Maha is 17 on edu index, behind Gujarat, Kerala

Sandeep Ashar TNN 

Mumbai: The state is steadily losing its ground on education. It has slipped four points to the 17th position in the Centre’s education development index. 
    The Union government carries out the annual ranking exercise based on various aspects influencing the quality, outreach, infrastructure and performance of students. The latest findings are based on surveys across the country in 2010-11. Maharashtra ranked 13th following a similar exercise in 2009-10.It witnessed a decline in ranking in both the primary (class I to IV), and upper primary (class V to VIII)categories. In the primary section, it dropped one rank from 14 in 2009-10 to 15 in 2010-11. The decline is starker in the upper primary section, where it slipped from 13(2009-10)to18(2010-11). 
    During a state cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the school education,higher and technical education departments were severely criticized by several ministers, following which chief minister Prithviraj Chavan ordered appointment of a core group comprising senior experts and education experts to oversee and chart an improvement in the state’s education standards.Chavan also directed both the school education and higher and technical education departments to give a presentation on the existing education standards to the cabinet. 
    Congress minister Narayan Rane raised the issue during a discussion on non-salary grants for schools, questioning the lack of quality of education in schools. The District Information System for Education report was then cited by the administration. 
    While Puducherry and Lakshwadeep retained the top two slots in the latest rankings, Punjab was third. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala were all ranked aheadof Maharashtra. Govt grants for primary schools Despite objections from the state finance department, the cabinet on Wednesday approved a proposal to provide non-salary grants to primary and upper primary schools from April 2013. It will benefit over 20,000 schools. The grants, discontinued in 2004, were for libraries, laboratories, toilets, etc and cost the state over Rs 330 crore annually. TNN

Various parameters like access to education, infrastructure, teacherpupil ratio and students’ performance, were used

Source:::: The Times of India, 01-11-2012, p.04. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW

Fair Use Victory for Librarians

By paufderheide

Created 2012-10-15 16:18

Posted by Patricia Aufderheide [1] on October 15, 2012

The latest judicial ruling on fair use validates librarians’ judgment in their Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries, which the Center helped to produce.

In Authors Guild v. Hathitrust, associations of publishers sued libraries that had permitted Google to digitize their books. Once Google digitized the book, the libraries then made a digital archive of them (the Hathitrust Digital Library or HDL), used the text to allow searches for text, and made them available, where there was no commercial copy, to the disabled.

The judge ruled [2] that the libraries had the right to repurpose the text because their uses were transformative (the concept that also anchors the librarians’ and other communities’ codes of best practices in fair use). Judge Baer wrote, “The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material.” He pointed to the fact that academics are already doing new kinds of searches through “text mining,” and that the sight-impaired’s use of digital copy (which can be read out loud with the right software) is a transformative use as well.

Copyright scholars are giving this a thumbs up for both libraries and fair use. Scholar James Grimmelman called it a “near-complete victory” [3]  and the Association of Research Libraries’ blog post [4] noted:

Judge Baer’s opinion should sound delightfully familiar to anyone who’s read Principles 3, 5, and 7 of the Code, which describe the consensus of academic and research librarians around preservation, accessibility, and non-consumptive uses (like search and text mining). Like the librarians, Judge Baer recognizes that these activities are “transformative,” especially the search and accessibility aspects.

Judge Baer also made a rousing defense of copyright policy as a policy intended to promote the creation of culture in his closing comments (as copyright scholar Kevin Smith noted [5]):

I cannot imagine a definition of fair used that would not encompass the transformative uses made by the defendants and would require that I terminate this invaluable contribution to the progress of science and the cultivation of the arts that at the same time effectuates the ideals of the ADA.

Whew. Librarians can get back to work. 

