Friday, May 7, 2010

Library Profile


Introduction
Welcome to the Home of the Goa University Library. The home of more than 1 lakh books, and 200 journals of both, technical and general interest. The library also houses special interest collections and rare and antique manuscripts. The Library is currently in the process of revamping and revitalising its collection so as to make it useful to the community of researchers that it was set up to serve.
The Goa University Library and Information Centre was set up in 30th. of June 1985 around the nucleus of the Library of the Centre for Post Graduate Research and Instruction, University of Bombay. The initial collection numbered 37,678 books and several bound volumes of periodicals. Today, our holdings have crossed one lakh books covering a wide range of disciplines under Humanities, Social Science and Pure and Applied Sciences especially Microbiology, Marine Science, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Geology, Management and other disciplines including a special collection on Latin America and The Caribbean. The Library also has a large collection of titles in Konkani, the state language of Goa and a foreign language section which includes titles in Portuguese, French and Spanish. Our Library acquires around 2500 books and over 400 periodicals every year. It also receives more than 150 periodicals gifted by various organisations and institutions. Goa University Library is a designated repository Library of United Nations publications since 1996.
In addition to these, our Library has a collection of rare books on Indo-Portuguese History and Culture donated by the late Dr. P. S. S. Pissurlekar (about 5000 books in various languages). Mr. Nuno Gonsalves of Portugal and numerous others have donated their collections to the University for the use of scholars of Goa and the neighbouring regions. The Goa University Library is the single largest centre of academic resources in the State of Goa and caters not only to the needs of the academic community of the state but also serves many scientific, historical and social science researchers from neighbouring States.
Our Automated Services....
With the successful completion of computerising its stocks and automating its services in a phased manner, our Library is on the threshold of embarking on its new role that of an information resource centre at the service of the academic community of this region, in addition to its traditional function of holding and disseminating of books.
The Library has presently 1,04,651, books whose particulars are already stored on magnetic media. Teachers, Students and Scholars in and around Goa now have access to this vast database from their departments over a campus wide network. In addition to this, we have also made available on this site, a regularly updated searchable database of the abstracts of papers published in over seven hundred journals in Science and Technology under the COPSAT (Contents Of Periodicals in Science And Technology) program of the INFLIBNET --- a project under the UGC. We also have an electronic browsable repository of the full text papers published in over one hundred journals in the area of Social Science and Humanities. With electronic versions of general reference material like the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, the World Book Encyclopedia, the Oxford English Dictionary, electronic, archives of the National Geeographic magazine, the Manorama Year Book, complementing our formal holdings, we have now become a major resource centre for scholars in this region. Future Plans......
The Goa University Library plans to set up an automated database of periodicals comprising of more than 12 lakh articles spread over 50,000 bound volumes. We also propose to provide Hypertext links to the first page of every article and publish and distribute this database on a compact disc with a web-browser based search engine. It is expected that this database would be an extremely valuable resource for other Universities and Research Institutions in India.
Goa University Library has an unique collection of Historical documents gifted by Prof. Pissurlekar and Mr. Nuno Gonsalves, some of which date back to 16th and 17th centuries. A bibliography of these resources is currently available in print form. We propose to set up a cross-referenced version of this collection with hypertext links between the indices of each document thus enabling researchers to request for photocopying specific pages of these rare documents. Since this collection is of great academic interest to historians from countries such as Portugal, the Library plans to distribute this cross linked and indexed database overseas.












