Around the World to: Technology Applications and Digital Library Initiatives at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library, Bangalore
A. Vagiswari and Christina Birdie
Introduction
The Library of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics at Bangalore, India is more than 200 years old as shown by a hand-written catalogue available in the library for the years 1794-1812. Over the years, this library has accumulated documents pertaining to astronomy, physics, mathematics, geophysics, electronics and computer sciences. Today it can boast of housing the largest and most comprehensive collection in astronomy and astrophysics in India.
The library collection is distributed among the branch libraries in Bangalore and the field stations in Kodaikanal, Kavalur and Hoskote. The Hoskote Library has been recently set up and will have books and journals in broader areas of science and technology. The main library is located on the Bangalore Campus. A collection of many of the reference materials in astronomy is available at the library of Vainu Bappu Observatory in Kavalur for the resident as well as the visiting scientists. Astronomical catalogs, sky charts and astronomical almanacs are also part of the collection in Kavalur library. The library at the Kodaikanal Observatory has books on solar physics and geophysics, since much of the observational work in solar physics continues to be done there. Many old volumes of journals like the Philosophical Magazine, Nature and Philosophical Transactions dating back to the year 1794 are also stored in this library. Some of the publications available in the Kodaikanal Library qualify for the archival collection and they are preserved well in an atmospherically conducive environment.
Library collection
The library collection has several unique features like the date of publication of a document as old as 1609, the nature of publications varying from hand-written manuscripts and hand-written annual reports, slides and photographs to CDs and VCDs. There are many old observatory publications containing astronomical catalogues, which are still in use and form an important part of the collection.
Since this observatory has been through historical transformation from East India Company's undertaking to a full-fledged astronomical observatory in Madras first and then at Kodaikanal, the library has a rich heritage of photographs and correspondence of the earlier British Directors. From the historical collection we moved over to the modern collection, when the library shifted from Kodaikanal to Bangalore in the year 1976.
Library services and facilities
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Library has the advantage of being both a traditional and modern library in terms of services and facilities. It is an important nodal center for lending and reference services in astronomy in the country. While the inter-library loan service is widely accepted among the users of the astronomy community, IIA Library also caters to the university students and faculty by supplying the xerox copies of the required articles as and when required.
With the introduction of electronic journals, IIA Library also started accessing many of its print journals in electronic format. In the last two years it has been accessing 110 journals and these e-journals are linked to the library Web page for easy access and retrieval. IIA Library is a member of the FORSA (Forum for Resource Sharing in Astronomy) consortium, to access the astronomy journals published by Kluwer publishers and "Nature" in the electronic format.
IIA Library has a functional Web page, (http://www.iiap.ernet.in/lib.html)which accommodates the essential information about the library in addition to the link to various e-journals and databases.
Technology initiatives in the library
The library took up computerisation of its card catalogue during the year 1992-1993. A database of 9,200 books was created using the CDS/ISIS software supplied by UNESCO in the initial phase. There was another independent software created in house for circulation of documents. After two years it was decided to make use of an integrated library software called LIBSYS which could take care of all the routine library activities. The already existing CDS/ISIS database was migrated to the present software, thus the continuity and maintenance of the library database was ensured. In the last two years, LIBSYS has undergone changes and is able to operate on various platforms. Currently our database is working on the LINUX platform and it can be accessed over the Internet, with a Web-based OPAC.
As a technology upgrade, bar-coding was introduced for the books and the journals in the library during the year 1996. This has made the process of circulation and stock-taking or inventory control faster and more accurate.
Digital library project
The Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library traces its origin back to the year 1786. The astronomical publication by Joanne Kepler titled Astronomia Nova was published in 1609, and is the oldest publication available in the library. There are approximately 450 books and manuscripts that need special care and preservation and we are committed to preserve these through digitization processes. The main goal is to enable the users to have easy access to these archival materials without physically handling the documents and thus avoiding further damage.
Ultimately we intend to make a repository of old astronomical publications available in the country to cater to a larger group of scientists and researchers for reference purposes. In view of the importance of digitizing the archival material the library prepared a proposal to digitize the old publications, annual reports, and hand-written manuscripts available in the library. As an initial step, C-DAC, Bangalore has digitized a few volumes of the archival material. The scanned image files of these volumes are saved in CD-ROMs, which can be accessed in the library.
In continuation of this digitization project, IIA Library also decided to be a part of the "Million book project," which is an international digital project. This project was initiated by Carnegie Mellon University and libraries from several other countries are participants in this global project and is described at http://www.library.cmu.edu/Libraries/MBP_FAQ.html. The project's objective is to create a free-to-read, universally accessible million book digital resource. With 15 partners in China, India and the USA, the collaboration of its partners is essential to the creation of a large-scale,multi-national digital library. IIA Library with its unique archival collection in astronomy will be a part of the project to add to the collection.
Virtual information support (VIS)
Virtual information support is a service envisaged by the astronomical libraries in India as a major support to the Virtual Observatory – India Project. IIA Library will be one of the key players in this project to provide seamless access to the resources held in the library to the astronomy community in the country. The major VIS initiative in 2003 will be the design and implementation of a Web site with features such as a newsletter, an integrated library database of all the major astronomy libraries in India, and an online interactive form to facilitate the interlibrary exchange.
A. Vagiswari (vagiaap@iiap.ernet.in) is Head of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics Library, BangaloreChristina Birdie (chris@iiap.ernet.in) is the Assistant Librarian at IIA Library, Bangalore, India.
