ICRISAT Into the New Millennium
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Information Exchange Strategy | While the traditional function of a
library is to conserve published information, an emerging role is the additional
preservation of the institution’s valuable data and history. The science of knowledge management involves using information technology to capture current data and information streams, which in the past were lost because the labor involved in preserving them was too great. |
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The role of the library as the
Institute's living historian will increase greatly in importance in the coming years. The
Patancheru Library alone expends approximately US$ 130 000 annually just to maintain its
core journal subscriptions and buy essential books. This costly capital investment needs
to be made globally accessible -- but how? |
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An example currently underway is the effort to conserve, catalogue and share our collection of thousands of photographic images in digital form. Making available online ICRISAT’s large SATCRIS database – a full bibliographic database of some 68 000 records by ICRISAT scientists – is another step towards a full-fledged electronic library. |
Milestones: 1998-99 |
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