With the broad focus of NISCAIR being on

Transcription

1 7 IT Facilities & Programmes With the broad focus of NISCAIR being on storing, publishing and disseminating scientific and technological information, a modern IT infrastructure assumes paramount importance. More so, when science communication today relies heavily on modern Infrastructure Development Today most of the staff of NISCAIR has Internet access, provided through a 4-Mbps (1:1) Optical Leased Line connection acquired from Reliance Communications (upgraded from 2 Mbps to 4 Mbps). Local Area Network (LAN) established in NISCAIR is functioning properly on 350 nodes at the Pusa Campus and on 450 nodes at the Satsang Vihar Marg Campus. The institute has more than 400 computers of different configurations, about 160 printers and scanners. All the scientific, technical, and administrative staff in NISCAIR are using computer systems for data transfer and inhouse communication through the intranet. Also, manuscripts and data are being exchanged through with authors and referees. Data transfer for composing is also being done through the network. Video Conferencing facility is established at both the locations. ICT. The Information Technology Division of NISCAIR strives to provide the requisite IT backup for most functions and activities of NISCAIR. The main thrust during the last two years was on strengthening the activities in the following areas: (a) Online Access of NISCAIR s Primary Journals, NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository (NOPR), and popular science magazines; (b) IT infrastructure development; (c) Maintenance and updation of NISCAIR Website; (d) Facility Management Software and (e) IT Human Resource Development. Servers are running on Windows 2003 servers and open source Linux platform. NISCAIR has mail software of its own open source Squirrel mail. users of both the locations (Pusa campus as well as S. V. Marg campus) can access their mails anywhere through the URL 67

2 To prevent the NISCAIR Network from spam, virus, spyware, intrusion detection & prevention system, phishing, etc., the IT Division is running Open Source Integrated Network Gateway Security Solution at both the locations. Unified Threat Management Solution is capable of preventing these attacks from the outside world as well as internal network. By using these open source platforms for , NISCAIR has saved considerable investment in software licensing. By implementing Open Source Network Gateway Security Solution, NISCAIR has not only protected its network from the attack of malicious codes but also benefited financially. To further strengthen the IT infrastructure of NISCAIR, 32 new HP Desktops, 21 Printers and 3 Scanners were procured during the year. Two licenses of Visual Studio 2008 have been procured with MS SQL Server 2005 for in-house software development project. The E-Trust Antivirus and Antispyware Solution running was replaced with Trend Micro Worry Free Standard Edition 6.0 with 400 client licenses, a much improved Antivirus solution. NISCAIR Website NISCAIR website ( ) is being updated regularly. The IT Division has re-designed the NISCAIR website. Some of the major features added in the new website are: easy-to-navigate popup menus for main links on home page and other pages, book animation that highlights important activities and services, addition of search facility, improved hit counters, removal of cross browser errors, so that new website displays properly in all the prominent browsers like IE 6.0/above, Firefox, Google Chrome, Netscape, Apple Safari, etc. Upgradation of Hardware Infrastructure To further strengthen the IT infrastructure of NISCAIR, KVM Switch for Rack Mountable Servers and network printer HP5200n were procured. High-end servers of 7140 M processor, 800 MHz FSB, 16 GB RAM and 3 HDD of 146 GB with RAID 5 are used for Open Source Integrated Network Gateway Security Solution, Web Server, Open Source online access of NISCAIR research journals and Open Source backup solution for servers and desktops. 68

3 Online Access of NISCAIR s Primary Journals A solution called NISCAIR Online Periodicals Repository (NOPR) has been implemented based on the open source digital repository system software. This has enabled NISCAIR to host online its research journals. All the 17 research journals have been made available in Open Access mode for accessing full text [ Research communities including students not only in India but also all over the world have been benefited by open access to NISCAIR journals. This will also help in enhancing the accessibility, visibility and subscription base of NISCAIR journals at National and International level. Current issues of all the research journals are published in NOPR for open access well before the publication of print version. The repository has data spanning from 2007 till the current issues and for some journals from 2002 onwards. The repository had about 6810 articles till 31 March Customization has been done in the software for improvement of the NISCAIR repository. Some of the salient features are: 1. alerts at journal level. This facility was available in original software but did not meet NISCAIR s requirement in toto as it functions at issue level i.e. one has to register for each and every issue to get alert on articles. Now users register only once for any journal of their choice and the system sends alerts to the subscribed users on new issues added in the journal. 69

4 To increase visibility of NISCAIR journals, all the 17 journals in NOPR have been registered with the following authorities and thus the new entries in NOPR are getting indexed and reflected immediately in all the prominent search engines: 1.Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) 2.Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) 3.Google Analytics 4.Official website of open source - dspace.org 5.Web Crawlers (Google, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Ask, Live) 2. Addition of support for entry of superscripts and subscripts through HTML during data entry. 3. Addition of search facility while giving authorization for uploading of new issues. 4. Provision to display hit counter for home page, journal volumes, issues and articles. 5. Display of contents page of issues in sorted order of page numbers along with direct link to open full text document. 6. Addition of functionality to display 10 latest issues in NOPR dynamically on home page. 7. Modification in article submission form. 8. Development of WYSIWYG editor to retain original text formatting of the article document while entry of metadata fields like title, keywords, abstracts. 9. Display of list of volumes/years of journals in descending order so that latest volumes are displayed first. DG,CSIR browsing through NOPR The data of two NISCAIR journals, Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge (IJTK) and Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstracts (MAPA), which have been included in PCT Minimum list, are being sent regularly on CDs to European Patent Office and WIPO, Geneva. NUCSSI Web Enabled database The National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India (NUCSSI) database is available only on CD. It contains over 44,000 unique journal titles with 2.47 lakhs holdings data of more than 540 libraries. The library holdings data on CD has been updated up to July The task of updating the data of all the libraries is time consuming and cumbersome. However, this problem was solved by using a web-enabled application. The application has been developed in Windows with MS-SQL Database server using.net technology. This application is available on NISCAIR website at Some of its features are: 1. Browse on journal title 2. Search on journal title, library and city 3. Advanced search 4. Data entry for updating data for library and its holdings 5. Inter Library Loan (ILL) request: Routing of ILL requests of library/user by . 70

5 Development of Management Council Meeting software As per CSIR directive regarding uploading/sending MC Agenda/Proceedings on secured server for seeking comments from HODs of RDPD, TNBD, FA- CSIR, etc., NISCAIR has developed a web-enabled database application. The application is developed in Windows platform with MS-SQL Database server using.net Technology. Development of Website for Climate Impact Studies in India project A website for Climate Impact Studies in India project has been developed and hosted on web site at The website was launched by Lok Sabha Speaker Mr Somnath Chatterjee during the celebration of International Polar Year 2009 in NISCAIR on 4 February Implementation of Open Source Unattended Backup and Recovery Solution NISCAIR implemented the Open Source Secure Unattended Backup and Recovery software for backup of data on Desktops in network environment. The solution does not involve any expenditure on software product, implementation and training. Establishment of Video Conferencing Facility This facility is one of the projects covered under ICT Project of CSIR. Video Conferencing Facility has started functioning with ISDN backup and 2 Mbps leased circuit. Installation of White Board and Document Camera has been done. Facility Management Software In-house applications developed at NISCAIR include: 1. Document Management Information System (DMIS) developed by NIC and customized by NISCAIR 2. Attendance Monitoring System (AMS) 3. Reception Management Software 4. Vehicle Allocation System 5. Online Guest House Booking Software 6. NISCAIR Online Receipt Management System (NORMS), developed for Finance and Accounts section is under implementation 7. IT Division developed and implemented software for receiving online applications for the recruitment of Group II and Group III. The software automatically generates unique ID and completed form for later reference 8. National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India (NUCSSI) - in-house development of web-enabled database application. It is being maintained and updated regularly 9. Coordination Committee Monitoring System (CCMS) 10. Dispatch Information System (DIS) 11. Vendor Information System (VIS) 12. TA/DA Reimbursement System Training Programme in IT NISCAIR provides six-month training to MCA students and to other students pursuing Computer Science/IT course leading to M.Sc., B.E., B.Tech., M.E., and M.Tech. Degrees to work on projects in the area of application of IT as partial fulfillment of their degree course requirements. During a batch of 8 students (1 January-30 June 2008) and during a batch of 13 students (1 January-30 June 2009) attended the training programme. 71

6 72