N. S. Harinarayana

Web 2.0 features in university library web sites

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore recent trends in the application of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 features as exemplified through university library web sites around the world.Design/methodology/approach – The top 100 universities from the ranked list of 200 provided on the Times Higher Education web site were considered for collection of data and from this list a selection was made of 57 of these universities. This selection was based on whether the site was in English and whether it had at least one Web 2.0 feature. For each of these universities their web sites were visited and data on their Web 2.0 features (such as Blogs, RSS, Instant Messaging, Wikis and the like) were collected and analyzed.Findings – Results reveal that 37 university libraries use RSS feeds for dissemination of library news, events and announcements and 15 university libraries provide blog space for users. Whereas wiki is the least applied Web 2.0 technology, with only one university using it, Instant Messaging is anot...

A Multilingual Multi-script Database of Indian Theses: Implementation of Unicode at Vidyanidhi

The theses submitted to universities are a rich and unique source of information on a given topic in terms of breadth as well as depth of treatment and coverage. The insight into the theoretical and methodological foundations of a topic, the data sets, and the exhaustive bibliography-all these attributes make the doctoral thesis a rich resource. A thesis represents the outcome of a focused and extensive study involving intellectual labour of more than three years. Archiving and enhancing access to theses is the main mission of Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) initiatives worldwide. ETDs gracefully overcome many of the problematic issues relating to the archiving and accessing of theses.