STEPHENS'S COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF DELHI: A BRIEF HISTORY
n numerical terms, J.B.G.TilakFootnote 2 identified that there were some 421 universities, and 18,000 colleges, in existence across India. St. Stephen's College in New Delhi is one of the premier Institutes established by the Cambridge Mission and is the oldest college in Delhi. The Cambridge Brotherhood arrived in Delhi in 1877 to reinforce the teaching strength of the school run by the S.P.G (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) Mission. The College was housed in the Shish Mahal in Katra Khushal Rai in Kinari Bazar from 1881 to 1890. In 1891 it moved into its own beautiful building designed by Colonel (later Sir) Samuel Swinton Jacob, the Chief Engineer of Jaipur State. Currently, the College has 13 departments and 90 staff who are teaching 1,400 students (including many law students) in the college. The College awards degrees in the arts and sciences at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Raj Kumar Bhardwaj
Shikha Kaushik
The University of Delhi is regarded as the premier institution for higher education in India. The University was established in 1922 at a time when only three colleges existed in Delhi; there are now 83 colleges that are affiliated to the University. The North Campus of the University has some 16 faculties and 84 departments and that is where the three original colleges, plus others, are located – these are St Stephen's College, Hindu College (founded in 1899) and Ramjas College (founded in 1917). The colleges of the North Campus centre round the Faculty of Arts and Science and the Faculty of Law. Whilst St Stephen's College does not enroll law students, resources such as the Institutional Repository of the St Stephen's College can be accessed by law students from the law Faculty. In fact, the IR is on the local area network of the Delhi University and can be accessed anywhere from within the Delhi University campus for interdisciplinary research.
ST STEPHEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY
St. Stephen's College has a well established library housed in a separate wing with approximately 85,000 books, 3,000 online journals and a separate archival section which holds records pertaining to the history of the college. The college library is a resource unmatched by any other undergraduate institution in Delhi. During the history of the library, it has also moved with the times, and is fully automated. A separate video library section with various documentaries makes it unique from other undergraduate libraries. In the digital section, students can access information through an online library.
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORIES: AN INTRODUCTION
Overall, the objectives of any IR should be aligned with the objectives of the library. The traditional justifications for creating IRs remain valid – to preserve digital data, give perpetual access, provide visibility for research and to challenge the unsustainable increases in the cost of the traditional publication methods. A number of pressures and developments in recent times, including shrinking budgets in higher education, emergence in the 1990s of internet search engines, the increased availability of e-resources, and traditional inter-library loan services, each played a part in reducing the significance and sufficiency of the collections housed within the physical walls of the library. Whilst these issues, amongst many other concerns, threaten the traditional library community, at the same time, it can open up opportunities to re-define the library and information service.
The introduction of an IR can help to re-define the production, dissemination and the use of material by library users. IR initiatives offer numerous opportunities to become engaged in the dissemination of information beyond those of the traditional library services. Some institutions even use their IR as a positive marketing and publicity tool, as an enhancement to reputation, the success of which can even increase enrollment of students due its reputation. Website content can often be removed from one day to the next with no-one assigned to oversee and manage these often sudden changes. An IR can provide a platform to manage institutional information at all levels including web content, as suggested by Nabe (in 2010)Footnote 3. In summary, the major benefits of IRs are that they enhance (a). access to resources (b). research become visible and (c). it helps to preserve the content. CrowFootnote 4, a senior consultant of SPARC (Scalable Processor Architecture), elaborated about the contents of institutional repositories as being:
• Institutional defined;
• Scholarly defined;
• Cumulative and perpetual;
• Open and interoperable.
Lynch (in 2003)Footnote 5 notes that, “…an effective institutional repository of necessity represents collaboration among librarians, information technologies, archives and record managers, faculty and university administrator and policy makers”. The architecture of the repository mainly depends on its purpose and also on the targeted users. Building any IR requires considerable examination of the necessary functions required by the institution. No digital resources management system can last forever; therefore, the most important consideration concerns the need for periodic maintenance of repository material. This means that any IR should have flexibility so that the contents can be migrated as necessary to a different platform if required in the future.
Many IRs are being registered with ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repository)Footnote 6 and to date some 2,324 institutions have been registered world-wide. Various technologies have been employed to create IRs and the list of software used includes (a). DSpace (used in 888 instances), (b). E-Print (406 occasions), (c). Repress (122), (d). Fedora (39) (e). ETD-db (in 30 instances around the world). So far, in India, 60 IRs have been registered with ROAR.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Several studies have been carried out in relation to Institutional Repositories at various organisations around the world. A collection of observations and views are provided here.
Feilter-Reichert (2005)Footnote 7, in his study, controversially tended to view librarians as not being necessary in respect of IR functions. However, librarians would be required to educate users about how to access material in the IRs. The role of librarians was found to be changing where institutional repositories were concerned and Chen et al. (2005)Footnote 8 saw the role relating to content recruitment and interpreting publishers' policies. Howard and Sullivan (2004)Footnote 9 view the role of library and information professional as managing and disseminating research outputs and learning objects from their own institutions.
Kashimura (2007)Footnote 10 in his study of the HUMI (HUmanities Media Interface) ProjectFootnote 11 defined IRs as preserving the digital information in a secure and reliable manner, while Krishnamurthy and Kemparaju (2011)Footnote 12 stated that IRs increased the visibility of the institution by bringing together the full range and extent of research output together with the advantages of long term preservation. However, Jones (2006)Footnote 13 stated that, “institutional digital library services face a tough battle in being accepted on campuses because alternative systems usually exist”.
Most recently, Alipour–Hafezi et al. (2010)Footnote 14 found that most digital library projects in the United States use the OAI (Open Archives Initiative) protocol as a metadata harvesting model in order to be technically interoperable. However, most of them are interoperable at metadata level rather than at the full text level. Kim and Kim (2008)Footnote 15, in their study, found that effective registering and searching of documents in the IRs improved ‘visual appearance’; however clustering and displaying material based on the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) model improved the collection usability. Carlson et al. (2009)Footnote 16 in a study conducted at Purdue University found that the more immediate needs of researchers improved the utility of IRs and attracted submission of new content. Davis and Connolly (2007)Footnote 17, at Cornell University, considered that students had little incentive to use IRs as other service were more appropriate, such as personal websites and repositories relevant to their disciplines. Buehler and Trauernicht (2007)Footnote 18 described in their study that material supporting an academic institution's scholarship could play a significant role in the success of institutional repository. However, the standard for metadata, data structure and hierarchies of collection and storage capacity must be consistent throughout for all the content received.
THE IR AT ST STEPHEN'S COLLEGE
Some initial considerations prior to implementation
In general, India remains far behind in terms of building IRs – as previously mentioned, just 60 IRs exist from 421 universities and 18,000 colleges across the country! St. Stephen's College initiated their IR programme in 2010, with just three terminals and two scanners and by choosing a suitable platform.
Before initiating the creation of the IR, St Stephen's College carefully considered the following issues (as referenced by Nabe, 2010Footnote 19):
(a) Who would manage it;
(b) What platform would be used;
(c) What initial policies will be promulgated;
(d) What marketing techniques should be used;
(e) The extent that these resources would be beneficial to the users;
(f) Who will finance the IR;
(g) What selection of software and hardware would be required.
Wise et al. (2007)Footnote 20 conducted a study and stated that DSpace can be used not only for ‘born digital’ material but also for an archive for digitised items such as XML encoded texts and digital images. The installation of the IR software is complex with many technical challenges. Once the St. Stephen's College IR project was initiated, DSpace was chosen as the platform. In the initial phase, DSpace was installed on a Windows platform using the 1.4.2 version of the software and later switched to a Linux based server using the version, 1.5.2. Various communities and collections were then created within the IR.
St. Stephen's College IR – the architecture
The IR of St. Stephen's College included various pieces of functionality, such as: community creation, collection creation within the community, user registration, document submission, approval process, metadata editing and rejection, and dissemination of documents.
