Push for resource sharing among higher institutions

Hyderabad has grown into into a hub of higher education and research institutions. The Osmania University is celebrating its centenary celebrations. Many institutions came during last two decades which include national research institutions.

Among higher educational institutions in Hyderabad are JNTU, IIT, University of Hyderabad, IIIT, BITS, MANUU, Agriculture University, EFLU, BRAOU, CESS, NALSAR, Telugu University, Architecture University, Gitam University etc. Prominent research institutions are IICT, CCMB, NIN, NIRD, MANAGE, NGRI, ICRISAT, NIPER, CRIDA etc.

All these except GITAM and BITS are public funded institutions. All of them have established libraries and are using ICT to cater to the informational needs of researchers. It is a known fact that the primary journals are major resources for research.

However, databases are also procured to guide researchers to identify the articles published in primary journals. The books are not key resources for research.

Budget spent for journals by these institutions is enormous. The total spent by the public funded institutions in India is in hundreds of crores of rupees per year and subscribed journals are in thousands. Unfortunately, resources have restricted users with certain exceptions. Again the user statistics are not encouraging in proportion to budget and number of journals.

Further, there are many Open Access (OA)/Free journals are to be exploited. There are many researchers, who are not able to access the primary journals due to limited budgets and other institutions do not allow them with certain exceptions, such as an understanding between OU and IICT /NIN for library use.

Important questions that come to every one’s mind are: Why researchers are denied access to knowledge resources procured from public fund? Are these resources used optimally? How far the researchers are aware of availability of resources in city institutions? Why the institutions are not able to share the data about their subscriptions and resources received from consortia? Can the institutions develop a model to provide access to both print and online resources to every researcher? Is it difficult to overcome the publisher’s conditions to provide access? Can the institutions take copyright provisions available for research / education to serve the researchers needs? Whose responsibility is it to make optimum use of public funds spent on procurement of resources? Earlier, there were models to provide access to resources available in other institutions.

In Chennai, the institutions formed a group and issued very limited number of cards to each institutions, which can be used to access resources in any participating institution. NISSAT established sectoral centres. Even UGC hadidentified six Universities for resource sharing but due to various reasons the purpose was defeated.

The subscription rates are increasing year after the year while funds are stagnant. Many State funded institutions including colleges suffer due to limited funds and less number of subscriptions. Resources sharing plans may help to overcome the difficulties.

Many institutions are ignoring Open Access journals published by both commercial publishers and institutions.The trained library staff need to rise to the occasion and plan to exploit them. It necessary that both governments and research organisations such as CSIR, ICMR, ICAR, ICSSR, ICHR, ICAR, and universities think seriously how to exploit the public funded resources.

As every problem has some solution, the optimum use of public funded resources shall result in reduction of cost per use. Now it is need of the hour to lay focus on resource sharing to justify use of public funds. (Writer is President, Telangana Library Association)

By Prof N Laxman Rao