
institutes have to deposit immediately the final authors version manuscripts of papers
accepted for publication (pre-prints and post-prints) in the institute’s Open Access
repository.
31. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
• Scientists and other research personnel of the ICAR working in all ICAR institutes or
elsewhere are encouraged to publish their research work with publishers which allow self -
archiving in Open Access Institutional Repositories.
• The authors of the scholarly literature produced from the research funded in whole or part
by the ICAR or by other Public Funds at ICAR establishments are required to deposit the
final version of the author's peer-reviewed manuscript in the ICAR institute’s Open Access
Institutional Repository.
• Scientists are advised to mention the ICAR’s Open Access policy while signing the
copyright agreements with the publishers and the embargo, if any, should not be later than
12 months.
• M.Sc. and Ph.D. thesis/dissertations (full contents) and summary of completed research
projects to be deposited in the institutes open access repository after completion of the
work. The metadata (e.g., title, abstract, authors, publisher, etc.) be freely accessible from
the time of deposition of the content and their free unrestricted use through Open Access
can be made after an embargo period not more than 12 months.
• All the journals published by the ICAR have been made Open Access. Journals,
conference proceedings and other scholarly literature published with the financial support
from ICAR to the professional societies and others, to be made Open.
• The documents having material to be patented or commercialised, or where the
promulgations would infringe a legal commitment by the institute and/or the author, may
not be included in institute’s Open Access repository. However, the ICAR scientists and
staff as authors of the commercial books may negotiate with the publishers to share the
same via institutional repositories after a suitable embargo period.
32. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Digital Library
Implementation of Koha-open source
Library Management System
During implementation of project objectives we experienced difficulties in
Data Conversion from older generation existing local library
management software like LibSys, Soul, Slim to Marc21, as these
software do not fully support data portability.
To strengthen the digital library initiatives, more advanced Library
Management Software, compliant to open international standards is
necessary for easy data portability and data sharing.
Koha - an open source software has been identified for implementation
by outsourcing for expert support, intensive training and in-house
capacity building.
has been implemented at 38 partner libraries.
35. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Koha OPAC for Users
Koha OPAC provides a simple interface for library users to perform tasks
such as searching, reserving items, suggesting new items etc.
Koha OPAC has got following broad features:
Advanced Search
Items that have checked out
Fine details
Request for editing your personal details
Making Lists
Tags (You can in catalogues)
Reading History
Purchase Suggestions
36. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
What is Koha ?
Koha is a full featured Integrated Library System (ILS), download-able
free under GNU General Public License. You have freedom to
modify the codes to adapt it to your local needs and redistribute it.
Koha has robust Cataloging, Circulation, Patrons, Search, Serials
control, Acquisition, Reports and Administration modules along
with utility Tools and OPAC.
Katipo Communications of New Zealand initially developed it with
Horowhenua Library Trust. It is currently maintained by a dedicated
team of software providers and library technology professionals from
around the globe.
By adopting it, the customer becomes ‘joint stake holder’ in the
product. The customer can freely upgrade to new versions, and can
take part in new developments (optionally) by financing them or by
carrying them out them self.
Koha is a well tried and tested software and has demonstrated
both stability and scalability, is being used in hundreds of libraries
worldwide.
37. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Why Koha ?
Koha is an example of Collaboration and Resource Sharing.
Software solutions are freely available to all libraries worldwide.
No Vendor lock-in. With proprietary software, source code is
'closed' and support and future development of the product solely
rely on the success and resources of a the single vendor. If the
vendor goes down or does not cooperate, your product support
gone. Open source solutions rely on stable code bases developed
and supported by many providers worldwide.
Open-source software are user-driven--you decide what
features are important and deserve attention rather than a vendor.
Cost-effective: no licensing fees as against proprietary
solutions. Users of open-source software can often deploy the
product using in-house resources. They pay only if support is
needed or any additional vendor services they require.
Technology Compatibility : Compatible with existing technologies
viz. RFID, and being open source developing software, compatibility
with any new Library Technology will be available in future also.
38. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Koha Features
Acquisition: A full acquisitions module complete with budgets,
book funds, suppliers and exchange rates.
Circulation: a fully featured circulation with circulation rules
customisable to suit your library.
An OPAC: the public side of Koha. This has all the features you
would expect, plus enhanced content from sources like Amazon,
Google Books, etc.
Flexible reporting: you have access to all the data in the database
and a reporting engine is provided to help you query it.
Customisable item types: you can choose exactly how you want
to catalogue your items. This flexibility also allows Koha to be
used to manage inventory such as cameras or computers.
Barcode scanning and Barcode printing
39. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Koha Features
User management: Koha manages your users, including
integration with systems like LDAP, Radius, Active Directory and
SAML, to allow single sign-on.
Koha uses a full text indexing engine to allow for fast and
powerful searching of all of your metadata.
Mature support for all major library standards including
MARC21, UNIMARC, Z39.50, SRU/SW, SIP2 and many more.
Automated overdue notices either by email or SMS. Koha can
also send advance notices to warn a borrower that an item is
nearly due. Koha can email issue slips instead of printing them
at point of circulation.
Koha can work in consortia, multi-branch or single-branch
mode.
40. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Koha Features
Koha has an offline circulation module.
Self Check-out and Check-in: Koha can be used with any SIP2
compliant self check-out/Check-in device like RFID.
Faceted search: Search results are classified for easier drilling
down.
Koha offer user services beyond a standard library catalogue.
E.g. The following are available:
book covers and recommendations from Amazon
user-defined keywords for books
user annotations on library records
user-generated lists of library resources.
43. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Synergy between Librarians & Researchers
Librarians and scientist looking after library activities
should see them selves as knowledge manager
Good library services are in the interest of scientific
research. Scientist have much greater stake in
libraries. Do not see it as isolated service. See it as
knowledge labs.
Librarian should see themselves as stake holder in
research not as mere service provider
Virtual Fusion of lab and library will provide synergy
for improving research quality.
44. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Improving Research Quality
That means library should be available in the lab if
you need it. Specific knowledge inputs while
working in lab may be critical.
Scientists from lab must guide & direct what they
expect from library.
Libraries should have interactive websites and
propagate the products and services to increase
visibility.
All Library Services should be provided through
single search-enabled interface
45. Agricultural Knowledge Management Unit, IARI
Thanks
Indian Botany by W H Gregg
published in 1883
A Manual of Determinative
Bacteriology by Frederick D. Chester
published in 1909
Entomological News and
Proceedings of the Entomological
Section Edited by Henry Skinner
published in 1904
Proceedings of the Indian Academy
of Sciences
published in 1935