Programmes & Activities
The technology being a driving force in the contemporary education system, the Centre has taken-up a number of initiatives for the benefit of the academic community in India. These initiatives are categorized into various phenomenons as mentioned below:
Library Automation
INDCAT
Union Catalogue of Indian Universities (IndCat) is a by-product of the library automation of the INFLIBNET Centre wherein universities that are signatory to the MoU on library automation contribute the bibliographic records of documents that are available in their libraries. The scope of the IndCat has now been extended to invite contributions from universities and other institutions that have not signed MoU with INFLIBNET Centre on library automation.
SOUL 3.0
The SOUL 3.0 (Software for University Libraries) is state-of-the-art integrated library management software designed and developed by the INFLIBNET Centre based on requirements of colleges, universities and other academic libraries. The software is compliant to international standards for bibliographic formats and circulation protocols. It is compliant to international standards such as MARC 21 for the bibliographic format, Unicode based Universal Character Sets for multilingual bibliographic records and NCIP 2.0 and SIP 2 based protocols for RFID, electronic surveillance and control.
Online Copy-Catalogue System
The Online Copy-Catalogue System (OCS) is mainly used to promote cooperative cataloguing and avoid duplication of efforts. It is one of the initiatives which helps Institutions to build-up their own catalogue using INFLIBNET's Union Catalogue (IndCat). It is fully supported with SOUL and other Library Management Softwares. It provides "IndCat Book Data" with simple and advanced search options. It gives 'copy', 'copy as new' and 'create new' options for creating online bibliographic records of book data and then share with INFLIBNET's IndCat, which benefits academic communities around the world.
e-Consortium
e-ShodhSindhu
e-ShodhSindhu is an initiative of Consortium for Higher Education Electronics Resources by Ministry of Education. It provides access to e-resources (10000+ full-text journals, 164300+ e-Books and 4 databases through e-ShodhSindhu and 600000 e-Books through NDL) to Universities, Colleges and Centrally Funded Technical Institutions in India.
N-LIST
The Project entitled "National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content(N-LIST)", graduated as a regular scheme of UGC under UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium as college component, is merged into e -ShodhSindhu: Consortia for Higher Education E-Resources. The N-LIST provides access to 6,000+ journals, 1,64,300+ ebooks under N-LIST and 6,00,000 ebooks through NDL to all Govt., Govt.-aided as well as non-aided colleges through a proxy server / shibboleth.
InfiStats
The Centre has developed a software called InfiStats, for monitoring the usage statistics of various e-resources made accessible to the member institutions. The InfiStats portal imports the usage data from the publisher’s website automatically and store it is a database on InfiStats platform. The InfiStats interface provides title-level COUNTER-compliant reports to member institutions. The member institutions can also log-on to this portal for monitoring the usage of their respective e-resources.
INFED
INFLIBNET Access Management Federation(INFED) was setup which uses Shibboleth, a standard-based open source software, for authenticating authorized users from colleges and universities and provide them seamless access to e-resources from anywhere, anytime. Shibboleth offers a mechanism for users to access multiple resources within a federated single sign-on framework.
ShodhShuddhi
The Govt. of India was to provide Plagiarism Detection Software to all Indian Universities/Institutions including Central Universities, State Universities, Deemed to be Universities, Private Universities, Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs), Institute of National importance (INIs), Inter University Centres of UGC (IUCs). The INFLIBNET Centre is a nodal agency to execute the project/initiative under the aegis of Ministry of Education.
Open Access Initiative
Shodhganga
Shodhganga is a digital repository set-up for submission of electronic versions of theses and dissertations by students / research scholars in universities in India and make them available in open access to the world-wide academic community in response to the UGC Notification (Minimum Standards & Procedure for Award of M.Phil. / Ph.D Degree, Regulation, 2009 and amendment made in 2016) where-in the responsibility of maintaining the digital repository of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) is assigned to the INFLIBNET Centre. Shodhganga is set-up using DSpace, an open-source software, that uses internationally recognized protocols and interoperability standards. The repository provides a platform to research scholars in universities to deposit, re-use and share their theses and dissertations.
ShodhGangotri
Under this initiative, research scholars/research supervisors in universities are requested to deposit an electronic version of the approved synopsis submitted by research scholars to the universities for registering themselves for the Ph.D. programme now it is expanded to MRPs/PDFs/Emeritus Fellowship and PG Dissertations. The repository on one hand would reveal the trends and directions of research being conducted in Indian universities, on the other hand, it would avoid duplication of research. Synopsis in “ShodhGangotri” would later be mapped to full-text theses in "ShodhGanga".
Shodh-Chakra
Shodh-Chakra provides a unique space to the researcher, guide/supervisor and university to manage the research lifecycle of a research scholar. The portal is integrated with millions of resources (including lakhs of full-text theses) along with the helping tools for the researcher which are required during the research work. Regulatory bodies can easily identify the concern experts on the basis of research area. The system will generate login credentials to researchers, supervisors after due verification from university.
Institutional Repository
The Centre has established an institutional repository called IR@INFLBNET using DSpace, opensource software. The papers published in the proceedings of the CALIBER and PLANNER are uploaded into the repository. The Repository also includes course materials, newspaper clippings, etc.
INFOPORT
INFOPORT: INFLIBNET Subject Gateway for Indian Electronic Resources is designed to facilitate registering of an Internet resource into the portal and extending its access to users. INFOPORT supports browsing of Internet resources by Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Scheme.
Scholarly Network
Vidwan: Expert Database
Expert Database and National Researcher's Network is the premier database of profiles of scientists and faculty members working in leading academic institutions and other R & D organizations in India. A persistent URL, username and password are issued to each expert facilitating them to edit and update their profile information. Data ingest dashboard was developed to import the profile information as the administrator.
IRINS
IRINS is web-based Research Information Management (RIM) service provided by the Centre to organize the research related information at the institute level. The portal facilitates the academic, R & D organizations and faculty members, scientists to collect, curate and showcase the scholarly communication activities and provide an opportunity to create the scholarly network. The IRINS is available as free software-as-a-service to the academic and R&D organizations in India. The IRINS supports the integration of existing research repository with open and commercial citation databases, scholarly publishers, etc. It is integrated with academic identity such as ORCID ID, Scopus ID, Research ID, Microsoft Academic ID, Google Scholar ID for ingesting the scholarly contributions.
SheRNI
She Research Network in India (SheRNI) is the expert profile network system that connects and leverages the knowledge, skills, and expertise of women across various fields in India. This system aims to empower women by providing opportunities for collaboration, mentorship, and knowledge-sharing. The objectives of this project are to create a national-level expert profile system for women faculty members and facilitate the exchange of expertise, insights, and experiences among women experts in diverse fields.
E-Content Development and Services
ILMS
ILMS i.e. INFLIBNET Learning Management Service is offered by the Information and Library Network Centre (An IUC of UGC) to the institutions of higher education across the country. This service is being offered to all the Central, State and Deemed universities on request basis. It provides pre-populated learning content, derived from e-PG Pathshala: A Gateway to PG Courses, as per the prevailing guidelines of UGC.