Tag: NDLI

The Paperless Professor

The e-Library of India developed by IIT Kharagpur wins at World Summit Award 2021

As we know a book is a gift that you can open again and again and this thought has inspired the ingenious innovators of IIT Kharagpur to develop the National Digital Library of India (NDLI). NDLI, developed by Dr. Partha Pratim Das, Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering and his team of researchers from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and sponsored by the Ministry of Education, India- has won the prestigious World Summit Award (WSA) 2021 for Learning and Education.

The National Digital Library of India is a public digital library that offers free and open access to over 55 million educational resources. Since its inception in 2015, the NDLI’s mission has been to create a national knowledge of asset. A single window knowledge repository available in 10 Indian languages that transcends the barriers of geography and language to deliver quality education and create effective learning environment for student across all social economic strata. Till date NDLI has more than 50 million contents delivered through multiple platforms and has more than 5 million viewers across the country. NDLI has digitally united the world’s largest democracy by launching two pioneer new services, the ‘Study at Home’ segment for schools and universities and a ‘National Covid-19 Research Repository’ for students, researchers and entrepreneurs followed by a CBSE Exam Preparatory for schools, colleges and entrance exams. The platform also ran a nationwide resourcing of educational materials along with social media outreach programmes.

The 65 million strong repository is overhauled with an EdTech Service Platform with the covid transformation journey which has been remarkable, moving forward from repository to being service oriented. The daily page views grew 10 times i.e 2,00,000 with users ranging from school students to educators from around the world starting a hastag ‘Fight Back Covid-19’ (#FightBackCovid19).  Public and open access to quality content has always been the core value of this open source content platform along with its policies, serving the front lines as knowledge partners.   An overhaul of 75 million plus metadata mammoth created into a trial service based AI platform in a period of 90 days, is the transformation to further scale and have a social relevance.

The Library comprises of all types of resources such as Books, Audio Books/Lectures, Video lectures, Lecture Presentations/Notes, Simulations, Question Papers, Solutions, etc. Educational materials are available from Primary to Postgraduate levels for all subject areas like Technology, Social Science, Literature, Law, Medical etc. For all contents, User Interface is available in widely used Indian languages. Huge volume of Educational materials are authored by large number of authors and integrates contents from Institutional Digital Repositories of large number of Indian Educational and Research institutions.

NDLI is powered by a unique process for digitally acquiring and curating the metadata of educational contents, running a vigorous online advocacy programme to mobilize learners and influencers across India. This e-learning mechanism aims to educate, enable and empower so that not just a privileged view but the whole India can learn, share and grow despite the crisis.

The World Summit Award 2021 winners have shown a commitment to solve social challenges using the digital solutions. 40 winners were selected among 380 projects with solutions from 182 countries. In UNSDG Learning and Education category, NDLI was the only winner from Asia while others were from Austria, Hungary, Lithuania and Malawi. Founded in 2003 by Austria within the framework of the UN World Summit on Information Society, it is a global initiative recognizing digital applications and content that contributes to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

https://wsa-global.org/winner/national-digital-library-of-india/

Content Writer:- Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer)

Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007

IIT KGP Director Speaks on NEP

On Higher Education

A day of celebration as an educationist as we welcome the National Education Policy (#NEP2020) announced by Dr.Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Hon’ble Minister, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. The policy has substantial elements for the higher education sector. The key among them is setting up the National Research Foundation to foster research culture and removal of MPhil which has been witnessing a downward trend in offering research career opportunities hence fewer number of takers.

Emphasis on Interdisciplinary and Humanities Education at IITs

Another area I must mention is the thrust on multidisciplinary education including more of Humanities and Social Sciences at the IITs. While the older IITs have a strong presence in this sector, this would strengthen the holistic academic needs of new generation IITs. At IIT Kharagpur we are already offering microspecializations, micro-credits and research programs that are typically interdisciplinary. We have specialized centres in these areas, to name a few are the Rekhi Centre for Science of Happiness, the Academy for Classical and Folk Arts, our law school which is the first-of-its-kind focusing on Intellectual Property. We will be glad to work with new IITs in these areas.

Democratization of School Education

What excited me most is the School Education Policy. It has come after almost four decades and with much democratization of pre-primary, primary and middle school education. The emphasis on primary education in regional languages and the introduction of Sanskrit, following the three-language formula, will turn out to be a great boon to the people of the country, especially in the rural areas. In several European universities, Sanskrit is being explored as a coveted academic discipline.

