A training workshop on Institutional Repositories was successfully conducted during 27-29 July 2004 at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. Participants from twenty one leading academic research institutions in India were imparted training in setting up institutional e-print archives using the EPrints open source software. Participating institutions included Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and National Institutes of Technology. The workshop was organized and conducted by the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in association with the Digital Library Research Group, Computer Science Department, Old Dominion University, USA. The workshop was sponsored by the INDEST Consortium, a programme of the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), Government of India. The main
objective of the workshop was to fulfill a recommendation of the INDEST
consortium to the member institutions to set up OAI-compliant digital
research archives of their research publications, following the model
already set up at Indian Institute of Science (http://eprints.iisc.ernet.in/),
and to work towards establishment of a virtual research archive using
the OAI inter-operability framework. It was strongly felt that this
will facilitate improved visibility and impact of research output of
these organizations and supplement the existing scholarly publishing
system. This initiative is an extension of the INDEST consortium's initial
goal of provision of shared access to licensed e-resources like bibliographic
databases and e-journals (http://paniit.iitd.ac.in/indest/).
More background information about the workshop is available in the workshop annoucement document. [Top] The workshop was conducted in a training laboratory equipped with 20 workstations with Linux Red Hat 9.0 operating system. Each participant was provided with a CD-ROM prepared by NCSI especially for the workshop. The CD-ROM consisted of EPrints (version 2.3.4) and other related software (Apache, MySQL, dependent Perl modules, etc.); presentations made in the workshop; sample documents to be used in lab sessions; and resources related to institutional repositories, metadata, and OAI. Participants used a shell scripts developed by NCSI for automating the process of installing EPrints and other required software. The workshop sessions covered the following topics:
Complete workshop programme and presentation material is available here.
Workshop inauguration and valedictory: On first day, the workshop was inaugurated by Prof. R.S. Sirohi, Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and Chairman, National Steering Committee, INDEST Consortium. Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, Director, Indian Institute of Science, was the Chief Guest. Prof. Sirohi, highlighted some of the key limitations of the traditional publishing system and referred to the improvements brought about by the well-known e-print archive Arxiv, operated and used by Physics and Mathematics researchers. Institutional repositories are institution-based e-print archives and bring the benefits of long term preservation and improved visibility to institutional research output. While lauding the initiative taken to organize the workshop, he mentioned that INDEST is committed to the task of establishing institutional repositories in all member institutions and urged all the participants to replicate the model already set up at IISc. Prof. Goverdhan Mehta, in his presiding remarks, drew the attention of the audience to the recent study "The Scientific impact of nations" published in Nature magazine (15 July 2004) which makes a detailed comparison of productivity and impact of research publications of different countries. Prof. Mehta observed that institutional repositories could serve a very useful purpose in improving the visibility and impact of institutional and hence national research output. On third day evening, Prof. P. Balaram, Chairman, Division of Biological Science, Indian Institute of Science, and Editor of 'Current Science' journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, chaired the valedictory session. He briefly highlighted the reasons for current interest in open access to research literature, and observed that institutional research archives, apart from other benefits, serve a very important purpose of bringing together institutional and individual research publications. While appreciating the possibility of INDEST member institutions setting up repositories and share these through the interoperability framework, he stressed the importance of filling these repositories with content at a quick pace. Dr. Jagdish Arora, National INDEST Coordinator, spoke briefly about the new INDEST initiatives. [Top]All the participants were successful in installing the required software and set up test e-print archives on their workstations. They also went through the document submission and approval processes. They also experimented with simple customization changes to the test archives. In a formal feedback gathered, most participants felt confident of setting up e-print archives in their institutions. Many expressed the need for further help and suggested more hands-on time in future workshops. On a scale of 1-5 (1-very poor, 5- very good), 'workshop content' got average rating of 4.7, 'logistics arrangement' got 4.4, and 'overall assessment' got 4.5. A major suggestion was to make available faster machines in the training lab, compared to the slow 'PII' machines that we made available to the participants! [Top] To help the workshop participants in handling some of the technical issues related to setting up their archives, an exclusive mailing list has been set up to facilitate interaction among the participants and resource persons. Another workshop to cover other interested INDEST member institutions is likely to be held later this year. [Top]Installation scripts and software: Each participant was provided with a CD-ROM consisting of EPrints and other related software required for setting up their e-print archives. Participants used this CD-ROM for hands-on learning of software installation and archive set up, in the workshop lab sessions. The CD-ROM compilation was prepared by the NCSI workshop team after thorough testing. The compilation consisted of EPrints (version 2.3.4) repository software (http://software.eprints.org/) and other required software (Apache, mod_Perl, MySQL, and dependent Perl modules). Linux Red Hat version 9.0 was the operating system platform. A shell script (for bash shell) has been developed by Mr. Filbert Minj and Mr. Ramnishath of NCSI, to completely automate the installation of all the required software and setting up of a test e-print archive. This was successfully used by all the participants in the workshop lab sessions. Detailed instructions for manual installation of each software module has also been prepared. This was also made available to the participants. To obtain a copy of the script and installation instructions. please visit this registration page. If you have any problems in accessing this page or registering, please conact Mr. Filbert Minj (E-Mail: filbert@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in). [Top]
[Top] We weclome your feedback, comments (and queries) about this site. These may be sent to Dr. T.B. Rajashekar, Associate Chairman, NCSI, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (E-Mail: raja@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in)
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