Cusat system gets Netherlands agency sanction
By James Paul | 14 Sep 2002
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.
