1.

a.

Sub-Project Title

:

e-Capabilities Enhancement of the SBAU Library for Learning, Teaching and Research Development

2.

a.

Total Cost of the sub-project (in Taka)

:

i. In Taka

:

Tk. 1,00,00,000.00

ii. In US$

:

US$ 1,28,617.363

(where US$ 1=Tk 77.75 )

3.

Implementation Period

:

Two years

i. Commencement

:

July 2014

ii. Completion

:

June 2016               

4.

General Objectives of the Sub-project

e-Capabilities Enhancement of the Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University Library (SBAU Library) aims to enhance the following capacities-  

1. Library Automation through Integrated Library Management Systems (ILMS) & Creating Digital Institutional Repository (DIR, e-Contents management through Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) tools and a customized federated search engine to search data or contents from the ILMS, DIR and Harvester from a single search box.  

2. Creation dynamic web page and an intranet to disseminate the library facilities among its user as an outreach library services with OPAC, DIR, Harvested Metadata, Federated search and general library information.

3. Enhancing the electronic security and e-surveillance capacities through RFID and CCTV in the library of SBAU.

4. Enhancing existing service quality of SBAU Library.

5. Ensuring the greater accessibility on e-contents through OPAC, DIR and Metadata Harvesting tools.

6. Creating favourable environment to support learning, teaching and research activities.

5.

Specific Objectives of the Sub-project

1.  Developing Library Management Software: Developing or customizing an Integrated Library Management System (ILMS) based on Machine Readable Cataloguing (MARC) standard. This automation (ILMS) will provide the followings –

·         OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) to its users and remote interested patrons (interested users) through LAN and WAN.

·         Borrowers services will be managed by IT including Charging and Discharging of the library materials including automated fine calculation. 

·         Users will be able to know their own borrowing status and they will also be able to reserve or hold their interested books by their user name and password. 

2.  Digitization of Resources: A Digital Institutional Repository (DIR) will be introduced to preserve the theses, dissertations (Masters and PhD level) of SBAU and scholarly articles published in the Journals of SBAU. The hard copies of these materials will be scanned with OCR (Optical Character Recognition) conversion systems. This proposed digital repository will provide its contents to-

• Serve the students, teachers, scholars and interested patrons nationally and globally as an Open Archives Initiative (OAI).

3.  Harvesting Metadata for users: An Open Archive Harvester software will be installed and customized to accumulate and index freely available metadata [OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)] providing a searchable, web-based interface. 

• Creating own metadata harvester, which can be focused on agricultural and allied disciplines and sciences. A user will get a wide and world wide collection of e-resources from this single platform.   

4. Federated Searching: Federated search came about to meet the need of searching multiple disparate content sources with one query. This allows a user to search multiple databases at once in real time, arrange the results from the various databases into a useful form and then present the results to the user.

• The federated search engine will be enabled to search OPAC of LMS, DIR and Harvester from a single platform. So, the users will get their search result from 3 individual databases.   

5. Web and intranet: Having plan to create dynamic web page and intranet to reach the patrons with the e-facilities of libraries.

• The patrons will get OPAC of ILMS, DIR, Harvested Metadata collection, Federated Searching Facilities and General Information update through web and intranet.

6. Developing e-security for library materials and service enhancement by RFID: To enhance the security for library materials from theft, the RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) technology will be established. This service will also provide automated charging and discharging system, shelf management system, etc.

7. Building e-surveillance by CCTV: To setup CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) to enhance the security and surveillance capacities of the library.

6.

Sub-project Summary (maximum 250 words):

This subproject will facilitate the capability to run with the current trends of library in the following ways-

(a) Library Management System- Bibliographic information for OPAC and overall lending management, the bibliographic information would be stored in a network accessible database server.

(b) Digital Institutional Repository- Theses, dissertation, proceedings of conferences, seminar reports those are conducted in SBAU will be stored in the network accessible Institutional Repository Server.

c) Metadata Harvester- A metadata harvester software will be installed in a network accessible server to accumulate and index freely available OAI metadata, providing a searchable, web-based interface to disseminate local knowledge to national and international scholar through the Information Super Highway.

d) Federated Searching: Federated search is an information retrieval technology that allows the simultaneous search of multiple searchable resources. A user makes a single query request which is distributed to the search engines participating in the federation (OPAC of ILMS, DIR and Harvester).

e) Web and Intranet: The dynamic web and intranet will provide all the e-facilities to its patrons in library and beyond the library.

Currently, the SBAU Library has no reading and research room having browsing facilities for the users. Such facilities will be facilitated by adding with a few numbers of new machines in the network. Proposed RFID & CCTV will enhance the security, surveillance and services. In this way, a favourable world class reading and research environment will be ensured.

The vision of our government is to establish the “Digital Bangladesh”, SBAU library wants to be a partner of the national mission. So, it wants to build the capability of sharing knowledge in terms of e-resources in the area of agriculture with effective and efficient way.