Cusat system gets Netherlands agency sanction

Kochi: The campus-wide networking system of Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) called the Information System for Cusat (Infocus) received a boost with the Netherlands government agency MHO sanctioning a second phase.

The second phase, projected to cost around Rs 50 lakh, is expected to be completed by March-April 2003. While a second stage was not originally planned, the successful completion of the first phase in record time had prompted the agency to fund the new phase. MHO is implementing similar projects in 12 developing countries, including Vietnam, the Philippines, Mozambique, Tanzania and Costa Rica.

Other than completing the campus network, the project will be spread across developing a human resource information system (HRMIS), an e-learning project called Blackboard Environment and digitising library holdings under the project LIBIS.

Infocus coordinator Poulose Jacob, teachers and students have already started creating content for the e-learning project. Work on HRMIS is also progressing. And the next phase of LIBIS is in the implementation stage.

While the work on digitising library holdings has already begun, the software, which gives global access to library holdings, especially the papers, theses, and dissertations of university academia under the Electronic Theses and Dissertations Project (ETD), is to be installed in the coming month.

Currently 60,000 documents in books, journals, theses and reports have been digitised. ETD will have a licensing system to protect intellectual property rights and in the future generate revenue for the university. Other universities and colleges in the state will be invited to join the ETD project.

A software, Acado has been developed by Transworld of Technopark, Thiruvananthapuram, at a cost of Rs 2 lakh as part of the pilot project. The software is also being tested at Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, and Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Thiruvananthapuram.

The software has provisions for e-learning, and e-commerce can be added at a later stage, says LIBIS project manager and librarian M D Baby. With the completion of digitisation, the library will provide a common database for all the 30 faculties at Cusat and in course will be a part of all major global networks.

The library is currently a part of the Library Network of UGC called INFLIBNET and Developing Library Network (DELNET), which is a major library network in South Asia.

New systems of classification are being introduced to unify material in various department libraries and focus will increasingly now be on the classification of Websites with students and teachers becoming increasingly dependent on the Internet.