INFLIBNET (Information and Library Network)

Background History: UGC constituted a committee in April 1988 under the chairmanship of Prof. Yash Pal to work out the details of a university libraries networking system. The report of the committee entitled “Development of an Information and Library Network: Report of the Inter Agency Working Group, UGC, 1988” was published in  December 1988 containing project proposal for the establishment of an information and library network. This project report is popularly known as “Blue Document”.

Introduction: INFormation and LIBrary NETwork (INFLIBNET) Centre is an autonomous Inter-University Centre of the University Grants Commission (UGC). Set up in March 1991 after the recommendation of Prof. Yash Pal Committee, it became an independent Inter-University Centre in June 1996. In January 2013, INFLIBNET Centre moved from its premises in Gujarat University, Ahmedabad to its newly constructed building at Infocity, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.

Objectives: The INFLIBNET Centre was established as a computer communication network for linking libraries and information centres in universities, deemed to be universities, colleges, UGC information centres, institutions of national importance and R & D institutions, etc. avoiding duplication of efforts and establishing communication facilities to improve capability in information transfer and access with the aim of supporting scholarship, learning, research and academic pursuit through cooperation and involvement of concerned agencies.

Governance: ‘The Council’ is the apex body of the Centre chaired by the President, ex-officio Chairman of the UGC. The Director of INFLIBNET is the Member Secretary to the Council. At present, Prof. Yogesh Singh is the Chairman to the Council and Prof. J. P. Singh Joorel is the Director of INFLIBNET Centre since 2018 onwards. 

INFLIBNET Network Organization
INFLIBNET has four Regional Centres, 40 Sectoral Information Centres (SIC) and more than 100 Document Resource Centres (DRC). It has set up six document delivery centres at different libraries across the country.
Regional Centres	Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Jadavpur University, Kolkata University of Poona, Puna
Document Delivery Centres	University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi Punjab University, Chandigarh Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

PROJECT & CONSULTANCY UNDER INFLIBNET

National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) is an important initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) was launched on 3^rd February 2009 at Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh as a Centrally sponsored scheme. It was started with the aim to extend computer infrastructure and connectivity, and to make available knowledge in the form of e-content to learners throughout the country in order to fill the gap of digital divide in India. More than 80 projects have been developed/being developed under NME-ICT, MHRD since its inception and INFLIBNET centre is acting as a coordinating agency.

•      E-PG Pathshala - A Gateway to All Post Graduate Courses: Launched in 2015, the project was initiated by the MHRD under its National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) CIET (Central Institute of Educational Technology), and NCERT and executed by the UGC.  INFLIBNET Centre has been assigned the task of coordinating all activities involved in the production of e-contents at post-graduate level in 70 subject areas. An open source learning management system ‘ATutor’ has been configured to host e-contents of this project.

•      Vidya Mitra – Integrated E-content Portal: INFLIBNET Centre since 2014 has developed a web-based e-content platform called ‘Vidya-Mitra’ for hosting all the e-content projects, developed / funded under the National Mission of Education through ICT (NME-ICT). The e-content related to different areas of knowledge from school to university level has been arranged in seven broad categories with further subdivisions. The major e-content developed by various institutions are NPTEL, e-PG Pathshala, NCERT-Pathshala, NIOS, e-Gyankosh, etc. The Single search interface is provided for learners to search all the uploaded e-content with ease.

India Ranking – National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF): Approved and launched on 29^th September 2015, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) is a methodology adopted by the MHRD, GOI, to rank universities  and institutions of higher education in India on annual basis. The first NIRF ranking was released  on 4^th April 2016. The Framework uses five broad parameters for ranking purposes, such as, “Teaching, Learning and Resources,” “Research and Professional Practices,” “Graduation Outcomes,” “Outreach and Inclusivity,” and “Perception”. The INFLIBNET Centre is responsible to develop a portal to capture data required for ranking of institutions. The Centre also provides data on publications, citations and patents for all applicant institutes.

  Excluding overall category, NIRF Rankings are given in 8 categories such as: Universities, Engineering, Colleges, Management, Pharmacy, Medical, Architecture, and Law. 