---

Source URL: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blog/fair-use-victory-librarians

Links:
[1] http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/blog/paufderheide
[2] http://www.tc.umn.edu/~nasims/HathivAG10_10_12.pdf
[3] http://laboratorium.net/archive/2012/10/10/hathitrust_wins
[4] http://policynotes.arl.org/
[5] http://blogs.library.duke.edu/scholcomm/2012/10/11/a-big-win-for-fair-use-and-libraries/
[6] http://twitter.com/share

UGC norms for selection of state univ VCs relaxed

TIMES NEWS NETWORK 

Chennai: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has decided to relax norms for selection of vice-chancellors (VCs) in state universities. On Sunday, UGC chairman Ved Prakash said the move followed requests from several state governments to easethestandards. 
    There has been speculation for morethan a month now thatselection normswouldbe relaxed. Prakash said that from now, selection norms prescribed by the UGC will not be mandatory for the state-run universities. Speaking at the 75th convocation of Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha Madras in Chennai, he said it was the responsibility of the state to maintain quality and transparency in the VC-selection process. 
    The present UGC norms insist that a VC candidate should have a minimum of 10 years experience as professor in a university or 10 years of experience in an equivalent position in a reputed research and/or academic administrative organization. With the recent move,these normswould nolonger be mandatory. 
    Refusing to comment on allegations that political interference plays a major role in the appointment of VCs, Prakashsaidthedecision was taken because several states had sought freedom in carrying out appointmentof university heads.He,however, refused to say if there was a requestfrom theTN government. 
    Senior professors and academicians in the state say the move will only facilitate more corruption. Tamil Nadu, for instance, has a dubious record in VC selection over the last decade. Recently, a VC seeking favours fell at the feet of a politician. Another was suspended on corruption charges and, in a third instance, a VC’s residence was raided by anti-corruption sleuths. 
    A Narayanan, an academician who has filed several petitions seeking transparency in the appointments of VCs and registrarsin thestate universities said the reason for relaxing norms remains unknown. 
    “We have VCs who knew how to find their way to the top post overnight. They are either relatives of politicians or someone from a dominant caste. When money, caste and political power decides VCs and registrar posts in state universities, UGC relaxation will further decay the system,” hesaid. 
    Ved Prakash also refuted reports of cancelling the autonomy of the Madras Christian College. “MCC has submitted all the documents we sought for verification and the autonomywas puton hold only till we complete the verification process,” hesaid.

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1350288044348

ON A DIGITIZATION MISSION TO RESCUE RARE BOOKS

Two academicians have been collecting rare journals, census reports, gazettes & books on South Asian history for the last 8 years to digitize them for easy access

Shreya Roy Chowdhury | TNN 

    For the last eight years, a group of academics have been on a rescue mission. Finding procuring material for research a Herculean task during their own fieldwork, two research fellows started gathering rare books and documents on South Asian history with the intention of digitizing them for easy access to researchers. They collected books from waterlogged homes, dusty government shelves, even bathrooms and on November 7, the South Asian Research Foundation will launch the digital archive containing completely searchable digitized versions of five million pages. 
    The first batch of two-lakh pages was purchased from the stalls of halfa-dozen rare-book dealers at the 2005 Kolkata Book Fair. Boria Majumdar and Sharmistha Gooptu were collecting material “randomly” till they formed the foundation in 2008 and got more organized. These included many 19th century Bangla journals, government censuses from the British era and gazettes. The online library will include early editions of William Jones’ works and of the Asiatic Review (from 1780’s), full sets of law reports (from 1870s), film ephemera (film pamphlets with synopses of films and songs from the 1930s and ’40s), about 200 journals, census reports, medical histories and government reports. “The colonial government was in the habit of producing reports,” says Gooptu. There are reports on increasing the number of “pubic latrines” in Bombay, on sale of rotten fish in Kolkata, statistics of cholera epidemics and problems of urbanization and housing in Bombay — all from the early 20th century. They’ve been painstakingly gathered from government offices, private collectors and rarebooks-dealers. About 15% of the documents are in Bangla — more languages may be added later — and series of documents will come with an introductory note from the editors. 
    And because bibliophiles don’t really know where to stop, the duo have found documents being stored in unlikely places – the most extreme case being that of a Hatibagan (Kolkata) collector who’d stacked on a platform of bricks, a lot he couldn’t accommodate in the rooms, in the damp bathroom. The foundation’s project manager spent an entire day in the bathroom sifting through the material and found in it, records of proceedings of the Governor General in council and Lieutenant Governor General in council, starting from the 1910s. In 2008, Majumdar had discovered journals of the Botanical Society in a private residence in Dumdum. “It was monsoon, there was waterlogging inside the house and there, in knee-deep water, I found the soaked copies of the journals,” he says. 
    Once rescued, the foundation does what it can to preserve the documents. The original hardcopies are housed in a rented a three-floor property on Diamond Harbour Road, near Taratala, Kolkata. Before a digitized version can be created, books are treated to deal with the pinholes and the yellowing. Pest control treatments twice every month keep the worms at bay. 
    “The archive building is not airconditioned and the cost of maintenance is high. We will donate the entire archive to the government, and the HRD ministry has been very cooperative and has agreed to set up a library and call it South Asia Archive,” says Majumdar. United Kingdombased publisher, Routledge, is funding the digitization process and will also take care of marketing to educational institutions outside India. Within the country, the team has received support from the University Grants Commission. Majumdar assures that the material will be available at a reasonable price to institutions and individuals. The couple’s paying for the purchase and preservation themselves. 
    On their collection drives, they have encountered dealers for whom rare books is purely a business proposition and genuine collectors who’ve dedicated a lifetime of work — and large sections of their homes — to them. “They don’t possess degrees and are humble backgrounds but have a great appreciation and respect for learning. If they make Rs.1,000 in a month, they’ll spend Rs. 2,000 on pestcontrol. That’s the typical profile,” says Gooptu. They found one of the earliest English commentaries on the Upanishads from such a collector, in Bardhaman. 
    “His books had taken up an entire room in a small house,” says Gooptu, “His wife was happy to see them go.”

