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The Seventh CDS/ISIS Users Group Meet was organised by NISSAT and Regional Research Laboratory (RRL), Bhubaneswar during November 26-28, 1997 at Bhubaneswar. Over 85 participants were regular users of this package, many were advance users who had developed interfaces programs in Pascal. Twenty papers were presented at technical sessions.
INAUGURATION
The inaugural session commenced with a warm welcome to the delegates and the dignitaries by Shri J.R. Sahu, Deputy Director, RRL, Bhubaneswar. He briefly mentioned the background of this meeting and appreciated the role of NISSAT for supporting various activities in information handling in the country. He thanked Dr. A. Lahiri, Adviser, NISSAT for giving the opportunity to organise this meet at RRL.
Dr. A. Lahiri in his introductory remarks mentioned that sometimes users complained to him regarding the over use of the package and its utility in future. He stressed that they forget that the users learnt the basics from CDS/ISIS during 1980s.The package is not for the people who can afford the packages costing Rs. 4 lakhs but it is for the other categories who can afford Rs.1500. He mentioned that the last meeting was held at Madurai Kamaraj University in 1995 and now more than double users from various parts of the country had arrived, which proved that there was still interest in CDS/ISIS. He briefly mentioned the launching of MINISIS in its new Avatar, no longer hardware dependent like HP 3000 but PC version. He stated that there should be a range of product for users to choose. He mentioned that a Memorandum of Understanding would be signed with SNDT University, Mumbai on December 20, 1997 and the future plan of setting up of CDS/ISIS Home page from India. He requested the users to feel free in suggesting (a) Whether to have users' meet every two years or every year to discuss not only CDS/ISIS but also other software packages of library automation (b) Is it worth the trouble?
Dr. Bill Swift of IDRC, Canada in his address traced the history of MINISIS and how it was used in 1970s as a generalised information management tool in libraries, museums, records departments and for inventory management, etc. based on HP 3000. He stressed that it was no longer hardware dependent and it was available on number of platforms and environments such as WIN95, Windows NT, DOS, Claris, etc. He highlighted some of its new features such as — supporting a very large number of fields, records, alternate scripts like Hindi and other languages, multimedia capability, Web interface. He also mentioned the other specialised application products under development which would be made available through extensive support network in India by SNDT University.
Dr. S. Ayyappan, Director of Central Institute of Fresh Water Aquaculture, Bhubaneswar inaugurated the meet by pressing the key to start MINISIS and mentioned that how important is to gather information for the scientists. He hoped that packages like CDS/ISIS definitely would help the scientists to collect and manage information in a faster way from the beginning to the end of the project.
Prof. H. S. Ray, Director, RRL, Bhubaneswar in his Presidential address stated that he was happy to be associated with the users meet as it was more focused on a particular product. He was happy to note that 1400 copies of this software were being used in the country and he appealed to the research community to make use of this for their information handling. He requested NISSAT to set up an Information Centre on Minerals and Metals in this region.
Mr.J.R. Sahu extended hearty vote of thanks to NISSAT and its staff, Prof. Ray, Dr. Ayyappan, Prof. Neelameghan, Dr. Bill Swift and to the participants for their participation.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Prof. A. Neelameghan, who was closely involved in the promotion of CDS/ISIS in India, Philippines and Caribbean countries, delivered the keynote address. He traced its origin to December 1985 and its growth since then. He shared his experiences in promoting the package, practical problems and challenges in organising training programmes. He mentioned that there were 30,000 licensed copies around the world and equal number or more were also being used without registration. He mentioned the use of CDS/ISIS not only in the library application but also in non-bibliographic databases in the areas of rocket launching, land records, case records of patients, etc. He explained in detail the use of CDS/ISIS at present at UNO and its other agencies, creation of LILAC, Union Catalogue of Medical Serials, etc. He highlighted the current developments viz. (a) database developed on CDS/ISIS are coming on INTERNET and CD-ROMs (b) Volume of all Pascal programs (around 200 at present) along with the manual will be put on to CD-ROM. He was quite optimistic that Unesco would continue its support and improve it, make it available on different formats, multimedia capability. He stressed that it should have multiple database search facility to live with other packages.
