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Academic Library System

Notes business growth opportunities to the electronic publishers and thus attract the best possible
price and terms of agreements. With this welcome change, the libraries all over the world are
forming consortia of all types and at all levels with an objective to take advantage of current
global network to promote better, faster and more cost-effective ways of providing electronic
information resources to the information seekers. GALILIO, OhioLink, TexShare, VIVA and
SUNYConnect in USA, CALIS in China, CONCERT in Taiwan, INDEST-AICTE Consortium,
UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium and CSIR E-Journals Consortium in India are
some of the well-known library consortia. Besides, library consortia that emerged with primary
motive to license e-resources for their member institutions, several existing library networks
have also taken-up the task to license e-resources for their members.
Considering the facts mentioned above, the University Grants Commission launched two ambitious
programmes for the academic community in universities under its purview. The first initiative,
namely “UGC-Infonet Connectivity Programme” provides for networking of university campuses
with state-of-the-art campus wide networks and Internet bandwidth, the second initiative
called the “UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium” provides access to selected scholarly
electronic journals and databases in different disciplines. The INFLIBNET is responsible for
execution and monitoring of both the initiatives.

Task Describe the role of libraries in Ancient India.

2.4.1 UGC Infonet Digital Library Consortium

The UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium is major initiative of University Grants Commission
(UGC) to bring qualitative change in academic libraries in India. It was formally launched in
December, 2003 by Honourable Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, the then President of India, soon after
providing the Internet connectivity to the universities in the year 2003 under the UGC-Infonet
programme. It is a national initiative for providing access to scholarly electronic resources
including full-text and bibliographic databases in all subject disciplines to academic community
in India. It facilitates access to high quality e-resources to academia in the country to improve
teaching, learning and research. The Consortium provides current as well as archival access
to more than 5,000 core and peer-reviewed journals and nine bibliographic databases in different
disciplines from 23 publishers and aggregators. The access to all major e-resources was given
50 universities in first phase in the year 2004. It has now been extended to 157 universities in
three different phases. In terms of number of users, the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium
is the largest Consortium in India with a vision and plan to reach out to all universities and
colleges affiliated to these universities, over a period of time.

Aims and Objectives

The main objective of the UGC INFONET Digital Library Consortium is to provide access to
qualitative electronic resources including full-text and bibliographic databases to academic
institutions at a lower rates of subscription. The major aims and objectives of the UGC-Infonet
Digital Library Consortium are as follows:
• to provide access to a high-quality and scholarly electronic resources to a large number

of academic institutions including universities and colleges at substantially lower rates
of subscription and at most favourable terms and conditions;
• to promote rapid and efficient access to scholarly content to the users and to create and
promote use of ICT in teaching and learning in universities in India;

12 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY