IGNCA organises training programme on Library Automation Software

THE INDIRA Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) – a premier academic and research institute in the country, in collaboration with Best Book Buddies organized two days hands-on training programme for the use of Koha (Library Information System), on May 23 – 24, at its premises.

Koha is open-source library management software, developed by the library community and made available free of cost for the use of librarians world-over. Koha is considered one of the best software in the world for libraries and every library wishes to migrate to it.

Dr Sachchidanand Joshi, Member Secretary, IGNCA, inaugurated the programme. While speaking on the occasion, he emphasized that Kalanidhi is the leading repository of research and reference resources in humanities and arts and such academic activities must be continued to benefit the masses. He invited scholars to work with Kala Nidhi on various personal collections of eminent scholars such as A K Coomarswami, Dr Devendra Swarup, Dr Kapila Vatsyayan, Dr Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Professor Hazari Prasad Dwivedi etc.

Dr Ramesh C Gaur, HOD (Kalanidhi) informed that the response was so overwhelming that within six hours the registration was closed. “Keeping it in view, it has been decided that Kala Nidhi, IGNCA, will organise such training programme once in every two months. Besides IGNCA Delhi, the plan is to organise KOHA training programmes at our regional centres at Bangalore, Ranchi, Varanasi, Gauhati and others,” he further added.

Gandotra informed that BBB is providing Koha implementation, hosting, maintenance to libraries free of cost for ever, which would save a total of rupees five lacs per library. Best Book Buddies(bbb) is providing KOHA support service to libraries across 27 countries. IGNCA is also using Koha since last year, which was implemented by BBB.

About 100 library professionals, students and users from all over India attended the training programme to understand the importance of Koha and the need of expanding its usage.