7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

AGRILIBNET: A Web Portal
Rathinasabapathy G. 1 and Amudhavalli A. 2
Abstract
Serial crisis is a challenge for most of the Indian agricultural university libraries. The
agricultural university libraries are subscribing to a number of national and
international journals to cater to the information needs of its target group of users. In
this context, it is important to note that International journals do not widely cover
issues that address research problems related to Indian condition. Regional agricultural
and environmental issues and their research solutions have sparse coverage in the
international journals. Hence, though efforts are initiated to form consortia amongst the
agricultural libraries facilitating access to online journals, it is imperative to ensure also
access to the Indian journals along with international journals including back issues to
all academicians and researchers in the fields of agricultural sciences. The given
resources’ crisis warrants resource sharing. The advancement in IT is an enabler to
accomplish this demand. To this end, an attempt has been made to design and develop
a web portal – AGRILIBNET - for sharing the holding details of agricultural science
libraries. This envisages to bridge the information gap and linkage amongst the
agricultural science libraries in India.
Keywords: Library Resource Sharing, Library Networking, Web Portal, Agricultural
Library
1. Introduction
Agriculture plays a vital role in the economic development of our country and it provides
employment to 65% of the population. Further, it provides raw materials for various
industries. In this context, it is important to note that the education, research and extension
activities in the field of agricultural sciences need to be further strengthened to meet the
food requirements of the growing population. India has built in a strong base of agricultural
education. Earlier, agriculture was taught as one of the subjects in the conventional
universities. Organized instruction in agriculture at university level was introduced in the
beginning of 20 th century when five agricultural colleges were established in 1907. At the
time of Independence, India had only 17 Agricultural Colleges, 3 Veterinary Colleges and
one Agricultural Engineering College. The Government of India was constituted several
Commissions and Committees as a measure to plan the future requirements of Agriculture
in this country and there was a realization on the part of policy makers that agricultural
education ought to be recognized as a national issue (Bhatia, 2001).
The Radhakrishnan Commission Report on University Education (1948-49) recommended
the establishment of ‘Rural Universities’ in India and this recommendation also been
endorsed by the first Indo-American Team on Agricultural Research and Extension (1955.
This led to the establishment of Agricultural Universities in the country
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1 Part-time Research Scholar and Assistant Librarian, Madras Veterinary College, Tamilnadu Veterinary and
Animal Sciences University, Chennai 600 007. grspathy@yahoo.com
2 Professor, Dept. Information Science, University of Madras, Chennai 600005 mudha75@yahoo.com
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