Project Description

Overview of KrishiKosh

URL: http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in

Under National Agricultural Innovation Project (NAIP) an initiative was taken through sub project “Strengthening of Digital Library and Information Management under NARES (e-GRANTH)” at ICAR-IARI, New Delhi as a lead centre to provide digital access to different library resources for National Agricultural Research & Education System in India which comprises of Agricultural Research Institutions and Agricultural Universities. Under this initiative digital repository ‘Krishikosh’ and digital library platform ‘IDEAL’ has been developed for capturing, digitizing & online sharing of the library resources in order to cater to the increasing need of the scientific/research/teaching community.

Krishikosh – is a digital repository of accumulated knowledge in agriculture and allied sciences, having collection of old and valuable books, old journals, thesis, research articles, popular articles, monographs, catalogues, conference proceedings, success stories, case studies, annual reports, newsletters, pamphlets, brochures, bulletins and other grey literatures spread all over the country in different ICAR Research Institutions and State Agricultural Universities (SAUs). Under the ICAR’s Open Access policy, Krishikosh provides ready software platform to implement all aspects of the open access policy, similar to ‘Cloud Service’ for individual institution’s self-managed repository with central integration. These two products of E-Grant (i) Krishikosh and (ii) IDEAL are used by all SAUs/DUs/CUs & ICAR Institutes.

Under the ICAR’s Open Access policy it is mandatory, to upload all Institutional publication viz., research articles, popular articles, monographs, catalogues, conference proceedings, success stories, case studies, annual reports, newsletters, pamphlets, brochures, bulletins, summary of the completed projects, speeches, and other grey literatures available with the various SAUs in the Krishikosh. Besides this, M.Sc. and Ph.D. thesis/dissertations (full contents) and summary of completed research projects to be submitted in the Krishikosh repository after completion of the work. The metadata (e.g., title, abstract, authors, publisher, etc.) be freely accessible from the time of deposition of the content and their free unrestricted use through Open Access can be made after an embargo period not more than 12 months.

For easy access to this repository, new initiatives have been taken up for efficient development and dissemination of Krishikosh to the end users of NARES. These initiatives includes the efforts for addition of new library, Development of tutorial video, Development of database for NARES library, uses of Social Media, Upgrade the Dspace version from 4.x to 6.x, Development of mobile application for Krishikosh, etc.

103 SAU’s / ICAR institutes are registered in Krishikosh. Currently this repository has more than 1,60,000 articles items which include more than 1,00,000 theses.

Tutorial videos were developed and available at E-Granth website for registering in Krishikosh and uploading of document with embargo settings. These videos can be utilized by the user to have better understanding for these processes. The impact of social media is very high for dissemination of information therefore, keeping these things in mind Krishikosh page has been created on Facebook for easy access of this digital repository.

Upgrade the Dspace version from 4.x to 6.x, which have added features such as enhanced security features, perform batch imports, enhanced image and PDF Thumbnails and File downloads integrated with Google analytics, drag and drop file upload (using HTML5) in submission process.

Mobile application for Krishikosh, Krishikosh website is mobile responsive site which means that the design of the system responds or adapts depending upon the layout of the device (different mobile phones, tablets etc.). Krishikosh is a huge repository of thesis, reports, articles etc. Keeping track of all the information is very hectic and difficult for the user, which results in low usage of the Krishikosh site. Thus, an application with push notification are being developed in order to engage the user with the Krishikosh, by sending messages regarding the new upload. It is implemented using GCM. For the testing purpose a sample database of the Krishikosh is taken and is implemented in PostgreSQL, it is the most advanced open source database. PHP script is used to connect the java programming in android studio, the database and the GCM server.

Salient Features of Krishikosh

  • Krishikosh is digital repository platform capable of Decentralized Management of Content but Centralized Hosting and maintenance for convenience of multiple users.
  • Each institution has its own repository with full control without botheration of maintaining hardware/software which is centrally managed at ICAR-IARI, New Delhi.
  • Krishikosh Institutional repository of NARES provides open access to institutional knowledge. Krishikosh has been developed by customizing open source software Dspace.
  • At present Krishikosh has more than 35 million digitized pages in 1,60,000 digital items (volumes) like old books, old Journals, reports, proceedings, reprint, research highlights, training manuals, historical records.
  • Includes more than 1,00,000 Ph.D and M.Sc. theses submitted by various ICAR Institutes / SAUs and with full Text searchable facilities.
  • Krishikosh provides ready software platform, similar to ‘Cloud Service’ for individual institution’s self-managed repository with central integration of all individual repositories.
  • It is full text searchable open access repository. Semantic search enabled through the integration of Agrotags.
  • Comprehensive search and browse options are available.
  • Easy to register for additional facilities.
  • User feedback provision for continuous improvement.
  • Subscribed users can get collection updates.
  • Institutional users can administer their own repository and can upload, remove, set embargo on their institutional content.