The Digital Library at St Stephen's College.
Contents and layers
The repository has the following contents:
a) Archives
a. Kooler Talk [a student publication]
b. Oxygen: Annual Chemistry Society Journal
c. Photographs
d. Prospectus
e. Stephanian – college magazine
b) Chemistry Department
a. Papers – students
c) College Library
a. e-Books
b. News clippings
c. Question papers
d. Research papers
e. Videos
f. Books written by Stephanians
d) Miscellaneous
a) Principal's Annual Report
b) Office orders etc.
c) Forms
There are a number of layers to the repository including the application layer, the business layer and the storage layer. Each layer plays a significant role in the functioning of the digital library and each is dependent on the other with the collective function of allowing efficient retrieval of the results. Using the Dublin Core Metadata StandardFootnote 21 for the DSpace software used, descriptors were appropriately assigned for retrieval purposes. DSpace uses what can be described as a flat structure and provides flexibility to create the community and sub-communities. Various collections can then be created within the communities.
Application layer
This layer relates to the interface of the system and is mainly responsible for providing users with an opportunity to access data through the search window, retrieving results ranked according to relevance.
Communities and collections within DSpace.
Business layer
The business layer is responsible for the DSpace-specific functionality which includes the workflow of items in DSpace, the administration, and the searching and browsing of the content. The objective of this layer is to satisfy the individual user by delivering to the user the individual item require. It provides the indexes and assists with searching the documents.
Storage layer
DSpace uses the Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), with Postgres SQL (where the bibliographical data is stored) as the backend of the software. This layer provides a mechanism to store and index from full text material. There are three levels of access – within the college campus, within the university campus and, more widely, as harvested contents on the internet.
Submission layer
The role of this layer is to facilitate the entry of the metadata and the submission of full text documents to DSpace. Before submitting document, the user, or member, has to accept the terms of the license. The user is then able to upload the file to the repository itself.
Presentation layer
The presentation layer gives access to users in real time across the bibliographical data. The PostgresSQl databases store all the information and displays on the screen. The storage layer directs the presentation layer as to where to go to display the full text, banner and style sheets and it contains the community and collection hierarchy. The presentation layer is in a Manakin XML interface which can be customised to a high level.
Safe Communication Layer (SCL):
The SCL ensures the safety of data exchange within the communicative system (see Zhao and JiangFootnote 22). This layer is designed to an industry standard to safely communicate and exchange information between the server and client architecture.
Interoperability is the key!
The interoperability of digital libraries allows users to access heterogeneous content held in repositories using a federatied search service; it transfers passive digital objects into an actual service. The goal of any digital library must be interoperability! The IR at the St. Stephen's College, Delhi is accessible through the university Local Area Network and can be found through IP address – http://www.10.9.1.63:8080/jspui – from any college of the Delhi University.
Policy formulation
During the process of building the digital library collection various policies were formulated. The “Copyright holder undertaking” was the first step. A form was prepared to take permission from the copyright holder to ensure fair use of the material and for uploading of the object to the digital library. However, where some contents from the archive section of the library were concerned, these items were digitised and uploaded with the permission of the Principal of the College.
The “DSpace License Agreement” document was re-written. Users are permitted to upload their content only after agreeing to the license. However, the acceptance and rejection rights remain with the staff of the library where the content of the DSpace repository is concerned.
Particular copyright issues
One of the major hurdles in building an institutional repository relates to particular copyright issues. Many of the students and academics are concerned that publishers hold the copyright and, in some cases, it is not clear whether there is any copyright holder at all. In these cases, there is a fear of uploading such content into the IR in case there is a breach of the law in copyright terms. However, many publishers openly allow self-archiving of journal articles but there remains less awareness about these issues and this is a major hindrance to building an effective digital library.
