The advent of internet and the mushrooming of information services (scientific and otherwise) in various digital formats have necessitated the imperative requirement for academic/scientific libraries to upgrade themselves to harness and channelize the power and challenge of digitization. Need for digitization became vital in order to:
Equip library as a platform to enhance the visibility of research carried out in the institute by showcasing them through Institutional repositories and such other mechanisms.
Promote the use of both print and virtual information resources (electronic) by designing and developing innovative services (Web based and otherwise) in such a way that the physical and virtual spaces of the library effectively respond to the changing and different end user behavior.
Consider long term preservation of research papers and other relevant materials.
Develop appropriate mechanisms for dissemination that will make full and effective use of the information and communication technologies (ICT's).
Therefore in order to fulfill these needs, digitization activities followed by building digital repository was taken up on priority at Raman Research Institute Library in 2004.
The Raman Research Institute having 60 years of history was established on the ideologies of Sir C.V. Raman, a Nobel laureate in 1948. This has been a pioneering Research Institute in Physics. RRI is also well known for scholarly scientific publications since its inception. The Institute consists of 60 scientists, 20 technical experts and about 50 research students pursuing PhD programmes. On an average, 150 research articles are published in high impact factor journals by RRI scientists every year. This being the scenario, it would be the responsibility of the library to develop new forms of knowledge structure and organize research information of the institute for better global visibility (Vickery, 1999).
The RRI Library has been built on Raman's personal collection. Over the years, the library has been nurtured as a hybrid service provider practicing the traditional values of personalized information service while adopting benefits of the information and communication technology (ICT) tools. The library currently, has an extensive collection of books and journals, both print and electronic versions in the specialized areas of research such as astronomy and astrophysics, light and matter physics, soft condensed matter and theoretical physics. The collection also comprises of maps, charts, CD/DVD's and newspaper clippings of historical value.
Availing of the growing e-science infrastructure (Rao, 2001) and also adhering to the needs of digitization, RRI library has developed a digital repository using DSpace, open source software for management of digital assets. The data in RRI Digital repository was further used to research and build “Imprints Collection” – a bio-bibliographic database in 2011.
We discuss these two facets of digitization that have been developed at the library of Raman Research Institute in Bangalore, India and their role in data dissemination.