Use of UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium among Distance Education Faculty Members of Annamalai University

Introduction

The UGC-Infonet Digital Library Consortium was formally launched in December, 2003 by Honourable Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, the President of India soon after providing the Internet connectivity to the universities in the year 2003 under the UGC-Infonetprogramme. The Consortium proved to be a recipe to university libraries, which have been discontinuing subscription of scholarly journals because of “Serials Crisis.” The term “serials crisis” refers to exponential and continuing increase in subscription cost of scholarly journals. The crisis is a result of rise in cost of journals much faster than the rate of inflation, increase in number of journals, and the paucity of funds available to the libraries (see Table 1 for a state-wise membership list).