Digital library at M.S. Ramaiah Medical College : A case study

Abstract

Digital library is not only digitization of physical resources, but also thoughtful organization of electronic collection for better access. Such organization provides coherence to a massive amount of shared knowledge base. Essentially a digital library deals with organization and access of a large information repository. Information and communication technologies have changed the landscape of information handling activities. The proliferation of electronic resources and a paradigm shift from print to electronic format of journals. With the available of open source software for creating repositories, many institutes have established institutional repositories in support of open access. The library is maintained well and regularly enriches its collection in order to allow users full access to current research tools and technologies. Besides, the M.S. Ramaiah Medical College Library is an active member of "HELINET" consortium offering more than 700 indexed national and international journals. It has more than 48 computer terminals with internet accessibility and facilities for scanning, printing and photocopying. In addition to that, a CD and Video based journal section with 'Proquest' system with volumes of journals dating back to 7years from 235 foreign countries. The M.S. Ramaiah Medical College Library to build the Greenstone digital library software is an open-source system for the construction and presentation of information collections. Collections built with Greenstone offer effective full-text searching and metadata-based browsing. An attempt has been made to provide on insight into what M.S. Ramaiah Medical College Digital Library initiative in a concise manner.