National Resource Centre

The National Resource Centre (NRC) acts as the co-ordinating body for the development of all the Resource Centres (RCs) in terms of collection development, manpower planning, information management, infrastructure planning, automation, and standardization. At present there are 13 Resource Centres (RC) in the network of NRC and each RC caters to the information needs of the students, faculty and the local fashion industry. All the RCs are computerized and use library database management system with state-of-the-art electronic surveillance systems and offer user-oriented information services.

The services offered by NRC are the following:

Consortium acquistion/subscriptions of e-resources

NRC subscribes to international online databases/periodicals along with print journals for all RCs through consortium. All students and faculty across NIFT Centres can access the subscribed e-resources from their desks.

Selective Collection development of books for RCs

NRC does selective collection development for all RCs or any particular RC for special or newly introduced programmes.

Development of institutional digital repository

NRC is developing an institutional digital repository for R&D purpose. A digital repository of executive summaries of project reports of the graduating students of NIFT is under construction. Other repositories being developed are - a full text archive of the project reports and image repositories of costumes, swatches and fashion accessories in the collections of RCs.

• Conservation of rare & fragile materials

NRC is responsible for basic conservation of rare & fragile print and non-print materials including textiles, costumes, accessories etc. in the collections of all RCs

• Resource sharing activities & Creation of centralized databases

NRC is responsible for resource sharing activities among the RCs and creation of common databases related to fashion industry eg. National Products & services directory, Fashion information bank etc. for all RCs.

• Standardization of activities

NRC formulates general policies for standardization of professional and administrative activities, not requiring local variations, for all RCs on recommendations of the Head Librarians.

IT application to Network of RCs

NRC is engaged in computerization of RCs, that includes selection of software,hardware and networking.

• Training/Retraining of RC staff

NRC acts as the nodal center for implementation of training programme for RC professionals

Conferences

NRC also organizes national & international conferences for promoting collaborations among various sectors of the knowledge industry.

• Proceedings of the National Conference on Changing information landscape : impact of ICT, March 1-2, 2007

• Proceedings of the International Conference held in February 2008.

Report on INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2008 on 'Building Knowledge Repositories: Cross - Sectoral Collaborations'