IGCAR Digitalises Its Library Through Newgen's OmniDocs

Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) is a well known organisation in the field of scientific research and advanced engineering in India. This Kalpakkam-based organisation has achieved a number of successes in the field of reactor engineering and energy security.

To enable easy accessibility of the study materials, benefits of digital content and better storage of valuable information, the IGCAR library recently deployed Document Management Solution from Delhi based Newgen Software Technologies.

Inefficient library processes

IGCAR has nearly 2500 employees which includes both research and non-research staff. The library houses a continuously growing, large collection of books, journals, periodicals, research papers and magazines extensively accessed by employees. With its existing system, the library was facing problems like maintaining and managing large volumes and various types of study and reference materials.

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Making the required material available to employees on time was a very tedious job for the librarians. Many a times, multiple employees required the same study or reference material which resulted in great employee dissatisfaction. “We have huge volumes of documents in our library and access to these documents during the nth hour was causing chaos. Though we earlier recognised the importance of electronic format of keeping documents, we were facing problems related to the conversion of printed documents into electronic form,” explains Somashekharan M, director, Central Library and Scientific Information Resource Division, IGCAR.

IGCAR was also facing problems with regard to storage of these documents, as they were occupying huge space. The manual system of tracking the reference materials was also proving inapt.

Swift migration to digital environment

In order to digitalise the library content and make the whole process systematic and less cumbersome, IGCAR hired Newgen. Newgen recommended IGCAR to go for a solution comprising OmniScan and OmniDocs. OmniScan would be used to scan, index and upload the images of study material to OmniDocs, where they would be stored, managed and archived. Using rights-based access, a large number of employees would be able to simultaneously access books, periodical and journals.

“We realised that only an automated system could solve our problem. We asked Newgen to showcase its products and design the solution to suit our library environment. The Newgen team has provided initial training to our library and IT staff. The total process of implementation was completed within two weeks,” states Somashekharan.

The total cost involved in the project was around Rs 16 lakh.

Web-based access to reference materials

The deployment has streamlined the working environment of IGCAR library. The implementation has helped overcome storage issues, improving the efficiency of the staff. The solution provides flexible interfaces to scan, publish and share documents. It enables creating, capturing, managing, delivering and archiving large volumes of documents and content material.

According to Somashekharan, “We have easily migrated to the digital environment. Now the man power requirement has also reduced drastically. There is an efficient use of resources and the whole environment has totally changed due to centralisation of the systems. The solution has also provided some security features enabling us to maintain the security of our documents.”

The deployment enables managing images as well as electronic documents in a single, central repository that can be accessed and shared among multiple users across departments and locations. The inbuilt adaptive workflow system allows the staff to efficiently route and track documents. Costs involved in procurement and maintenance of study and reference materials have reduced. The availability of online documents has led to Web-based access to the entire reference materials in the library.