Mrs. S. Ravindran, Director, NISSAT chaired the session and thanked Prof. Neelameghan for his detail presentation.
TECHNICAL SESSIONS
There were four technical sessions and an Open Session which were structured to provide ample time for discussions on the problems and use of the package. Finally there was a Concluding Session.
Technical Session 1
Chairman: Prof. A. Neelameghan
Mrs. S.Ravindran presented the status report on the use of Micro-ISIS in India. NISSAT has distributed 1389 copies till 1997. Of these 960 copies were distributed in 1993 and the annual growth rate has been declining and this might be due to introduction of price for the package and manual. North tops in number of licensed users (595) followed by South (373). As per the survey conducted by NISSAT, 63.7% of users use it for cataloguing/indexing services. NISSAT has been regularly conducting or encouraging INSDOC, DRTC, various professional associations and universities to organise training courses. Since 1986, 177 courses were held and 3469 professionals were trained. There were several questions on the level of training, response from NISSAT office, users' survey, technical support, strong features of the package to be highlighted, lack of simple documentation, need for identifying local bodies and persons, communication among users, starting of CDS/ISIS Newsletter or some columns on the problems in other magazines.
Sri B. N. Sarkar, NISSAT gave a brief presentation on various utilities available from NISSAT and Sanjay and Trishna packages and he announced that the copies of these could be obtained on demand. He also highlighted Windows version which could be downloaded from Unesco's website at http://www.unesco.org for testingit.
Dr. Bill Swift, IDRC, Canada demonstrated Windows'95 based 32 bit MINISIS which was launched at the inaugural session. His presentation was excellent and highlighted how it could accommodate the database size upto 4 GB; 32000 fields, group fields and elementary fields, MARC records capability, generation of default worksheet, multimedia features within the system, ODBC complied, Web capability and hyperlinking, etc. He also mentioned about the new application products such as library application package on MINISIS under preparation. Ms. Niyati Shah, SNDT University, Mumbai assisted him in answering questions on distribution, pricing, training, etc. by SNDT University. Mr. Swift was of the opinion that MINISIS would not replace CDS/ISIS but both would coexist. While concluding the session Prof. Neelameghan felt that the package had lot of potential, each institution could acquire the wonderful capabilities and he was sure it was going to be very good library package and also for other applications.
Technical Session 2
Chairman: Dr. Bill Swift
Mr. Narayanan Kutty presented several utilities viz. database and record duplication in CDS/ISIS database; database corrupt checking; mailing list management; field, dictionary and browse editors, etc. developed using Pascal at VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram. He offered these utilities to the users and suggested they could be distributed by NISSAT. He continued his presentation in Session 3 also.
Mr. Viswas Chavan, NIO, Goa presented his paper `CDS/ISIS resources on Internet and how to put CDS/ISIS database on Internet'. He highlighted the steps involved and the challenging job they had in setting up NIO Web page and putting up their CDS/ISIS resources on Internet. He also mentioned his experience in Internet browsing on CDS/ISIS using different browsers and provided their addresses.
Prof. A. Neelameghan, Institute of Information Studies, Bangalore presented `Converting CDS/ISIS databases to multimedia system for Internet and CD-ROM: A case study'. He explained how `OM information service: an interactive multimedia database service' was designed and developed by him with the help of National Science Information Centre, IISc, Bangalore which would be available soon on Internet and as a CD-ROM. The database consists of extracts and quotations from 200 sources of different cultures, faith, etc. from Vedic time to the present. He also explained the contents of the database, indexing and display parameters, search and retrieval process. The religious music can be played in the background while searching the database and pictures of eminent personalities could be accessed by just few clicks.