NIRF Ranking 2019
Category	Topped Institutions
Overall	Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
University	Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

•  Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements (ARIIA), launched in August 2018, is an initiative of Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India to systematically rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in India on indicators related to “Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development” amongst students and faculties. Assessment of innovation is based on Seven parameters with certain weightages allocated as below: (i) Budget, Expenses to Support & Revenue Generated   (20 Marks); (ii) Infrastructures & Facilities to Support Innovations and Start-ups   (10 Marks); (iii) Awareness Activities for Promoting Idea Generation and Innovation   (20 Marks); (iv) Promotion and Supporting Entrepreneurship Development   (20 Marks); (v) Intellectual Property (IP) Generation, Technology Transfer and Commercialization   (14 Marks); (vi) Innovative Learning Methods & Courses   (10 Marks); (vii) Innovations in Governance of the Institution   (6 Marks).

       ARIIA is located at MHRD Innovation Cell established at AICTE premises.

ARIIA Ranking 2019
Category	Topped Institutions
Public Funded Institutions	Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Private Funded Institutions	Vellore Institute of Technology, Tamil Nadu

·    SWAYAM: A Government of India initiative launched on July 9, 2017, is a free online self-education platform, providing opportunities for a life-long learning from class 9 to post-graduation level. SWAYAM platform is developed by MHRD and AICTE with the help of Microsoft. INFLIBNET Centre is a nodal agency for coordinating for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) for PG courses. INFLIBNET Centre also acts as a nodal agency for offering seven courses in library and information science on SWAYAM platform. These seven courses in LIS were launched in November 2017 and successfully completed in March 2018.

·     SWAYAM PRABHA: Another initiative of MHRD, GOI, launched in 2017, is a group of 32 DTH channel devoted to telecasting of high quality educational programmes on 24x7 basis using the GSAT-15 satellite of ISRO. INFLIBNET Centre has developed a portal for SWAYAM PRABHA and is hosting and archiving of videos for 32 DTH channel.

·    Study in India: Launched in April 2018 by the MHRD, GOI, it is a web portal designed for foreign students seeking study in India. Educational Consultants India Limited (EdCIL), Noida, a Central Public Sector Enterprises (CPSE) under MHRD is the implementing agency for this project.

·   VIDWAN:  Developed by INFLIBNET with financial support from the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT) is a database of profiles of scientists / researchers and other faculty members working at leading academic institutions and other R & D organisation across India. It provides information about expert's background, contact address, experience, scholarly publications, skills and accomplishments, researcher identity, etc. The project was started in 2012 with the merger of ‘University Expert Database (1999)’ and ‘Expert database in Science and Technology (2001) of INFLIBNET. 

OPEN ACCESS INITIATIVES

INFOPORT- INFLIBNET Subject Gateway for Indian Electronic Resources: Designed and developed by INFLIBNET to serve as a comprehensive gateway to all Indian scholarly content scattered over the internet. It uses Subject Gateway Management System (SGMS), developed by INFLIBNET as a hosting platform to promote open access to Indian scholarly content. The content at INFOPORT is classified according to DDC.

OJAS – The Open Journal Access System: OJAS was intended to serve as a platform for faculty and researchers in universities to host their open access journals. It was developed on Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open source software created by the Public Knowledge Project, first released in 2001 under the GNU General Public License. INFLIBNET Centre has discontinued the OJAS service with effect from 31^st March 2018.

Shodhganga – A reservoir of Indian Theses: Developed and maintained by INFLIBNET using DSpace software, Shodhganga is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to Indian universities. It was created consequent on the UGC making it mandatory through regulations issued in June 2009 for all universities to submit soft copies of PhD theses and MPhil dissertations to the UGC for hosting in the INFLIBNET.

Shodhgangotri – Indian Research in Progress: A repository of synopsis of research topic submitted to Indian universities by the research scholars as part of registering themselves in PhD program. This ‘research in progress’ repository compliments Shodhganga. 

E-CONSORTIA INITIATIVES

N-LIST- National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content: Launched on 4^th May 2010, was intended to provide access to scholarly content especially to colleges & centrally funded technical institutes. It was jointly executed by the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre, and the INDEST-AICTE Consortium.

E-Shodhsindhu: Consortia for Higher Education E-resources: MHRD has formed E-Shodh Sindhu Consortium by merging the three consortia initiatives namely, UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INDEST-AICTE Consortium and N-LIST in December 2015.

LIBRARY AUTOMATION & SOFTWARE INITIATIVES

IndCat – Online Union Catalogue of Indian Universities: Developed by INFLIBNET is a free online union Catalogue of Books, Theses and Serials of major universities/institutes libraries in India.  It provides the records in Standard bibliographic formats i.e. MARC, MARCXML that can be used for Inter-Library Loan, Retro-Conversion and other purposes.