Multilingual features
Dealing with metadata in different languages is one of the time consuming tasks when building an IR and in a multi-lingual country such as India this task becomes truly massive when handling documents. At St Stephen's College, some special DSpace software was employed to handle this multilingual problem. Metadata was entered as per the language of the subject and the DSpace software handled the rest of the task. Therefore, documents can be searched and browsed in Hindi, Urdu, and so on. A snap shot of some titles in Hindi are depicted below:
Browsing the Digital Library in Hindi.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Institutional Repository is a mechanism for collection, storage and preservation of all relevant material for students and teachers alike. It enables a significant array of resources for educational and research purposes to be easily accessible via a single platform. At St Sephen's College it has enabled the networking and sharing of resources between different departments of the college and facilitates encouraging interdisciplinary, cross campus learning and research.
STUDENTS' OPINION ON IR: A SURVEY
Following the successful establishment of the IR at St Stephen's College, a survey of undergraduate students was conducted to find out the usage of the electronic information sources with the following objectives:
Objectives of the study
(a) to study the awareness, search methods and the use of e-resources among the students;
(b) to study the frequency and purpose of using the e-resources by the students;
(c) to identify the search method used in searching the electronic resources in the IR;
(d) to identify the best methods of training users where the IR was concerned in order to influence the development of a training programme in the college;
(e) to rate the quality of library and information services and usage of e-resources in the IR.
Methodology and analysis of data
In order to understand the usage of electronic information sources a survey was conducted in 2011. A questionnaire was prepared to collect the data pertaining to the objectives above. A total of 140 questionnaires were distributed and 78.57% questionnaires were completed.
Awareness of the IR
The table below summarises the general awareness of electronic resources and the table shows that 86.36% of the respondents are aware of the electronic resources.
Awareness of IR
Note: n = 110
Frequency of use of IR
Users were asked to assess the frequency of their usage of the electronic resources in the IR with four options. 55.04% of the respondents stated that they frequently used the electronic resources, 18.34% replied that they occasionally used them and 13.76% indicated that they sometimes use the e-resources, However, 12.84% respondents suggested that they rarely uses the these resources. Importantly, there were no groups who did not use the IR!
Frequency of using IR by undergraduate students
Note: n = 109
Purpose in using the IR
The student respondents were then asked about the purpose in using the IR and a number of reasons were listed and more than one option could be chosen. The results can be seen in the table 3 below.
Purpose in using the IR by students
Note: n = 106
Search and retrieval techniques in the IR
The data depicted in table 4 summarises the preferences of respondents in relation to their search and retrieval methods.
Search and retrieval methods used in the IR
NB. Respondents were given multiple options to tick.
Method of learning about the IR
In order to understand the method of using e-resources users were given five options and the table details the responses. One statistic that is a worry for the library is that only 25% claimed to have received assistance from library staff. This may suggest that where the IR is concerned, there is insufficient training being provided by the library.
Method of learning about the IR by students
Note: n = 107
Rating the quality of electronic resources available through the IR
The survey listed ten types of e-resources available through the IR and respondents were asked to rate their quality. Table 6 shows the results.
Rating the quality of electronic resources in the IR by students
NB. Respondents were given tick multiple options in the questionnaire
Training to use the Institutional Repository
The data collected suggested that the majority (i.e. 63.82%) of the respondents need training to use IR.
Training to use the IR by students
n = 102
Mode of training for using the IR
Mode of training for using IR
n = 70
Findings
The study confirmed that the majority of students of St. Stephen's College are fully aware of the IR and its contents and resources and these students frequently use them. The study further indicates that most undergraduate students use the resources to keep themselves up-to-date with the latest developments in their field. However, it was clear that more students needed specific training by the library team in order to maximize their use of the e-resources.
CONCLUSION
The design and development of the Institutional Repository at St Stephen's College, as elsewhere, has been a significant step in supporting the research and teaching needs of the institution. The library has played a significant role in the development of this resource and by increasing the level of training for users in the future it will remain a key initiative in this area of provision. IRs should not be static resources; they must grow and develop in order to fulfill the objectives of the organisation that they support. E-referencing, data harvesting, open source software, all empower the library professional to accomplish much of this work alongside those working in the information technology field.