Mr. V. V. Siva Prasad, NAARM, Hyderabad presented his first paper `Software review for library automation.' He explained that how difficult it would be for librarians for selecting library automation software. He highlighted their efforts of evaluation and bench marking library automation software from India. The methods followed by them were: calling the technical details through questionnaires; presentation by the vendors at NAARM to the specialists and librarians; hands-on testing by librarians; and evaluation by the technical experts. Their questionnaire was based on the checklists prepared by Library of Congress, Wisconsin Group of Universities, James Company.
Mr. Siva Prasad highlighted the training activities on CDS/ISIS in his second paper. The duration of the course was of two weeks, first week on general aspect of CDS/ISIS, second week on Pascal programs, Fangorn and other utilities.
Mr. M.P. Tapaswi, NIO, Goa presented his paper `Bibliometrics'. How CDS/ISIS can be used for numerical data analysis like bibliometric studies. Several programs were written in Pascal. It included citation studies, ranking of journals, research workers, authorship collaboration, productivity, contents analysis, Bradford's law of scattering, obsolescence of literature, etc.
Mr. M. Raghuram, Madurai Kamaraj University, in his paper `BICCAS' highlighted the features related to autoconversion of searched outputs from CCOD and Medline into ISO 2709 structure using Fangorn. The database had 35,000 entries covering the period from 1973 to 1997.
Ms. Vidya Dalvi of NCL, Pune in her paper `Retroconversion of cataloguing data using LC-MARC' explained the retrospective conversion of bibliographic records using the program developed at DRTC and provided by NISSAT. This converted LC-MARC records into CDS/ISIS format.
Technical Session 3
Chairman: Mr. G.P. Ruben
How CDS/ISIS was used at Centre for Science Education and Communication was demonstrated by Mr. Sinha for answering questions received in response to Turning Point - TV serial programme on science education.
Mr. B. Vasu of CFTRI, Mysore explained in detail using the Pascal Program for searching Food Science and Technology database. This had search options like browse, search, print, etc. It was also used for printing of various secondary periodicals as the output from the databases.
Mr. Narayanan Kutty in his continued presentation explained SRIM database and utility developed to edit, create records downloaded from NTIS. NASA Thesaurus was used for vocabulary controlling.
Mr.C.Sugumaran, LPSC/ISRO, Thiru-vananthapuram presented his experience in material inventory control system using CDS/ISIS
by creating a Pascal interface. The system consisted of two nodes, one for the user and the other for the data entry operator. Several menus were created. The user could give interactive queries and hits were displayed for browsing and printing. Various types of reports were generated.
Mr. S. Deshmukh, C-DOT, New Delhi explained how CDS/ISIS was used in their library. He also explained Pascal interfaces developed for circulation module.
Technical Session 4
Chairman: Prof. A. Neelameghan
`IR-4 : a circulation utility' was presented by Mr.G.P. Ruben and Mr. John Paul Anbu. This was developed by them and used in American College library, Madurai which had 1,10,000 books. Several utilities such as holding, circulation, fine calculation, etc. Package was demonstrated by Mr. Anbu. They reported that IR-5 would be released soon.
Mr. Nagaraja Rao, Ramakrishna Mission School, Mysore presented the details on Vivek database which had over 3700 records of quotations. The famous quotations were indexed and helped the students in selecting them. He also explained how CDS/ISIS was used for circulation and to find out the statistical details of issue.
Open House Discussion
Chairman: Dr. A. Lahiri
A Panel discussion consisted of Panelists such as-Prof. A. Neelameghan, Mrs. S.Ravindran, Mr. B.N. Sarkar, Mr. G.P. Ruben, Mr. J.R. Sahu and Mr. Narayanan Kutty.
Dr. Lahiri introduced the topic and the panel of experts. The entire discussion was divided into three sections. viz. Clearing house, CDS/ISIS training—status, policies of NISSAT, and User problems.
Mrs. Ravindran traced the history of Unesco sponsored programme on CDS/ISID and its activities. She also informed that NISSAT is planning to host the information on the develpoment of databases, application programmes, publications, training course
materials, etc. on website at http://www.isisclearinghouse.org . Participants were requested to send the information to NISSAT for publishing on this site. Mr. Sarkar in his presentation highlighted the training activities through various organisations such as DRTC, IASLIC, ILA, etc. Prof. Neelameghan suggested to prepare the list of experts in different regions who can help the users in that area. He also mentioned that a compilation of about 25 Pascal Programs with about 180 page documentation was under preparation. He agreed to co-ordinate with NISSAT for making them available on the website at http://www.isisclearinghouse.org .
