National 10 (Spotlight Weekly)

PERI in Nepal

By Krishna Mani Bhandary

PERI stands for Program for Enhancement of Research Information. It is a program of the INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publication) based in the United Kingdom. Mrs. Carol Priestley, The Director of INASP visited Nepal in January 2003 on her way to Cambodia. While in Nepal she met with the authorities of the Ministry of Education and Sports and the Ministry of Science and Technology. TUCL (Tribhuwan University Central Library), organized an interaction program at the library where faculty deans, executive directors of the research centers and heads of central department participated. In February 2003 TUCL was nominated by INASP as national coordinating institute of INASP in Nepal for the implementation of PERI here. ICSU; International Council for Science was established in 1932 under the law of France for the development of Science World wide. Nepal is also a member of ICSU.

Authorities of the ICSU were anxious with the present trend of the development of science. Some authorities expressed the opinion that if this trend continuous, the gap between western world and the rest of the world will be terrible. To reduce this gap an international network of information named INASP was established in 1992 by the International Council for Science (ICSU), as a program of the committee for the Dissemination of Scientific Information (CSDI)/ICSU Press.

After PERI's implementation, Nepalese researchers, scientists, students, graduates, professors, scholars and all those interested in research in science and technology will have access to world's more than 7000 high-quality scientific journals. Like wise, they will have a full access to contents, abstracts and articles from 20,000 scientific journals.

PERI began as a pilot program in 2001 in six African countries, which quickly grew to include eight countries. At present, PERI is active in 20 countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and former Soviet Union plus Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Bolivia and now Nepal.

The information resources available through PERI would normally cost a single institute in the west over 1 million pounds. These same resources are being made available to all resources in Nepal for about 27,500. Pounds.

Funding has been made available for 2003 for Nepal by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Using these funds, the information resources will be paid for and intensive training will be made available.

PERI has four areas of services – delivering information to enable researchers and scientists to acquire international academic and scholarly information as on-line full text journals; access to national and regional research; strengthening publishing providing opportunity for the enhancement of skills in book and journal publishing in print or electronic and enhancing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills with in library, university and research institutes.

The PERI has been implemented in 20 countries to bridge up the digital gap between developing and developed world latest being in Bolivia, Ghana, Senegal and Nepal in 2003. Sri Lanka is the first country to introduce this program in South Asia.

TUCL is Nepal's largest library and thousands of users visit it everyday. We hope the relation with the ICSU will further enhance library services. A strong and competent scientific community committed to study underlying causes of economic and social problems may provide policy makers with feasible ways for sustainable development.

Promoting in-country quality publications also is one of the objectives of PERI. PERI puts these publications on its website, so that other researchers worldwide would have an access to the quality Nepalese publications. This would benefit Nepalese publications to gain international recognition.

PERI offers underprivileged country with possibilities of reducing their technical disadvantages by developing technological skills in the sector of research information and scientific innovations. We believe permanent access to PERI's program will democratize access to information and gap up the existing margin between haves and have nots in the world.

We know science and technology play key role in the information society for several areas mainly in production of knowledge. And, the information is power to win and succeed both.

The major problem TUCL predicts is whether we can purchase this invaluable service if donors and INASP withdraw their assistance to TUCL? Nepal will have to meet considerable costs to continue the service if they withdraw their support. This is not the time to worry about, however, it would be an intelligent thought to think about future implications. If donors discontinued their support, Nepal would have to pay for the service for its emerging brains in future.

In the second week of July 2003 introductory workshop on PERI was organized by INASP, in association with the national coordinating institute, Tribhuvan University Central Library (TUCL) at TUCL, Kathmandu and at Pokhara University, Pokhara. The objective of the workshop was to introduce information resources i.e. full text database of several publishers to the librarians of Nepal. Fifteen librarians of different institutes from western development region participated in Pokhara workshop. Twenty-five librarians from different institute from Kathmandu participated in the workshop at TUCL. At the end of the both the workshop the participants are able to select relevant database from different publishers equal to the amount of budget 27,500 made available by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the INASP, UK. Real access to the database of more then 7000 scholarly journals, articles full text will be available to the scholars and scientific community of Nepal from the beginning of September 2003.

In addition to resources under PERI; TUCL has following resources:

a. HINARI, more then 2000 scholarly journals full text database

b. Information literacy Unit: Website database of several subjects, cheapest Internet service in Nepal, i. e. Rs. 10/hr.

c. Largest collection of current journals and back issues.

d. TUCL is a depository for the United Nations and the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, IMF, APO, Publications

e. 30,000 records can be searched in our Website www.tucl.org.np

f. TUCL is a national ISBN Agency since 2000, so far we have provided ISBN to 3700 Nepali publications.

g. In the near future TUCL is receiving Japanese Government's cultural grant. Under the grant, they will receive equipment (Microfilming + Binding) worth Rs. 22 million. This will provide them an immense opportunity to preserve the national printed heritage of Nepal.

(Bhandary is a chief librarian at the TU Central Library)