Natarajan, M. (2008). Annals of Library and Information Studies, 55(1), p.81.

Natarajan, M. (2008). Annals of Library and Information Studies, 55(1), p.81.

This book describes some of the digital initiatives in India and outside with particular reference to South Asia. It discusses and identifies areas like the type of contents included in e-form, the agency / organization which is involved, the supporting organisation, software used, their web addresses and a brief description of the activities. The book is mainly focused as a reference source for identifying the sources available on open access. It has chapters on digital library initiatives, open courseware initiatives, open access journals, Metadata harvesting services, National level open access repositories, and Institutional Repositories.

The first chapter on digital library initiatives in different types of institutions is highlighted with the multilingual content aspects. About the organization and the detailed history is also included. The second chapter on Open Courseware initiatives, describes the efforts made by the Consortium for Educational Communication for learning with the allied / related projects at the end of each initiatives with other initiatives like UNESCO-SALIS and National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning.

The third chapter discusses the open access e-journals from INSA, Indian journals.org and even from private publishers including the availability of issues. The fourth chapter on Metadata harvesting services provides the highlights of CASSSIR from NCSI, for the development of OAI-based Institutional research repository services in India. The other initiatives are also highlighted. The National level open access repositories discusses on special subject oriented repositories like for catalysis database, Librarians' Digital Library, OpenMed@NIC, etc. Some of the Institutional Repositories are discussed under institutional Repositories before concluding the digital initiatives taken in the South Asia.

It has concluded that there is a need for policy frameworks at institutional level with infrastructure, trained manpower and the required financial resources. The open access should be available from any region and at any time is a trivial issue and bridges the social divide. It gives the visibility of e-resources available in south Asia, which will act as reference source for open access initiatives for digital contents. This is available at FREE of cost.