DIGITIZATION OF GOVERNMENT INFORMATION RESOURCES : A CASE STUDY OF CENTRAL SECRETARIAT LIBRARY BY S. MAJUMDAR DIRECTOR CENTRAL SECRETARIAT LIBRARY BY S. MAJUMDAR DIRECTOR CENTRAL SECRETARIAT LIBRARY

The course of human development has taken new dimension with the introduction of information and communication technology (ICT)

 For India, the rise of Information and Communication Technology is an opportunity to overcome historical disabilities and to become the master of one's own national destiny

 The GOI has recognised the potential of ICT for rapid and all-round national development.  The National Agenda for Governance, which is the Government's policy blueprint, has taken due note of the ICT Revolution that is sweeping the globe

Indian Libraries also have taken up the Challenge  Develop the machine readable catalogue and make it available on the network for wider accessibility;  Develop machine readable full text documents to provide greater accessibility to full text databases of different nature;  Standardize such development by adopting international standards;  Explore ways and means to preserve the machine readable information in a way that can sustain the future requirements of ICT.;  Changing the focus of government libraries from providing library services to the fulfilling the long pending focus of right to information.

GOVERNMENTAL PUBLICATIONS IN INDIA  The sphere of governmental activity in India has expanded considerably. Many burning issues like population control, health management, economic and social condition of rural and urban masses, education, basic requirements. In every field the government has intervened

Types of documents published by the Government Organisations  Administrative Reports  Governmental Notifications  Statistical Reports  Budget Documents  Committee and Commission Reports  Research Reports

 Bills, Acts, Laws, Codes, Rules and Regulations, Law Reports, Digests and Parliamentary Debates  Reports of various Parliamentary Committees

TECHNOLOGICAL INITIATIVES BY GOVERNMENT  Initiatives have been taken by National Informatics Centre to provide most of the information through a portal where in different kinds of digital documents on the governmental activities can be accessed.  But these efforts also have not been properly coordinated and digital documents brought out by many of the departments do not form part of the Web site.

CENTRAL SECRETARIAT LIBRARY MISSION  “ take an Indian Initiative to ICT through its libraries to promote, facilitate the development of Indian tangible heritage from printed form to machine readable collections and provide services for optimal utlisation of resources and provide life long accessibility of information through vast library resources.”

Central Secretariat Library : Types of Machine Readable Database  Machine readable catalogue of bibliographical information for its document resources;  Creating digital documents of the annual reports, budget documents of the parent Ministry;  Creating digital documents of the Government of India Gazette from inception to date;  Developing machine readable annotated bibliography of rare books;  Developing Digital documents of selected government publications

CONCEPTUALISATION  PILOT PROJECT  ANNUAL REPORTS;  PERFORMANCE BUDGET;  DEMANDS FOR GRANTS;  EXPENDITURE BUDGET OF DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE TO

OBJECTIVES  TO DEVELOP CD BASED FULL TEXT ENGLISH DATABASE  DATABASE IS HIGHLY INSTINCTIVE AND IS 100% SEARCHABLE, NAVIGABLE AND CAN BE BROWSED ON ALL GRAPHICS, TABLES, FIGURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS

OBJECTIVES  TO DEVELOP INTERFACE FOR WEB ENABLING TO HOST ON CSL SERVER CO- LOCATED AT NIC

SECOND PHASE CONCEIVED  ANNUAL REPORTS, ETC. OF DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, TO

SECOND PHASE CONCEIVED  GOVERNMENT OF INDIA (CENTRAL GOVERNMENT) GAZETTE  COMPLETE SETS ARE AVAILABLE FROM 1950 ONWARDS.  MORE THAN 70% QUERRIES OF THE TOTAL USAGE OF INDIAN OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS PERTAIN TO GAZETTE OF INDIA

UNIQUENESS OF GAZETTE  ORGANISED INTO DIFFERENT SECTIONS AND PARTS  SEARCH REQUIREMENTS ARE ON ANY ONE OR COMBINATION OF SUBJECT, PART NUMBER, SECTION, SUBSECTION, DATE, GSR NUMBER, AND S. O. NUMBER

