The Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar

Bhubaneswar, Jan. 1: The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) here has initiated a move to digitalise its library.

By the first half of this month, the institute will be ready with a “smart library” that would reduce human dependency.

“As the library is getting digitalised, students will not have to rely on the librarian to get access to a book from next month. They would just require to say the title of a book to a microphone and the book’s location would immediately appear on the computer screen,” said an official of IIT, Bhubaneswar.

A device called radio frequency identification has been installed in the library to navigate its 10,000-odd books. The system will help in automatic tracking of books and documents, tagging them and helping maintain a database. This technology is also used as a theft detection system in all state-of-the-art libraries.

“We hope all technical nitty-gritty related to installation of this system would be addressed by the end of this month,” said librarian P.K. Mohapatra.

The students would be required to have smart cards to access the digital library. The automatic alert system would turn on and identify if anybody tries to access any library articles without an authentic card.

The IIT, Bhubaneswar, library is also in a process to install a software called “Turn It In” to detect plagiarism in submitted research papers by students.

Director of IIT, Bhubaneswar, Madhusudan Chakraborty said that e-book subscriptions worth Rs 8 crore had already been made.

“E-books have an advantage over regular books as they need less maintenance and there is no fear of documents going missing. We can locate the books faster and get them through network-based services,” said Mohapatra.