German universities have delved into Sanskrit learning to conduct research on the scientific heritage of the Vedas, Upanishads and other ancient Indian scriptures such as Baudhāyana sūtras (800 BCE) which contains mathematical principles of square roots, Pythagorean theorem, geometric principles etc. or Pingala’s misrau cha (400 BCE) which is usually identified as the Fibonacci number series and works on advanced Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Metallurgy and much more. India in this 21st century has still much left to look back and explore our hidden wealth. Endowing our student community with an evolved language like Sanskrit will help shape a rational thought process among school-going children.

The regional and Sanskrit language education will also enable our student community to grow strong indigenous roots and learn from the resources of our rich heritage while training in computer programming will upskill them to dive for more opportunities as the 21st century progresses.

Education through the National Digital Library of India

The National Digital Library of India developed by IIT Kharagpur as an initiative of MHRD has much to offer towards this new policy. It can give a significant impetus to pre-primary, primary, middle school and high school education through incorporating not only educational resources but also developing online education pedagogy and outreach programmes facilitating rural students. It can further provide resources for the education of the elderly to make them more equipped for Digital India.

Study@COVID-Time with NDLI

IIT Kharagpur develops JEE Preparation Module on NDLI during COVID-19 Lockdown

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In a recent announcement JEE Main and NEET UG have been postponed till last week of May 2020 with Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, Minister, Human Resources Development, Govt. of India urging students to prepare further for these examinations during this period. While the decision for the postponement was expected, students now need adequate online resources and e-learning materials to continue with their preparation. 

IIT Kharagpur has been quick to address the issue by developing a preparatory module for JEE available to students for free on the National Digital Library of India platform.  Students can visit the NDLI website https://www.ndl.gov.in/ or https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/ or log on to the NDLI mobile application. A special module named ‘Corona Outbreak: Study from Home’ has been added to the website which contains a wide range of digital content including those preparing for competitive examinations like JEE Advanced. The repository contains NDLI Tutorial for JEE Advanced for 12 years and Practice Questions and Solutions for JEE Preparation. Content for JEE Mains for 5 years is expected to be made available soon.  

“The solutions have been prepared from the perspective of undergraduate students who have cleared JEE as well as subject matter experts and doctoral students in related areas. Hence the solutions are diverse and students can opt for their preferred methods. Further we have provided reference materials for related problems, so students can explore further the topics,” explained Prof. Partha Pratim Das, Joint-Principal Investigator, NDLI.

Students can browse the School option under the Corona Outbreak module or search by relevant keywords. The developers recommend registering on the portal for better user experience though the resources are available without any restrictions.

“Please visit and continue your studies. Please let us know how we can continue to support your preparations. NDLI is accessible through the web as well as mobile App. Be safe but let us be digitally active in academics and connected,” says Prof. P P Chakrabarti, Principal Investigator of NDLI, on his social media handle. He further urges to reach out to students who can be immensely benefited from this platform during this lockdown period. “Digital Libraries have become the next generation paradigm for people to empower themselves with knowledge and contribute to the knowledge gathering of this world,” he added.

NDLI was developed by IIT Kharagpur under the aegis of Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India in the year 2016 as a National Mission project. MHRD has been promoting various e-learning platforms since the academic activities have been restricted in educational institutions earlier this month due to CoronaVirus outbreak. NDLI has been at the forefront of such e-learning platforms with over 4.8 crore content in more than 300 languages that can be viewed in 60+ formats apart from e-books (audiobooks, simulations, e-thesis, question papers etc.). The platform has over 55 Lakh users.

“The project, which has been collating content to democratize education for India, has shaped up to be the most promising initiative on the future of libraries from India and symbolizes a strong voice to tell the story from India’s standpoint,” added Prof. Das. 

Building Knowledge Portal of India

For most people outside the country, India is a land of antiquity, of ancient wisdom and knowledge. The preservation of said antiquity and the wealth of cultural heritage, however, has proved to be a challenge in our country. Locating the original material is itself a task but by no means the largest hurdle. Worn, yellow and tattered pages need careful supervision and expert handling of the material. Apart from the expertise required in traditional preservation of antique documents, the digital age calls for the preserved material to not just be digitized, but also be accessible to users of all ages, at all places and at all times. In the West, institutions like the British Library and the US Library of Congress have been digitally preserving cultural artifacts for a while now.

Closer home, National Digital Library of India (NDLI) – an MHRD initiative executed by IIT Kharagpur – is set to deliver 21st Century solutions to age-old problems of preservation of cultural artifacts for posterity. Proud hosts to original digital copies of Kheror Khata – Satyajit Ray’s handwritten screenplay manuscripts, NDLI has carefully archived a series of cultural wealth that narrates the nation’s story of being and becoming.  Digital copies of Jugantar and Amrita Bazar Patrika newspapers are available in NDLI, which have fascinating recordings of India’s history during and post Independence.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg. India’s wealth of knowledge heritage is as diverse as the inter-web is vast.

