Visited the spectacular digital library in the fourth hour today, since I had the hour to myself instead of having to rush from one class to another, as has been the necessity these past two months.
What a breath stopper in terms of infrastructure...the well laid out systems and hushed ambience lead to an academically encouraging atmosphere.
I accessed the Springerlink to access journals. Unfortunately, I could not open full papers in the Journals of Children's Literature, Language Learning and Education. Though the page identified the institution in a sidebar, only those that were available for free viewing were accessible, the others requiring username and password.
Though it was a personal disappointment for me, I am totally amazed by the availability of scholarly treatises and papers available to scholars and faculty. One could spend hours and hours just soaking in the reading...
The PG students who were there were prevented from opening YahooMail, as they should be, since I feel that otherwise the whole affair might just become a netcafe and not a knowledge cafe; pendrives were prohibited, though CD-ROMS weren't. Though students tell me that CDs are not virus proof, the risk is less when compared to a pendrive's infinte capacity to paralyse and immobilise systems. (I believe that browsing centre managers in Salem blanch at the sight of a GCEian armed with a pendrive, since they are carriers of deadly viruses and destructive malaware).
Another good measure adopted by the Principal is a request for the logbook records of visits made by his students, since that one single gesture prevents students from straying into forbidden and unacademic territories.
I hope that our students will use the library for productive research and scholarly pursuits in order to enrich their learning and academic skills. Love the library for the promises that it holds for a lover of reading and research.