Indian university library develops app for researchers

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4 months ago

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Annamalai University’s library is now just a click away for students

S. Prasad

CUDDALORE, OCTOBER 20, 2020 13:02 IST

Annamalai University Vice-Chancellor Prof V. Murugesan launching the mobile and web app MYLOFT (My Library at My Fingertip) at the University premises recently | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

The university has extended remote access of its library through an online Android platform, enabling students, research scholars and faculty members to download e-books and journals from anywhere

Annamalai University has launched an Android-based application to enable students, faculty members and research scholars to look up titles of interest from over 80 publishers, e-books and journals.

The University has extended its remote access E-Resource service, which is disseminated through an online Android platform, MYLOFT (My Library at My Fingertip). Users can now login on the app and search for titles using keywords with the help of a separate user ID and password.

The service through MYLOFT app was launched by University Vice-Chancellor Prof V. Murugesan.

According to Dr. M. Sadik Batcha, Professor and Librarian, Dr. C.P. Ramasamy Aiyar Library, the university spends nearly ₹50 lakh every year to buy e-books, journals and other publications.

However, with students attending online classes due to the COVID-19 necessitated lockdown, they were unable to visit the library to access e-books, library subscribed resources, digital content and journals, he said.

“We developed the application and enabled a remote access platform through which students, research scholars and faculty members can download the e-books and research articles available in the library at the click of a mouse,” he said.

This is a license based system and access is allowed only for students, research scholars and faculty members. A separate user ID will be created for every registered user and the password will be sent on their mail ID. Licenses have been issued for over 3,000 students and research scholars, Mr. Batcha said.

Earlier, students had access to these publications only from the university library and the LAN servers in the campus. Now they can access and download it from anywhere across various platforms.

Though the mobile and web app was ready, the University had to get the approval of 88 publishers for downloading research articles. The library’s books cover a wide range of disciplines including humanities, engineering, medicine and social sciences.

The remote access service is seeing an exponential increase in downloads since its launch last week. The daily logins have touched 1,000 while over 500 have used it for reference.

Source: https://bit.ly/3jNr56o