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The Open Access Movement (OAM), which started as a gradual realisation by authors mainly in biomedical sciences to make available results of public-funded research projects to the public without much barrier pertaining to cost, permission, copyright obligations, etc., gradually gained momentum across the world and India was no exception to it. Though the movement was confined mainly to science, technology and medical fields in India, since last few years, a number of open access repositories and open access journals in Social Science subjects have started appearing. The present study which is confined to the open access Social Science journals published from India as mentioned in the Directory of Open Access Journals, identified 60 open access Social Sciences journals in India. The study also analysed the journals on the basis of certain parameters as to trend of open access journals in Social Sciences, and was found that most of open access journals in Social Sciences appeared between 2009 and 2014 and about half of the journals charge authors for publishing their papers in the journals and only a few are published under Creative Commons Attribution. Lastly, the paper discusses about implications of open access publishing on Social Science research libraries made few suggestions towards encouraging open access publishing in Social Science subjects in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this paper is to provide practical guidelines of setting up an institutional repository through DSpace open source software. In the electronic publishing age, the demand for information has been growing steadily in all spheres of work. At the same time the concept of access to information at the free of cost in electronic format is gaining momentum. In this direction present paper discussed step by step procedures in building an institutional repository using DSpace including collections. This paper helps in planning to build an IR. It also helps the beginners in understanding the steps to be followed for uploading different file formats to build digital repository to maintain collection with uniformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defence Materials Stores and Research and Development Establishment (DMSRDE), Kanpur is working in the field of nonmetallic materials. This paper tries to evaluate the usage statistics of Science direct material science package of M/s Elsevier in terms of number of downloads of full text articles available to users of DMSRDE. Usage data of science direct material science package from 2005 to 2015 is analysed to assess the usability of journals in terms of highly utilised or non-utilised journals, average cost per article, and the impact of the online availability of journal articles on the library services. The study reveals that only 12 per cent of the highly used titles of package accounts for 65-66 per cent usage. The cost per article study supports package subscription over individually selected highly used titles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growth of electronic repositories (e-repositories) has been found remarkable in facilitating global open access to legal scholarship. Legal repositories are evolved as reference tool by the law schools to manage legal scholarship, working paper series, peer reviewed articles and other kinds of learning objects. These kinds of services; developed over a decade, improve the visibility and sustainability of scholarly produced literature, and help in winding information gaps between information rich and information poor researchers.The article traces the initiatives in support of open access to scholarly literature and examines how e-repositories improve communication access and bridges channels for legal scholarship. The article finds that certain primary crucial points like policy and standards, perceivable formats, accessibility and management of rights for digital materials, economic facts should be considered before implementing e-repositories. The study concludes that internationally there are number of initiatives supporting institutional and disciplinary repositories in support of legal scholarship, but lack in developing countries like India where no single law institution has approached the repository route of open access publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper gives an account of the origin and development of the Open Access Initiative and explains the concept of open access publishing. It also highlight various facets related to the open access scholarly publishing in the field of Media & Communication on the basis of data collected from the most authoritative online directory of open access journals, i.e., Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ covers 8492 open access journals of which 106 journals are listed under the subject heading 'Media & Communication'. Most of the open access journals in Media & Communication were started during late 1990s and are being published from 34 different countries on 6 continents in 13 different languages. More than 80 % open access journals are being published by the not-for-profit sector such as academic institutions and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to study the users' understanding and acceptance of e-books in India. This study was carried out by conducting a survey using questionnaire as a tool to find out users' views on using e-books as compared to printed documents. This study was carried out during the period of January to March 2006 covering a wide range of ages, subject backgrounds, computer experience, occupations, and comfort in using computers in their daily life. The readers survey found that Indians are generally willing to use and read e-books though they continue to prefer and use printed publications. Generally, the users are aware of the advantages and limitations of each medium and will tailor their choice according to their needs. Of the total, slightly less than half of the users (41 %) are ready to pay the same or slightly lesser price as compared to printed publications, 24 per cent are half