Coal India officials at the launch of the e-library at the CMPDIL headquarters in Ranchi on Thursday. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, July 17: Interacting with fellow colleagues and conducting a research on mining technologies could never have been easier.

The Central Mine Planning and Design Institute Limited (CMPDIL) launched an e-library at its headquarters in the capital, which was inaugurated by Coal India Limited (CIL) chairman Parta S. Bhattacharya, at a function organised today.

The e-library will comprise a single-point search engine to enable Coal India employees to access relevant data related to mining work.

The e-library will have all technical data associated with the coal industry. The e-library will help employees in research work and academics as well as the technical study of a particular aspect of the coal industry, said CMPDIL chairman-cum-managing director A.K. Singh.

The research and development project wing of the CIL conceived the venture. It has also been funded extensively for the project and after months of research the data for the e-library has been compiled, Singh said.

CIL chairman P.S. Bhattacharya also released the first CMPDI e-newsletter during the function. The newsletter is in the form of an in-house e-journal for the employees with multimedia facilities. The e-newsletter will also be equipped with an automatic “knowledge update”.

The newsletter will be compiled with technical literature relevant to the coal industry, Bhattacharya said.

“The e-library will be effective in setting up a web-enabled information centre to improve information transfer and access on coal mining. The e-library will facilitate ready access to encapsulated information on coal and lignite to researchers and personnel working in the company,”Bhattacharya added.

Through the e-library one can also connect to other sectors of the CIL through the intranet. The digitisation of data in the library has been done with the objective of preserving old fragile documents.

A senior employee of the coal company said the e-library will be crucial for the welfare of the organisation.

It has a vast source of data and will benefit the development of employees.