National Workshop on DSpace at SVS College: well-planned and well-executed

A two-day UGC Sponsored National Workshop on Developing Digital Library using DSpace was held on 6-7 August 2015 at Sri Venkataramana Swamy (SVS) College, Bantwal, Dakshina Kannada District, Karnataka. It was convened by Dr. Sujatha H R, Librarian of the College.

The event commenced with the inaugural session which included Keynote address by Dr. Suresh Jange, Deputy Librarian, Gulbarga University, Kalaburagi and release of the book titled “Exploiting Electronic Information Sources in Fisheries Sciences: Users’ Perception” authored by Dr. Sujatha.  Dr. Jange, in his address, reiterated the importance of institutional repositories in enhancing the visibility of institutional scientific and research productivity.

The workshop sessions were handled by Dr. Mallikarjun Angadi, Deputy Librarian, Sir Dorabji Tata Memorial Library, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai and Dr. Suresh Jange, who were assisted by Mr. Shekappa Bandi, Semi Professional Assistant, TISS and Mr. Nikhil Hosamani, Gulbarga University, respectively.

Dr. Angadi gave a quick overview of DSpace, Liblive DVD and proceeded with installation.  Each participant was given a Liblive DVD as part of workshop kit.  Participants were given hands-on-experience on the installation of Ubuntu (Lubuntu) with dual-boot on Windows.  This was followed by session on basic configuration, creation of Communities and Collections and submission of documents.

The forenoon sessions on Day 2 were on workflow management.  The resource persons focused on creation of e-people, registration in DSpace and assigning roles in the submission workflow.  In the afternoon sessions, advanced skills such as dspace administration and customization were demonstrated and practiced.  The last session was on Metadata harvesting.

During the course of the workshop, a DSpace institutional repository for SVS College was developed and the same was unveiled by Dr. Panduranga Nayak, Principal during the valediction.

I was fortunate to be one of the participants.  The sessions were well-planned. Resource persons dealt with the participants with great patience.  I was pleasantly surprised to see that every participant was given personal attention.  It was, indeed, a ‘workshop’ in both letter and spirit.  Hospitality was exceptional.

A special note of thanks to the Management of SVS College.  Kudos to Dr. Sujatha for this venture and her strategic management throughout the workshop. The event was extensively covered in all the local newspapers and local editions of leading dailies.

It was evident from the participants’ feedback that the workshop was well-received.  It was not only a skill development programme, but also a confidence-building exercise.  It was proven again that small, well-planned initiatives yield better result.