NLSIU Bangalore to set precedent in effort to digitize its library

National Law School of India University, Bangalore (NLSIU) is preparing to completely digitise its library. This move will not only help students navigate tomes and other information seamlessly, but will also help curb piracy and set an example for other institutions to follow suit..Housing nearly 40,000 books and over 30,000 journals and reports, the library is one of the largest in India..Speaking to Bar & Bench on the move, Vice-Chancellor Prof Sudhir Krishnaswamy said, "There are two issues primarily - for students with disabilities, especially visual disability and locomotor disabilities, access to books has always been a problem. We have been making some partial arrangements depending on their request for research, to make some scans and share with them - that was a piecemeal approach. Then when the pandemic broke out, it was not only students with disabilities, but all students who needed access. Then we realised the way forward, and most students these days prefer to read material off their devices. So we decided to adopt a full-fledged digitization strategy for the library."On the different steps involved in this process, Prof Kishnaswamy said,"There are many ingredients to the process - one of it is to scan the books, for which we are using a high-end technology to ensure precision and quality work. After scanning, the books also need to be processed. We need to put in place Optical Character Recognition (OCR), searchability as also the platform on which they will be hosted. That software element has also been put in place - so that we can follow a careful, copyright-compliant digital rights management (DRM) system. The entire process should be done in the next 12-18 months." .Regarding the ambit of books that will come within this digitization effort, he said,"We are doing it in a phased manner; we will go step by step. But most of our journals are already available in digital copies, so all the other books will be digitized. Course packs were already being made available online to the students - we have a digital learning platform which took care of that. This was done in October 2019, a month after my joining. We created a customized learning platform and we put all the materials that we need on it for students' ready access."On the workforce required to complete the digitization process, Prof Krishnaswamy commented,"We will be running 8 scanners simultaneously, so there will be at least 8 people doing that. Then we will have people processing the software, the scanned documentation - so overall, it is a team of 8-12 people who will be on it apart from our librarian and staff.".The University is also planning to launch a need-based scholarship scheme for law students all over the country, with priority to lower income students. Around 25 scholarships are dedicated for students with disabilities."100 students anywhere in India can avail this scholarship every year. We are exploring ways to widen and progressively improve our access. So currently, we are providing access to students on campus, but we also have access given to off-campus students and alumni."