BytesForAll

OPEN ACCESS WORKSHOP

MSSRF (www.mssrf.org), the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, held an event in early May. Sunil Abraham (sunil@mahiti.org) reports that the focus of this workshop was GNU EPrints, a software developed at the Electronics and Computer Science Department of the University of Southampton. (See software.epr

ints.org). Today there are 132 known archives running EPrints software worldwide; the total number of records in these archives is 45,894.

Dr Leslie Carr demonstrated the installation of EPrints software on Red Hat 7.3. EPrints requires Apache Web Server, MySQL Relational Database Server and the Perl Programming Language. After that Prof

Leslie Chan demonstrated OAIster (www.oaister.org), which is a meta-crawler for Open Archives. Today it has 3,163,129 records from 282 institutions. Says Abraham, “This is really a must-see for all researchers, documentalists, archivists and information scientists.” OAIster is based on an Open Archives Initiative—Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. (See more at www.openarchives.org)

In short, OAI provides standards, technologies and tools to Open Archive projects that wish to publish data in a uniform manner and leverage the collective strength of the network. This is similar to the Dublin Core (dublincore.org) initiative.

Other presentations included one by Dr D K Sahu on Open File Formats and design of Metadata. He made a detailed comparison of PDF, HTML, XML and SGML.

LOW OR NO NET ACCESS

Jude Griffin (jgriffin@msh.org) of the Electronic Products Group at the Management Sciences for Health, Boston (www.msh.org) has been visiting India to look at the state of innovation for those with low or no Internet access, and at those who are doing innovative work on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in India. Says he: “I work for MSH, an international health nonprofit organisation whose audience consists of health professionals in the developing world. This audience consists of people ranging from health workers in Bangladesh to ministry officials in Latin America.”

Their products and courses use a mix of delivery methodologies including Web, e-mail, CD-ROM, print and face-to-face. Says Griffin, “We are looking for possible collaboration partners for a variety of ICT initiatives from courses to communities of practice, which would utilise a range of ICT.”

OPEN PUBLISHING

The Journal of Orthopaedics is applying the principles of Free Software and Open Source to the publishing world.

Open Access has already become the buzzword in scholarly discussions and publishing circles. The community, which was denied barrier-free access to vital research, has started to dream of a world where the exchange of vital research is seamless and free.

Open Access Movements are gaining momentum and public acceptance worldwide. Open Access can change the situation with a multi-pronged approach. Releasing content in an open access licence, which inherently includes re-use permissions, will make it available in different forms and different avenues free of cost, significantly improving access.

For example, a recent editorial published in the Calicut Medical Journal (www.calicutmedicaljournal.org) was translated into a vernacular language and republished in a popular health magazine which made the article accessible to a community that had no access whatsoever to the primary literature.

This was brought to our attention by Dr P V Rama- chandran, professor of Radiodiagnosis at the medical college, Aleppey, (Web: www.pvramachandran.com) and Dr Vinod Scaria of Kozhikode in (Web: www.drvinod.com).

DIGI-LIBRARIES

Check out the mailing list for digital libraries, Digilib_India. To subscribe to this group, send an e-mail to: digilib_india-subscribe@yahoogroups.com It provides useful nuggets of information like the recent one about USEMARCON Plus v1.41. USEMARCON is a piece of software that lets users convert bibliographic records from one MAchine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC) format to another.

To download the software visit the British Library website at www.bl.uk/services/bibliographic/usemarcon.html

FOR THE NON-PROFIT WORLD

The Australia-based Malian Foundation is offering non-profit organisations free computer software and management tools which can help them achieve their potential. For example, the foundation offers Discover, a specialised tool that helps organisations train volunteers. (www.worldvolunteerweb.org)

COMMUNITY MULTIMEDIA

UNESCO has just released a handbook on community multimedia centres (CMCs) titled ‘How to get started and keep going: a guide to community multimedia centres.’ Written by reputed practitioners and researchers working on CMCs or ICT for development, it is available in hard copy, CD-ROM and via cyberspace. (portal.unesco.org)

PCs FOR Rs 5,000?

When Rajesh Jain (rajesh@netcore.co.in) of Netcore spoke about PCs costing Rs 5,000, some thought this was only in the realm of speculation. In reply Jain outlined his plans. “Here is what we are planning to do: build our own thin client for about Rs 3,000 (it will support VNC, a remote display protocol). Down the line it will also have a multimedia codec, so the client will have full media capabilities. The cost will include the keyboard and mouse. A refurbished monitor is available for Rs 2,000 or so in India. That’s how I get to the 5,000 figure. We expect the thin client to be ready in about two months. We will still need server resources…that cost can vary from Rs 500-Rs 2,500 per user, depending on the user.” Check out his software plans on www.emergic.com

CHARITYFOCUS.ORG

Pavi (pavi@aravind.org) writes, “Charityfocus.org was started by a bunch of college techies in Silicon Valley who wanted to do something more. They have a chapter in Bangalore that you’re more than welcome to join.”

COMING...FROM CALIFORNIA

Joyojeet Pal (joyojeet@sims.berkeley.edu) is part of a research group at the University of California at Berkeley. The group is in the process of developing new technologies that can be used to make infrastructure and end-user devices less expensive for developing countries. Says Pal, “We are planning a trip to India in June, when we would like to meet with potential partners to test our technology and explore tie-ups. Ideally, the partners should have the following (not restricted to, except item 4):

• Need for an infrastructure solution
• Need for faster connectivity
• Need for regionally-relevant solutions in existing infrastructure or something very close to deployment.

Contact Pal if interested. This is a research group mainly interested in unexplored research areas in cost reduction for infrastructure. (tier.cs.berkeley.edu)

ICT IN INDIAN LANGUAGES

Dr U B Pavanaja (pavanaja@softhome.net) recently asked if anyone has information about any course (diploma / degree / correspondence) being conducted by any Indian university about ICT (information and communication technologies) in Indian languages. Said he, “I need the structure of the course, syllabus, number of lectures, practicals, etc. Any pointer or website name may also be given.”

Dr Pavanaja is a member of the Board of Studies for Kannada University, which is currently looking at preparing the structure and syllabus for a course on ICT. The medium of instruction will be Kannada.

Dr Pavanaja is also editor of Vishwa Kannada, the first Internet magazine in Kannada (www.vishvakannada.com)

India Computes! is presented by Frederick Noronha, a freelance journalist based in Goa. He is the co-founder of BytesForAll, a voluntary unfunded venture focusing on how IT and the Internet can benefit the common man, particularly in South Asia. To join the Bytesforall mailing list send a blank e-mail to bytesforall_readers subscribe@yahoogroups.com Website: www.bytesforall.org