THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finding it tough to browse the rich collection of library resources located in various universities for teaching and research? Help is at hand. The Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) has come up with a solution to make this task easy by devising a single point access to the entire library resources of universities in the state called KALNET (Kerala Academic Library Network).
Based on the VuFind open source software, a team of library staff led by Calicut University are engaged in the development of this new generation search interface. Library data from various university libraries are combined to form a single interface which is not only fast but also has many advanced features. In the second phase the libraries of affiliated colleges will be linked to KALNET. KOHA, free software, will be used for this.
KALNET offers a single, unified catalogue to search for items across the collections of different academic libraries in Kerala. It offers quick searches based on the Title, Subject and Author. It offers better integration of the Library’s traditional print materials, electronic and digital collections.In addition to books, other library resources such as journals/periodicals, PhD theses, postgraduate dissertations, Daisy Digital talking books (audio books) and various reports are also indexed.
Advanced searching with Boolean operators as well as a “Narrow Search” feature to limit, sort and refine the search results is an added feature. A Virtual Browse feature for print books to see what’s related to the book by subject area is also added. While viewing a record, the user will be offered suggestions of resources that are similar to the current resource Participating Universities (Partners in KALNET).
The KALNET partners are: University of Kerala, Cochin University of Science and Technology, University of Calicut, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala Agricultural University, Kannur University, Sree Sankaracharya University, Malayalam University, Kerala Veterinary University, Kerala University of Fisheries and National University of Advanced Legal Studies.
1st-of-its-kind
In addition to books, other library resources such as journals/periodicals, PhD theses, postgraduate dissertations, Daisy Digital talking books (audio books) and various reports are also indexed in the interface