OBJECTIVES  DEVELOP VALUE BASED PRODUCT  USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGY  SCANNING  DATABASE GENERATION  CONTENT ANALYSIS  CONTENT MANAGEMENT

OBJECTIVES  CONCERVATION AND PRESERVATION  WEB ENABLING TECHNOLOGY  PORTAL APPLICATION

ADMINISTRATIVE FORMALITIES  OPEN TENDER SYSTEM  EVALUATION PROCESS  TECHNICAL EVALUATION  FINANCIAL EVALUATION

TECHNICAL EVALUATION  CONSTITUTION OF HIGH POWER TECHNICAL COMMITTEE  SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD OF IT  SPECIALIST FROM NIC

TECHNICAL EVALUATION… CONSTITUTION OF COMMITTEE….  SPECIALIST FROM DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY  SPECIALIST FROM LIBRARY PROFESSION  ADMINISTRATIVE AND FINANCIAL SPECIALIST

TECHNICAL PARAMETERS  TWO PART EVALUATION 1. CREDIBILITY, TURNOVER, WORK FORCE,SIMILAR WORK EXPERIENCE 2. TECHNICAL EXPERIENCE

TECHNICAL DETAILS  ELEVEN PARAMETERS  Digitizing technique : scanning, OCR, Proofing or any other with technical specifications;

TECHNICAL DETAILS …..  ELEVEN PARAMETERS ……  Format for metadata creation;  File format : TIFF and PDF or any other  Organization of Images and the corresponding metadata in DBMS

TECHNICAL DETAILS …  ELEVEN PARAMETERS …..  Standard DBMS used or it is a proprietary software  Retrieval interface with standard search strategy  Provision for Web enabling of data

TECHNICAL DETAILS ….  ELEVEN PARAMETERS …  Resolution : Scanning and Output/Display  Portability from one platform to another  Platform used  Work flow

PROTOTYPES  ANNUAL REPORTS  GAZETTE DOCUMENTS

TECHNICAL RESULTS  COULD SHORTLIST TWO AGENCIES  COULD ACHIEVE BEST PRACTICES TO BE FOLLOWED  COULD UNDERTAKE BENCHMARKING OF THE BEST PRACTICES

BENCHMARK  SCANNING  OCRing  PROOFING  FORMATING  CONTENT ANALYSIS

BENCHMARK…..  METADATA CREATION USING UNIMARC AND DUBLIN CORE  CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM  PLATFORM PORTABILITY  WEB ENABLING  DELIVERABLES  PRESERVATION AND CONSERVATION

PORTAL DEVELOPMENT  Training- cum-Workshop on Portal Application conducted by C-DAC;  Identified the Core Group professionals  Developed Questionnaire for Content Collection

PORTAL DEVELOPMENT….  Web based Portal for CSL and Libraries under the Department of Culture;  Information Gateway for Government of India Libraries

DELIVERABLES  TIFF images to PDF with text ;  PDF on CD-ROM after OCRing in RTF ( Rich Text Format) for full text search;  TIFF on CD-ROM in raw form;

DELIVERABLES….  XML based ODBC compliant database archives on CD-ROM;  Installation of Portal Application Infrastructure;  Hand over the Portal to CSL;  Deliver the tools required for managing and updating the Portal;

 MAPPING THE TAGS OF DUBLIN CORE WITH UNIMARC  COSTING TECHNIQUE USED BY CSL : BASE IS THE WORK FLOW - STAGES OF WORK

As we move into the electronic era of digital objects it is important to know that there are new barbarians at the gate and that we are moving into an era where much of what we know today, much of what is coded and written electronically, will be lost forever. We are, to my mind, living in the midst of digital Dark Ages; consequently, much as monks of times past, it falls to librarians and archivists to hold to the tradition which reveres history and the published heritage of our times. Terry Kuny, Consultant, National Library of Canada 1998

THANKS