or quarter the price of printed publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As computer usage continues to grow exponentially, the desire of users to use electronic publications (e-publications) has also increased tremendously. This has led to the publication of materials in electronic form as e-publications on both CD-ROMs and web. The electronic book (e-book) is one of the several forms of e-publications and its popularity has been growing steadily for the past decade. This bibliography provides all references of the published literature on e-books and related technologies in one source so that it will save time for others in conducting literature searches and reviewing the developments. The information included in this bibliography is collected systematically from all the published sources in the world such as journal articles, conference papers, conference proceedings, books, reports and PhD theses on e-books until the last quarter of 2011. Mainly, it covers e-books, e-books publishing, the impact of e-books on different types of users, e-book publishing techniques and trends, e-book user interfaces and other technologies related to e-publications. This bibliography will be useful to all researchers conducting research in any areas related to e-books and e-book publishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As digital information resources available online are increasing at an exponential rate, several practices have evolved for the economic and effective delivery of such information to the end users. In this context, consortia-based information services have gathered momentum world over during the last few years. Though, there are several library consortia in India, UGC Infonet is mainly meant for universities controlled by UGC and CeRA is meant for agricultural universities. This paper discusses utilisation of consortia-based digital information resources by the post graduate and doctoral students of the Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur. Results show that cent percent of the students were familiar with the use of digital information resources available online and 87.14 per cent of them used CeRA. Eighty two per cent students were acquainted with CeRA and learned the required skills for the access and use of digital information resources through curriculum-based courses like 'library and information services', 'research methodology', etc. The students in general would like to strengthen the CeRA services by adding more resources and facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to provide an overview of the contents and design of the online English newspapers in India. Twelve online English newspapers published daily in India were selected for the study. The study used website content analysis to assess the contents and design of these newspapers. A checklist was developed as the main tool for data collection and Microsoft Excel was used as the tool for data analysis. The study shows that online English newspapers in India have a common pattern of contents, coverage, and design. Contents availability and access to the contents are the most prevalent options in these newspapers. Majority of the newspapers use Blog, RSS and Facebook to connect with their readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an integrated environment which enables museum personnel to catalogue and at the same time publish online museum exhibits. The system is based on international standards and is highly customisable to cater the needs of a variety of museum types. Moreover, the underlying database allows storing for the same exhibit documentations for different audiences and in multiple languages, while it is extendable to accommodate new media types, languages, exhibits and information categories. The administrative part of the environment permits the restriction of certain functions to specific personnel roles, enforcing thus a general museum security policy regarding access to and modification of information. The environment presented is currently in use at the Athens University History Museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern tool like computer has replaced traditional methods of storing and retrieving knowledge. Retrospective conversion of manual bibliographical records on online mode is considered to be the first step in the direction of computerisation process in the library. This paper attempts to analyse the retrospective conversion process undertaken by the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi, a premier social science research library in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of scientific and technical information is growing exponentially. As a result, the scientific community has been overwhelmed by the information published in number of new books, journal articles, and conference proceedings. In addition to increasing number of publications, advances in information technology have dramatically reduced the barriers in electronic publishing and distribution of information over networks virtually anywhere in the world. As a result, the scientific community is facing the problem of locating relevant or interesting information. To address the problem of information overload and to sift all available information sources for useful information, recommender systems or filtering systems have emerged. Generally, recommender systems are used online to suggest items that users find interesting, thereby, benefiting both the user and merchant. Recommender systems benefit the user by making him suggestions on items that he is likely to purchase and the business by increase of sales. Filtering information or generation of recommendations by the recommender systems mimic the process of information retrieval systems by incorporating advanced profile building techniques, item/user representation techniques, filtering and recommendation techniques, and profile adaptation techniques. This paper addresses the application domain analysis, functional classification, advantages and disadvantages of various filtering and recommender systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]