Resource Sharing among State Agricultural University and ICAR Institute Libraries in India through Web Portal

Abstract

Web portal is becoming increasingly important and more sophisticated as it provides an entry point to the Internet, and offers value-added services such as directories, searching, news, and links to related web sites. Since the web portal is viewed as a virtual reference library directing web-surfers to desired destinations, the paper provides a conceptual plan of designing a web portal for sharing library and information resources among State Agricultural Universities (SAU) in India as there is no such facility available at present. Though most of the Agricultural Universities in India have a presence on the web and been provided with Internet connectivity, the LIS resources donâ t have a presence on the web sites of the Agricultural Universities. Since agricultural science educators, researchers and policy makers need a lot of current information with regard to the education, research and extension aspects of agricultural sciences, it is proposed to design a web portal so as to enable them to have access to the holding details of current periodicals and back volumes of the State Agricultural University libraries and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) libraries in India. This paper attempts to present a preliminary proposal to develop a web portal for sharing resources among SAU and ICAR institute libraries.