Digital Library Training Workshop at CIIT Abbottabad
4-5 August 2009
A two days Digital Library Training Workshop was organized in COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CIIT), Abbottabad. This workshop was launched by COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Islamabad for the CIIT teaching staff, students and librarians of all CIIT Campuses. The workshop was funded by INASP "International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publication" (UK).
The Master Trainer of the training was Raja Muhammad Ibrahim, Senior Librarian, CIIT Islamabad. Other trainers included Syeda Nasreen Sultana, Librarian and Abdur Rehman, Deputy Librarian, both from CIIT Islamabad.
The participants were given training to use variety of digital resources available to CIIT through the HEC program. They were further prepared to use advance searching functionality on the resources and to formulate and implement a rigorous search strategy. The participants evaluated the resources in terms of functionality and appropriateness of content.
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology Library is subscribing 32,000 on-line journals (through HEC) giving access to Abstracts, Table of Contents (ToCs), Full Text and Document Delivery Services. These journals are available through world’s nine renowned publishers having different databases on Sciences, Technology, Social Science and humanities. As most of the full text material on the web is in Portable Document Format (PDF), the participants were advised to install any PDF reader in their computers like Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing the PDF files.
The participants were enlightened about all important resources that are available through Digital Library. They were trained to search electronic journals, scholarly databases and associated online resource. Besides introducing them to the generic techniques and approaches suitable for all systems, they were also informed about the specific approaches and techniques that are required for particular services/packages.
All sessions of training went very well and participants came to know about various new things. This training will help participants to search and collect academic and research materials more efficiently and will help to further enhance the teaching/learning standards and research productivity at CIIT.