SOUL (Software for University Libraries): Developed by INFLIBNET, is an integrated library management software for college and university libraries. The first version (SOUL 1.0) was released on the occasion of CALIBER 2000 at Chennai and the latest version 2.0 was released in January 2009.

INFLIBNET Access Management Federation (INFED): In order to provide access to e-resource to users of universities and institutions from out of their campuses, INFLIBNET has acquired Shibboleth, an open source single sign-on software for authenticating authorized users from institutions and provide them seamless access to e-resources from anywhere, anytime. 

IRINS (Indian Research Information Network System): A web-based Research Information Management (RIM) service was developed by INFLIBNET in collaboration with Central University of Punjab, Bathinda. It is available free as software-as-service (SAS) to the academic and research organizations in India. 

Shodh Suddhi: Enhancing Research Quality: A programme initiated by Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), GOI which provides access to Plagiarism Detection Software (PDS) to all universities/Institutions in India since September 2019. Under this initiative, URKUND - a Web Based Plagiarism Detection Software system is being provided to all Users of universities/Institutions in the country.

INFLIBNET CONVENTIONS

CALIBER (Convention on Automation of Libraries in Education and Research Institutions): A bi-annual convention, organized by the INFLIBNET Centre in  different parts of the country in collaboration with universities. The first convention was held in 1994 at Ahmedabad.

PLANNER (Promotion of Library Automation and Networking in North Eastern Region): A bi-annual regional convention address the issues and problems of academic libraries in North-eastern region. First PLANNER convention was organized in 2003 at North-Eastern University, Shillong, Meghalaya.

Recent Conventions
Conventions	Held at:	Theme
12th CALIBER 2019 (28-30 November 2019)	KIIT, Bhubaneswar, Orissa	Library 2030: Moving Towards Smart Technologies, Services and Resources
11th PLANNER 2018 (15-17 November 2018)	Tripura University, Agartala	Rejuvenate Academic Library as a Social Hub

OTHER INITIATIVES & PUBLICATIONS

InfiStats – Usage Statistics Portal for e-Resource: INFLIBNET Centre has developed a portal called InfiStats, for monitoring the usage statistics of various e-resources made accessible to the member institute. The InfiStats uses "Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI)" Protocol (ANSI/NISO Standard No. Z39.93-2007) that defines an automated request and response model for harvesting of usage data for electronic resources using Web services framework. The portal imports the usage data from the publisher’s website automatically and stores it on InfiStats database. The InfiStats interface then provides title level COUNTER reports to member institutes.

INFLIBNET Newsletter:  Quarterly – First issue published in April 1995

SELF CHECK EXERCISES

1.     INFLIBNET Centre is situated at:

A.     Gandhinagar

B.     Ahmedabad

C.     Delhi

D.     Gurugram

2.     'InfiStates' is developed by __.

A.     NISCAIR

B.     RRRLF

C.     National Library of India

D.     INFLIBNET

3.   Who is the present Director of INFLIBNET?

A.     Dr. Jagdish Arora

B.     Dr. Girish Sahni

C.     Dr. A. K. Chakraborty

D.     Prof. J. P. Singh Joorel

4.    Which of the following are open access initiatives of INFLIBNET?
      a)      Shodhganga

      b)      e-Shodh Sindhu
      c)      Infoport
      d)      IndCat

             

         A.     a, b, and d are correct

         B.     a, c and d are correct     

         C.     a and c are correct

         D.     b and d are correct

5.    Which among the following is the premier database of profiles of scientists, researchers and other faculty members working at academic institutions and other R&D labs in India?

A.    INFOPORT

B.    VIDWAN

C.    OJAS

D.    INFORMER

6.    First 'PLANNER' of INFLIBNET was organized in 2003 at __.

A.    Shillong

B.    Silchar

C.     Gauwahati

D.     Aizawal

7.   'Research in Progress' database in India is __.

A.     Vidyanidhi

B.     Shodhganga

C.     Shodhgangotri

D.    NDLI

8.   OJAS service of INFLIBNET has been discontinued since __.

A.     2016

B.     2017

C.     2018

D.     2019

9.    Which among the following is not one of the services/activities of INFLIBNET?

A.     Shodhganga

B.     PLANNER

C.     NACLIN

D.     Shodhgangotri

10.  INFLIBNET Newsletter is being published since:

A.    1995

B.     1996

C.     1997

D.     1998