NEW LIFE: The page of a rare journal before and after it was processed for digitization

Source:::: The Times of India, 15-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&AW=1350288044348

Small towns fuel online education boom

Market set to double in five years

Priyanka Golikeri l Bangalore

A growing demand for education from smaller towns is giving a big impetus to the domestic online education market. With access to computers increasing day by day, people from smaller towns such Ranaghat, Sardar Sahar, Tonk and Talipramba that have populations from some thousands to a few lakh are looking for online tools to update themselves and get access to certificate courses and degrees. This is set to double India’s online education market to $40 billion by 2017 from the present $20 billion, according to industry estimates. Take an example of Manju, a 22-year-old history graduate from Gulbarga, Karnataka, who is a history graduate is currently undergoing an online course in retail management and would even take her exams online. A dearth of institutes offering diverse courses in her region has prompted her to take up the e-course, which will fetch her a certificate from the Retailers Association of India. Her school-going sister, too, regularly uses online tools to understand concepts in physics and math. Experts say like the metros, the demand for online education is galloping each day in places such as Chiplun (Maharashtra), Hissar (Haryana), Kannur (Kerala) and Churu (Rajasthan). The proliferation of computers is also fuelling the trend. The sale of personal computers rose 16% in financial year 2011-12, compared to the previous year, as per data by the Manufacturers Association for Information Technology (MAIT). About 10.8 million units of desktop computers, notebooks and netbooks were sold during April 2011-March 2012. Pavan Chauhan, MD of online education firm Meritnation, said the demand comes not just for higher education, but also from school students. “Students from kindergarten to class 12 (K-12) express a need for assessment modules and animation videos to understand concepts in various subjects. They see online education as something which supplements formal education,” said Chauhan. Meritnation has about 33-34 lakh students registered from ICSE and CBSE boards in the K-12 domain, with nearly half hailing from small towns. Edukart, which operates in the higher education space of e-learning, has tapped about 7,000 people since its inception November last year. “There is a strong demand from working professionals, housewives and people who could not attend formal institutes,” said Ishan Gupta, CEO of Edukart. Edukart currently offers courses in retail, computers, etc, through its tie-ups with the RAI and Computer Society of India. Gupta said the firm would branch out into areas such as hospitality, telecom and energy soon. “We are looking at tapping 30,000-40,000 people in the next two years,” said Gupta. While Meritnation would restrict its focus to K-12 in the near future, Chauhan said Edukart aims to reach out to one crore school children in the next few years.

Source:::: DNA, 04-10-2012, p.14. http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?pgNo=14&edcode=820009&eddate=2012-10-04

Bapu's Letters Our Columns

Source::: The Times of India, 03-10-2012, p.17. http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW