The 3rd University Forum organized by INFLIBNET and Elsevier was held at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi on 13th July 2012. Delegates from different universities across the nation participated in the forum.
In his welcome address, Prof. Ajit Khembhavi, Director, IUCCA, said that the forum had become a prominent platform to discuss knowledge sharing among students, teachers, researchers and universities. He remarked that the forum which was growing in size had been instrumental in heralding the relevance of digitalization of libraries to facilitate easier access to knowledge. He added that several cycles of development providing mechanism for e-access had transformed the tedious and lengthy process of finding sources for knowledge acquisition into an easy one minute operation enabling the students and teachers in even remote areas to get access to books and journals otherwise not easily available. Prof. Khembhavi pointed out that e-access was a huge success because it had extended resources to scholars in far flung places. He reminded the forum the existing challenge was to focusing on how to extend available resources to newly emerging sectors.
Addressing the forum, Mr. Martin O' Malley, Managing Director, Global Sales & Customer Marketing, Elsevier Science & Technology Division, reiterated that Elsevier, as a leading publisher, was focusing on quality, access and sustainability to enable collaboration to build a an environment conducive to research and learning. He said that access should transcend boundaries so as to help researchers overcome the challenge of accessing research content.
Dr. Jagdish Arora, Director, INFLIBNET, spoke on the need of developing digitalized models sustainable and extendable to all the universities in India so that students of all regions might get equal opportunities of knowledge acquisition. He said the impending challenge was to improve the Science Direct access to make it beneficial to more universities.
Ms. Paula Kaufman, Dean of Libraries & University Librarian, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign spoke on the Value of eBooks. She said that eBooks are cost effective, have 24 X 7 easy access, are easy to preserve and can be downloaded on multiple search engines.
Giving a presentation on Driving the Value of Library Services within an Institution, Mr. Gerald J. Schafer, Director of Libraries, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, highlighted the patterns of accessing digital resources among students, teachers and researchers. He shared his observation that the majority of people accessed digital books and journals without visiting the library.
In his presentation, Library Contributions to Research Workflow, Dr. Thomas C. Leonard, University Librarian, Library Development Office, University of California, Berkeley, drove home the point that capture and preservation of web resources would increase and create a new dimension to special collection which would in turn aid research.
There was an Open House Discussion in which Dr. Jagdish Arora, Mr. Martin O' Malley, Mr. Kok Keng Lim (Managing Director, Academic & Government, Asia Pacific, Elsevier Science & Technology Division) and Mr. Saurabh Sharma (Elsevier Regional Director, South Asia) replied to the questions raised by the delegates.
The delegates opined that the forum was a great learning experience for them in terms of adding to their knowledge of accessing the digital content.
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Open House Discussion - On the Panel (L to R) Mr. Saurabh Sharma (Elsevier Regional Director, South Asia), Dr. Jagdish Arora (Director, INFLIBNET), Mr. Martin O' Malley (Managing Director, Global Sales & Customer Marketing, Elsevier Science & Technology Division), Mr. Kok Keng Lim (Managing Director, Academic & Government, Asia Pacific, Elsevier Science & Technology Division)
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CONTACT DETAILS
Manik Sethi, Elsevier, +91 9910225543, m.sethi@elsevier.com