OPEN RESOURCES FOR HIGHER EDUCATION: THE INDIAN SCENARIO.

The paper introduces the merits of Open Access resources especially in a developing country scenario. It delineates the different problems of the Indian LIS professionals in the provision of higher education resources. It describes the key players in the creation of open scholarly archives. Some important providers of open study materials included are eGyankosh by Indira Gandhi National Open University, a premier Distance Learning provider; eGurukul, a repository at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, etc. The paper also discusses the open archiving resources of premier higher learning and research institutes of India, namely Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Indian Institute of Information Technology- Allahabad, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi , Indian National Science Academy, Indian Statistical Institute- Bangalore, National Aerospace Laboratories, National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, National Chemical Laboratory, National Institute of Oceanography, National Institute of Technology- Rourkela, Raman Research institute, etc. It explores the dictum of the University Grants Commission of India to submit electronic version of theses and dissertation which led to the creation and access of Electronic Thesis and Dissertations bibliographic and/or full-text database at the University level. The major Indian government initiative (in collaboration with Education and Research Network, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and some other prestigious bodies) called 'Digital Library of India' has been explored. With the ultimate goal of digitizing all Indian books and the immediate goal of capturing 1 million pages, it is also a useful resource for higher learners. Other notable attempts include biomedical resources by medIND (called the 'Indian Medlars') by National Informatics Centre covers full text of IndMED journals that covers peer reviewed Indian biomedical literature. OpenMED@NIC provides free service to academics, researchers, and students working in the area of Medical and Allied Sciences. One important resource in Library & Information Science Studies namely, Librarian's Digital Library (LDL) at Documentation Research & Training Centre (DRTC) has also been covered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]