Volume - I : Issue - 1

K-mine ( Knowledge Mine ) is an electronic monthly digest of AALIS. The aim of K-mine is to share new thoughts and disseminate the latest developments in Library and Information Science to our fellow professionals.

K-mine will be published every month, a e-mail notification will be sent to aalis Discussion forum about the latest issues. LIS professionals are welcome to author the articles. Puropse of starting this is to provide a platform for LIS professionals to publish and share their thoughts and experience.

We invite you all to contribute to the digest by writing articles, case studies, short communication, Description of important websites, New Software, book reviews, Summary of LIS Programs, opinions, etc. We hope this initiative will be very helpful for LIS Professionals.

The first issue of K-Mine is in front of you.

-Kahlil Gibran

The Library of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore, was established in 1911 and it is one of the first three departments started in the Institute. It is regarded as one of the best scientific and technical libraries in India. Apart from the main library it has departmental libraries also. In 1995 the library was renamed as "J.R.D Tata Memorial Library". It is no exaggeration to state that the IISc library is the largest and finest of its kind in this part of the world. 

The primary mission of the library is to support the educational and research programmes of the institute by providing physical and intellectual access to information, consistent with the present and the anticipated educational and research functions of the institute. In accordance with the objectives of the institute, the library aims to develop a comprehensive collection of documents useful for the faculty and the research community of the institute. The secondary mission is, to serve as a resource center for the scholars and scientific community of the country. The collection of the library which includes books, journals, reports, standards and patents is regarded one of the richest collections in the country, in the field of science and technology. This rich and valuable collection built over nine decades has some of the rare reference materials and several important journals. 

This vast reservoir of knowledge, on aconservative estimate, is worth over Rs. 300 crores. The annual budget of the library is over Rs. 10.00 crores of which subscription towards periodicals alone is about 9.00 crores. The library currently receives over 1734 periodical titles of which 1381 are subscribed while the remaining titles are received as gratis and on exchange basis. About 600 titles are accessable online against the print subscription. The total holdings of the library exceeds 4,11,676 documents for details see Statistics.

The library offers services such as Reference Services, Referral Service, User Guidance Service, Circulation Service including Inter Library Loan andDocument Delivery Service, Book Bank Service, Bibliographic Service, Xerox Service etc. An Current awareness service is provided comprising regular display of xerox copies ofarticles published by the Institute faculty and students, in various periodicals that are being received in the library. Under the Corporate Membership Facility(CMF), reference alone facility has been extended to Corporate Organisations/ Industries involved in R&D activities. Currently about 229organisations/industries are availing this facility. 

The library has been using the LIBSYS an Integrated Library Management software package with all the modules for the library housekeeping operations.The library Online Catalogue database has more than 1.25 lakh records of books (Bibliographic Information) and information about 22,000 back volumes of periodicals. Using LIBSYS OPAC, users can search the Library Online Catalogue by Author, Title, Subject, and keywords. Also, the users can know the latest additions of periodicals and books and the status of a document (whether on shelf or on issue). Reservation of a book can be done Online. 

Several CD-ROM databases are acquired by library and the retrieval services are offered through NCSI.

The J.R.D.Tata Memorial Library Annexe and Digital Library located opposite NCSI was inaugurated on 12th March 1998 by Mr.Ratan Tata. Some of thelibrary collections like technical reports, standards, patents and theses are located in this building. This building has two wings. Digital Information Service Center(DISC) and Internet School. The DISC provides services based on CD-ROM databases pertaining to education and entertainment and creates digital content for the digital library. The Internet School with fully modern computer facility for 20 participants is intended to provide education and training facility for Internet Training and navigation.

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The Librarians' Index to the Internet (lii.org) is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 12,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. lii.org is used by both librarians and the general public as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources. Library of Congress subject headings  are used to make lii.org compatible with major standards such as Z39.50 and MARC.

Every site entered in the lii.org database is reviewed at least twice--sometimes three or four times--before it goes "live." An active weeding program keeps us current--while sites change and die all the time, lii.org almost never has more than 100 "dead" sites. 

The operational funding of lii.org  has been provided by the Library of California, though it is likely that their funding source will shift after July 1, 2003, as the LOC is targeted for zero-funding. Hosting is provided by UC Berkeley SunSITE. 

Infomine - Virtual Library of Scholarly Internet Resources ( http://infomine.ucr.edu )

INFOMINE is a virtual library of Internet resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level. It contains useful Internet resources such as databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers, and many other types of information.

Search / Browse can be done very easily. The resources are organized by using Library of Congress Classification.

INFOMINE is librarian built. Librarians from The University of California, Wake Forest University, California State University, The University of Detroit - Mercy, and other universities and colleges have contributed to building INFOMINE. Infomine provides email alert services for users of a specific discipline. There is a detailed information regarding how to 

Infomine is developed on the open source portal software called iVia. It is freely available and Infomine has proved a dynamic resources portal can be designed using iVia.

Koha is the world's first free Open Source Library System. Made in New Zealand by the Horowhenua Library Trust and Katipo Communications Ltd. 

Koha was developed in 1999 and the first library went live in January of 2000. Koha's code has been in production since then and is continuing to move towards higher levels of functionality and standards compliance, including embracing the international records and cataloguing standards MARC and Z39.50. The development community has also grown and now includes contributors on four continents and ports in several languages. Thousands of Libraries around the world runs KOHA successfully. A complete Serial Control System is on Developmental stage.

Features

• Full functional catalogue,
• opac, 
• circulation, 
• member management and 
• acquisitions package.

System Requirements

• Platform independent
• Apache Server
• My Sql Database
• Perl Scripting Language
• A system with minimum of 64 MB RAM, 10 GB hard Disk space.

can be downloaded from http://www.koha.org