PAU Library Conducts Training Programme on Cera for North Zone Agricultural Universities
Mohinder Singh Randhawa Library, PAU organized a one day 'J-gate@CeRA Regional Ambassador Training Programme' for the libraries of north zone Agricultural Universities and Institutes of ICAR.
The programme was inaugurated by the worthy Vice-Chancellor, PAU, Dr. Baldev Singh Dhillon. Dr. Satendra Kumar Singh, Scientific Advisor to Honorable Union Minister of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Govt. of India and Project Director, Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture, ICAR, New Delhi, was the Guest of Honour.
It was attended by 48 Librarians from various agricultural universities and ICAR institutes from the north zone which included the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, National Capital Region, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand.
In addition to this, Dr. S. K. Joshi, Incharge (CeRA & HRD), Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture, ICAR was also present who gave a brief account of CeRA during his address. According to him, Consortium of e-Resources in Agriculture (CeRA) is an ICAR project under which access to around 3300 fulltext journals is provided to all the state agricultural universities and research institutes of ICAR. This database is hosted and technically managed by Informatics Publishing Ltd, Bengaluru. The training was imparted by the Training Unit of Informatics Publishing Ltd, Bengaluru.
The Vice-Chancellor, PAU, Dr. Baldev Singh Dhillon congratulated DKMA, ICAR for this noteworthy project which is not only catering to academic needs of the agricultural fraternity across the country but is also providing a platform for quality research publications and resource sharing.
According to Dr. S. K. Singh, the objective of the training programme was to introduce the participants to various features of CeRA with a focus to create Ambassadors of CeRA from each institute to improve its usage. He also informed that three new awards have been created from this year onwards by ICAR based on the usage of CeRA among all the member institutes.
Mohinder Singh Randhawa Library, PAU bagged two out of three awards- Maximum CeRA Usage and secondly for Creating Maximum number of Users Profiles under CeRA. The third award- Maximum Document Delivery Requests was bagged by Nehru Library, CCSHAU, Hisar. Dr. S. K. Singh alongwith other dignitaries flagged off the Regional Ambassador Training programme. The training focused on creating awareness of CeRA, introducing new features added to CeRA and forthcoming features amongst the participating libraries. University Librarian, Dr. (Mrs.) Param Pal Sahota, regarded the event as a great success which has not only updated the existing knowledge about CeRA but also enhanced the skills of the participants to educate the end users.
Source:http://www.pau.edu/
