e-Acharya: A gateway to all learners

e-Acharya is an integrated e-content portal developed under National Mission for Education through ICT (NME-ICT). The portal provides facility to search and browse the learners all learning materials includes audio, video, textual materials, etc. through a single interface. The portal cover quality learning resources from top institutions in the country in eight subject categories viz Agriculture Science, Biological Science, Chemical Science, Physical Science, Medical and Health Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities.

You can start your search from the home page using free text search and exact search options. For example search using the keyword 'Nano Science' a total of 1118 records will be displayed, 100 on each page. Each record will contain the title, project name, course,  subject, contributor, institution, key word and the language in which the record is available. On the right side of the record there is option to refine your search. You can  narrow your search by content type, target users, by subjects, by institute and by project name. Each refine term shows how many item included in the term. Take the example of the 'Nano Science' refine by institute - IISc Bangalore, eighteen items contributed by IISc on the topic will get. To select the item click on the title and open it. You can browse by other access points from the record window.

Anyone can register to the portal for free by adding  name, email id and category in which belong. It will help to create a profile and manage the portal in the personalised way. You can select the subject, search on the subject, you can store e-text and videos; You can manage number of collections in your profile, number of visits on the websites, last login time, and login count. You can contribute open access content and any project with special collection. 

Link to portal:  http://eacharya.inflibnet.ac.in 

Shodh Ganga : A reservoir of Indian Theses

Shodhganga is a digital repository of theses and dissertations submitted to Indian universities. It is maintained by INFLIBNET Centre which is an autonomous Inter-University Center of the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India. More than 397 universities and  centrally funded institutions contributing their research out put to the Shodh Ganga and  467 institutions signed MOU with the project.There are 231171 full text theses and 6450 synopses are currently available at the portal. The full text of all the documents submitted to Shodh Ganga are available to read and to download in open access to the academic community worldwide.

According to Shodh Ganga website "Theses and dissertations are known to be the rich and unique source of information, often the only source of research work that does not find its way into various publication channels. Theses and dissertations remain an un-tapped and under-utilized asset, leading to unnecessary duplication and repetition that, in effect, is the anti-theses of research and wastage of huge resources, both human and financial." To solve this problem since 2016 May UGC made mandate submission of electronic version of theses and dissertations by the researchers in universities with an aim to facilitate open access to Indian theses and dissertations. The online platform of electronic theses will help to easy access and archiving of theses and dissertation of all institution participating in the project. This facilitate to improve the standard and quality of academic research by avoiding duplication of research.  

 The Shodhganga depository is built using open source digital library software DSpace developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in partnership between Hewlett- Packard (HP). The DSpace uses internationally recognized protocols and interoperability standards. So the  repository has the ability to capture, index, store, disseminate and preserve ETDs (Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Access the portal at https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in .

 

Shodhganga home page

The Diary of Wimpy Kid Series

Cover of the first book

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a children's novel written and illustrated by American cartoonist  Jeff Kinney. The story was first appeared in FunBrain, an educational browser game website for children and adults, in 2004. The first print edition of thirteen book series was published in April 2007 with the title Diary of a Wimpy Kid. The story is around the activities of a mischievous boy Gregory Heffley. Greg, has trouble with family, friends, and his local middle school. He is very concerned about how popular he is at school, and he daydreams a lot about being rich and famous when he grows up. He tries to fit in at his school, but usually he does not succeed. Facing many challenges, Greg attempts to handle them very creatively, but unfortunately his antics often backfire on him.

This book can recommend to children from age seven who enjoy reading as it is quite easy to read. The book will help to learn language and its usage. The book with illustration creates interest in reading. This series is must for every school libraries and public libraries which serve child patrons. Have a look at the series;

Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Published on April 1, 2007

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Published on February 1, 2008

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, Published on January 13, 2009

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Published on October 13, 2009

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth, Published on November 9, 2010

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever, Published on November 15, 2011

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel, Published on November 13, 2012

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck, Published on November 5, 2013

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul,  Published on April 28, 2014

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School, Published on October 27, 2015

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down, Published on November 1, 2016

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway,  Published on November 7, 2017

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown, Published on October 30, 2018

Visit:  https://wimpykid.com/

e-Adhyayan: Depository of books for UG and PG courses in India

e-Adhyayan is a repository of e-Books for the Under-Graduate & Post-Graduate Courses. The e-Books are being derived from the e-text of e-PG Pathshala. The project is initiated by the University Grants Commission and Ministry of Human resource Development, Government of India. The author / course coordinator of books are Indian experts. Currently, e-Adhyayan has 50 e-Books in Sociology, Library & information Science, Computer Science & IT. It is available in open access under Creative Common platform. The platform of e-Books is pressbook which is open source. It has been deployed and customized by the INFLIBNET Center. It also facilitates e-book publishing off-line, where author can write and publish his/her own book.

Access the resource at http://epgpbooks.inflibnet.ac.in

Science Direct: A databse for research literature

Science Direct is a subscription based database which provide scientific, technical and health research information. It has started in  1997 and provided by Elsevier . It provides access to more than 3500 e-journals and 34,000 e-books. Journals are grouped in to four categories- Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. The contents of the database is peer reviewed and includes open access contents.  The abstracts of journal articles are freely available but for full text you have to subscribe or pay per view.