Concluding Session
Chairman: Prof. H. S. Ray
Mr. K.N. Kittur, Raporteur General presented an exhaustive report of entire proceedings of two days. Recommendations on various aspects of CDS/ISIS were presented. Prof. Ray appreciated the deliberations during two days and he hoped that the discussions would be quite useful to the participants to use the software for providing information in a faster way to the scientific community. Mr. J. R. Sahu, Dy. Director, RRL, Bhubaneswar proposed a vote of thanks.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Based on the papers, discussions, panel discussions the following recommendations were made:
• The software needs to be tuned to simultaneously display the records of more than one Indian languages in the database.
• CDS/ISIS and CDS/ISIS Pascal manuals need more simplification.
• NISSAT should authorise the resource persons/specialists/teachers and current licensed users of CDS/ISIS to copy and distribute the software for the trainers/students and licensed users after signing agreements and other formalities.
• NISSAT should build a comprehensive database of CDS/ISIS users in India.
• NISSAT should give wide publicity and distribute the CDS/ISIS Pascal programs having authorization for distribution without cost with proper documentation.
• In order to promote, develop more Pascal interfaces some incentives/honorarium be given.
• NISSAT should establish a Guidance Cell/Bulletin Board/Local bodies of experts at different places covering all the regions to handle/answer the problems posed by the users from time to time.
• NISSAT should devote few pages of ITT to give wide publicity to the solutions on the items repeatedly/frequently questioned.
• The CDS/ISIS training programmes should not be less than two weeks duration and distinction between `basic' and `advanced' level programmes be discontinued as far as possible as the same candidate is less likely to be deputed for second time for advanced learning.
• A component of `follow-up actions by the organisers' needs to be added after training in-order to keep track of better use of software by the students/participants.
• NISSAT should make more efforts to organise training programmes in the areas with least training and comparatively less licensed users.
• Institutions conducting short term courses should set initially an example of extensive use of CDS/ISIS software at their workplace.
• Increase in financial support in tune with the escalation in different costs from NISSAT is recommended.
• Communication process in NISSAT needs to be simplified. Quick replies to the letters, advanced planning for any programmes/information flow from/to NISSAT (so that the user gets some time to respond) need to be looked into.
• NISSAT should promote development of model libraries where they are fully automated using CDS/ISIS software. This would generate confidence in CDS/ISIS among library professionals.
• The established users of CDS/ISIS especially from library and information science field look into the development of databases pertaining to non-bibliographic purposes.
• Information on the programmes developed in CDS/ISIS Pascal by the users should be supplied from time to time to NISSAT and NISSAT should update the same.
— K.N. Kittur
Monopoly Over Internet Ceases
The National Task Force on IT and software development has recommended removing VSNL's monopoly over internet, 100 per cent depreciation on all IT products in two years, blanket approval for Indian IT companies to acquire foreign companies out of export earnings, issuance of `sweat equity' to employees; and allowing cable operators to provide internet through their network without additional licence fee.
The `IT Action Plan' has suggested that government organisations and private internet service providers (ISPs) should be allowed direct access to internet. However private ISPs will have to obtain clearances for defence purposes from the concerned ministries.
The task force has recommended that the authorised cable TV operators should be allowed to provide internet access through their network. No additional licence fee should be charged for this purpose.
The report has also recommended that networks such NICNET, STPs and private ones shall be allowed inter-connectivity without necessarily having to go through the DoTs I-Net network.
In order to improve national information infrastructure, the report has suggested that the Railways, defence, state electricity boards, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd., Gas Authority of India Ltd and Steel Authority of India Ltd should be allowed to lay fibre optic backbone for internet purposes. These organisations have rights of way to lay cables.
—The Times of India, 7 July 1998