National Law School of India University to digitalise entire library

In a benchmark move, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is all set to move its entire holdings to online mode.

The National Law School of India University (NLSIU) is digitising its entire library comprising nearly 40,000 books and another 30,000 journals and reports. It is one of the biggest libraries in India comparable to libraries of the Indian Law Institute and Supreme Court.

Some of these books and out-of-print documents have historical value to them.

Professor Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of NLSIU has said, "Previously the university had digitised a limited number of books for annual course reading lists as required by the syllabus. But students had complained that this was unsatisfactory due to problems with text recognition and other issues. So, we decided that we must do something strategically," as reported by the Deccan Herald.

NLSIU signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with Public.Resource.org which was started by American open-source advocate and technologist Carl Malamud whose 'Servants of Knowledge' initiative in India has already seen the digitisation of more than 18,000 out-of-copyright books. 

Lawrence Liang, professor at Ambedkar University Delhi, an NLSIU alumni and fellow with Public.Resource.org who is involved in the digitisation project of NLSIU as an advisor said that the digitisation of in-copyright material on scale such as that of NLSIU has not been tried before in India.

“Very few institutions in India have robust libraries, but there are repositories in places with a large number of books and documents. The question then becomes: how do you maximise the availability of materials? Our conversation with NLSIU began with that point," added Liang.

The digitisation of scholastic copying efforts globally faces legal threats by publishers. However, Liang was involved in one such case - 2013 incident in which Oxford University Press sued Delhi University and a photocopying shop for copyright infringement. In this case, the court ultimately ruled in favour of the students because under Section 52 of the Indian Copyright Act (1957), fair use exceptions are granted for education and scholastic purposes.

"In-copyright material will be restricted to students, with an extension to visually challenged students across India who can avail a library scholarship. We expect this to be of benefit to such students who may not have adequate library facilities at their disposal," said the VC.

"The long-term objective for libraries in India should be to create a controlled digital lending system adapted from the Internet Archive. It is hoped that a precedent may be set for a consortium of libraries to similarly digitise their works, which will give students the ability to access them," said Liang.

Omshivaprakash HL will be running the digitisation operation NLSIU. He said that "Eight top-of-the-line scanning machines will be operational at the library from May. We are hoping to scan 60 to 80 books per day or 40-50,000 pages per day which is a huge amount. We estimate that it will take at least 600 days to complete digitisation."

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