Visit Science Direct website at https://www.sciencedirect.com

MathSciNet : A bibliographic database for Mathematics and allied fields

MathSciNet is an online Bibliographic database for Mathematics, Statistics and Theoretical Computer Science created by American Mathematical Society in 1996. It contains electronic version of 'Mathematical Review'  and over 3.5 million items which includes citations, reviews, links to journals and full text articles. It is available in English, French and German. MathSciNet is an essential tool for researchers in Mathematics and allied fields. It can access through subscription  through researcher's affiliated Institution, normally individual subscription is not possible

You can do publication search from MathSciNet home page using different access point such as author, title, key word , Mathematical Review number, etc. and combination of these using Boolean operators. When you click to-down menu on the right side of the author you can see all the possible searches Author, Author/Related, Title, Review Text, Journal, Institution code, Series, MSC Primary/ Secondary, MSC Primary, Mathematical Review Number, Reviewer and Reference. You can narrow your search by year of publication, period of publication by giving in between two years. Again narrow your search by type of document - Books, Journals, proceedings or by all type of document. The result can chose either in PDF or HTML.


Search using any access point will lead to a page contain the bibliographic entries on the relevant topic. Each entry here shows MR number, the author of the document, the title of the document, the title of the journal in the case of journal articles, year of publication, the reviewer, etc. Click on the MR number you will get more information on selected item. An abstract or review of the item, link to the journal, link to the article itself are provided in this window. If the article having access to your institution you can directly go to the full text of the item.


The MathScieNet database is an excellent bibliographic database for Mathematical researchers and student to assist your literature search with more than 2,900,000 records, more than eight hundred thousand authors indexed from 1800 mathematical journals. Most of these peer reviewed journals are indexed cover to cover. For more information visit official website of MathScieNet at www.ams.org/mathscinet/

Google Scholar: A database of scholarly publication for students and researchers

Google Scholar is a searchable database of full text and bibliographic scholarly publication. It is founded in 2004 and freely accessible. Google Scholar index includes most peer-reviewed online academic journals, books, conference papers, theses and dissertations, preprints, abstracts, technical reports, court opinions, patents and other scholarly literature. Google Scholar allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether online or in libraries. It links the users with literature but it does not mean to get full text of all article it indexes. It helps to access articles, cross reference with other sources and keep update on your favorite field of study using its alert facility. It also provide various metrics to analyses the impact of publications.

 

• How to search  Google Scholar

You can access Google Scholar by typing https://scholar.google.co on the address bar of the browser. To search type your query words on the search you will get millions of result in few second. Google scholar allows users to search both basic search and advanced search. Using advanced search you can access by key word, author, title, publication and date. When the result window appear click on the title and it leads to the website of the publisher or the document. Some open access journals can be accessed full text and if a subscribed one you have to pay for it. You can customize your preferences using settings. Under the search result section you can decide what type of sources to search and how to manage the search. Here you can manage collection - that means type of document to retrieve; results per page; where results should open and a Bibliography manager. Under library links you can link your resources with their databases. Google Scholar is an excellent database and search engine for academic research.

 

• Google Scholar Citation

Google Scholar Citation provides a simple way for authors to track citations for their publications. Google scholar chose the list of article by an author and update automatically. When an author gets new citation google will automatically calculate metrics such as h-index and update time to time.  the google make the profile of the author public and any one search the name he can easily access the scholarly contribution of the author. To get such a profile you have to start a google scholar account. For this you have to sign from google Scholar him page using your google account. Then select my citations. enter name, institution, email, areas of interest and click 'next step' . you can see similar articles and you can add articles as your group. and now you can chose to update article to your profile or send an email for confirmation. Now you can see your profile and you can manage your citations 'Action' drop down menu.

AGRIS: A global database for Agriculture and related research

The International System for Agricultural Science and Technology (AGRIS) is a multilingual bibliographic database maintained by Food and Agriculture Organization  (FAO) of  the United Nations  Organisation (UNO). It was created in 1975 to give access to rich information in Agriculture Science and Technology, Health and Environment across the globe. The database is a comprehensive collection of research and  technical information on food and agriculture. It helps researchers, students and policy makers for literature needed for their work.

Basically AGRIS is a bibliographical database, but it provide link to more than 2 million full text documents.AGRIS facilitates access to journal articles, monographs, book chapters, grey literature, technical reports, theses, dissertations and conference papers. The items in the AGRIS indexed using AGROVOC, the multilingual thesaurus of FAO. It offers 9,390,683 bibliographic records (as on August 2018) produced by more than 400 data providers from 145 countries. The data providers includes research centers, academic institutions, publishers, governmental bodies, development programmes, international and national organisations. More than 400000 users accessing AGRIS in every month. It is open access so anyone can access it without subscription.

Website: http://agris.fao.org/

Science and Plants for Schools

 Science and Plants for Schools (SAPS) creates opportunities for teachers and students to find out more plants and to become more interested in plant science.
see the website: http://www.saps.org.uk/

10 apps to read e-books and listen audio books

Libby
Over Drive
Kindle
Hoopla Digital
Fluster
BorrowBox
RB Digital
BiblioBoard Library
Sora
Simply ELibrary Reader