Latest Arrivals



Stock Rooms
The stacks mainly forms the area where the bulk of reading material is kept for the users. Some of the classification based on the type of source is as below:
Reference Collection,
Text Book Section
U.N. Collection
Special Collection
Location : Ground floor - entrance from three sides 1. From 1st floor - Right Hand Side 2. From 1st floor - Left Hand Side 3. From current periodical section - Right Hand Side & Left Hand Side All books except reference volumes are housed in the both side of the stack room, arranged in numerical order from 000 to 999. Open access system is practiced in the library Users are allowed to go to racks directly for books and borrow them Adjacent there is reading hall on both the sides for readers. Users are not allowed to merge the books in the shelves. In case of difficulty contact stack room in-charge. Right Hand Side - General, Computer Science, Philosophy, Sociology, Economics, Education & Literature Left Hand Side - Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Microbiology, Marine Science, Botany, Zoology, English, History, Hindi, Marathi & Konkani.
Books in Portuguese Language are housed in the corridor on the way at the entrance of the stack room & French titles in corridor of entrance through current periodical section. (except for photocopying in the library only)
For reading hall facility is available in this section please contact in-charge person:Stack room in-charge: Mr. Vikrant Malwankar contact the In-charge person in the current periodical section if you have difficulty in locating any periodical

Reference Service


Reference Collections
Location : Adjacent left hand side hall of current periodical section. All reference sources are housed in this section . It includes encyclopedia, dictionaries, directories, bibliographies, handbooks etc. They are identified by 'R' mark on the book and are not allowed for borrowing or take it elsewhere except for photocopying in the library only.
Guidelines: Background information, overviews of a topic and quick facts are found in reference source. Encyclopaedia - General information, subject information (basic) Dictionaries - Difference in meaning, quotation Directories - Addresses of institutions and current information Almanacs - Statistics, facts figure Biographies - Biographical information, important personalities Bibliographies - Reference to previous published information on the topic Atlas & Maps - For geographical information, location

Classification
Books are classified according to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Scheme wherein all disciplines are divided among ten main classes. Notations used is numerical numbers and books are arranged in numerical order in the shelves. A brief outline of this scheme is given below.000 - 999 - General works, including Computers & Library Science100 - 199 - Philosophy and Psychology200 - 299 - Religion and Theology300 - 399 - Social Sciences, including Political Science, Education, Economics and Sociology400 - 499 - Linguistics, including Grammar & Dictionaries500 - 599 - Pure Science and Mathematics, including Biology, Chemistry and Physics600 - 699 - Applied Sciences and Technology700 - 799 - Fine Arts, including Music, Painting, Architecture and Theater800 - 899 - Literature, including Essays, Poetry, Drama, Literary Criticism and Fiction900 - 999 - General Geography & History

Cataloguing
Library Catalogue
Each and every documents is entered in the library record. For getting information about the holdings of the library catalogue is the key to the users. It helps to find out answers for queries such as:
Whether a particular book by the given author is available in the library?
What all books are available on a given subject?
Which books by particular authors are available in the library?
Following catalogues are available in the library Main Catalogue (author catalogue)
A card catalogue wherein cards are filed under the author, editor, translator, series etc. alphabetically arranged as are the words in a dictionary. Detailed biographical information pertaining to documents which is useful for its location are entered on this card Classified Catalogue
In this catalogue the cards are arranged in numerical order parallel to book shelved in the stack room i.e from 000 - 999. This catalogue is useful to search library holding on a given subject/topic etc. The same information is available on our database, Goa University LibraryThe catalogue of books holding is available online and searchable by different access points like keywords in title, by author, by call number, accession number or even by a keyword.

Library Services

Goa University Library provide some special services. i.e.
Book Acquisition and Processing Unit
Location:
First Floor- 1st right hand room immediately after entrance. This unit actively participate in the collection development process of the Library so as to achieve the motto of boosting higher education and research activities on the campus. This unit consists of following sub-sections.
Book acquisition
Accessioning & Cataloguing
Classification
Data Entry
Book Acquisition Policies & Procedures :
Normally only one copy of the recommended title is purchased with exception of text books and books with interdisciplinary topics.
Three copies of books written in Konkani language are purchased by the library to encourage konkani writers and languages as it is an official languages of the state.
Requisition for books must be submitted on official book request form.
Requisition forms are available in the acquisition section of the library.