Presidency University Kolkata is a 203 years old heritage institution that started its journey in 1817 as Hindoo College. In the year 1855, Hindoo College was transformed to Presidency College by the then British Government. The alumni and teachers of this great institution have helped shape the nation in the fields of economics, science, arts and every nuance in between. Some priceless and antique publications like the Presidency Register of 1934 comprising historical reports, data and a list of students since 1817 of Hindoo-Presidency are the prized possession of the Presidency Alumni Association with no other copy available. These records, data, reports, and articles have been digitized and hosted by an alliance of the Presidency Alumni Association and the National Digital Library of India. In a symbolic coming together of a National knowledge platform with a heritage Institution to pave the way for India’s knowledge heritage, these documents, reports, articles are now available at zero-cost on National Digital Library of India site: https://www.ndl.gov.in/ for anyone, anywhere to access freely to learn, share and grow.

Registration to NDLI is free.

The platform is also available as an android as well as an iOS app.

Digital CHAVI for Cancer Cure

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IIT Kharagpur and Tata Medical Center have set up an open architecture image biobank to aid cancer research in the country. Named CompreHensive Digital ArchiVe of Cancer Imaging (CHAVI) it will address the emerging field of imaging-related research and will be India’s first step towards harnessing artificial intelligence and deep learning methods to answer medical questions of importance in the field of image banking.

IIT Kharagpur and Tata Medical Center have been jointly working on several novel educational and research programmes including Masters and Fellowship courses to enable this trans-disciplinary research that marries technology and medicine. The two institutions have joined hands in initiating a pilot project on developing an image data bank for cancer patients, in particular, the present focus is radio oncology. The project has been undertaken by IIT Kharagpur through the National Digital Library Initiative (NDLI) of MHRD. The overarching aim here is to build up a national bank of annotated images with a flexible query interface and link it with a pipeline of radiomic services for furthering radiomic research in large image datasets.

The CHAVI project is the first of its kind. The objective of the National Digital Library of India is to make accessible material for doing research that normally could not have been done in India. With the CHAVI project, as a beginning, we have chosen cancer imaging database along with Tata Medical Center because of their tremendous expertise. Cancer is one of the most dreaded diseases in our country. If we are able to create a very well defined, annotated database, it will help researchers as well as doctors to be able to do early, more accurate diagnosis and provide better treatment for our people which is a lot more cost effective – Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Principal Investigator of NDLI.

As a pilot, radiation oncology related images are being banked within the NDLI CHAVI RO project. It is a prototype system which is under development addressing various such issues. It is also being developed considering multi-institutional participation in building a national image data bank.

Once the pilot project is successful, it can be scaled up to a larger set of medical images. Medical imagery can then be combined with AI to enable reach of treatment to more people as well as provide targeted therapy based on individual symptoms. This should enable doctors like never before, and revolutionize the way doctors interact with patients and systems.

AI for the medical vertical has three pillars. Descriptive analysis that will help education – students anywhere in the country can access the bank to look at the images and learn from there. Predictive Analysis will help doctors diagnose better. And then Prescriptive analysis that will help doctors reduce the scope of treatment based on past use cases.

We need more affordable solutions in India for cancer treatment, majority of our patients are middle class and lower middle class and cannot afford genomic analysis. Image banking combined with predictive/prescriptive AI can enable us to identify signatures as a much more cost effective alternative – Dr Sanjoy Chatterjee, Tata Medical Center.

While Tata Medical Center has created a large repository of medical data and images of cancer patients including outcomes of treatment in many cases, there are various challenges while building this system. The first and foremost is in preserving anonymity of patients as well as maintaining adequate referential integrity, a necessity for carrying out useful research.

To enhance the CHAVI project, the two institutions organized a workshop titled – “Structuring a Collaborative National Image Banking Program” on 26th July 2019 at Tata Medical Center, Kolkata, supported by MHRD through the NDLI project. The workshop which was coordinated by Dr. Sanjoy Chatterjee and Prof. Jayanta Mukhopadhyay from IIT Kharagpur involved presentations and panel discussions with experts in medical and Computer Science / AI domains. Several expert doctors from India, USA and UK and specialists in the area of Computer Science from India also took part in the daylong proceedings.

Who said what in the workshop

The scope of image banking is to enable cancer research and move it forward, to access data that is more diverse and come from different centres, different patients and different ethnic groups to help doctors make more informed decisions and deliver personalized treatments – Dr. Emiliano Spezi, Cardiff University, USA

For research, we need geographic distribution – which means we need to build national archives, be it central or distributed and then connect them globally to be truly able to sample the human population – Dr. Fred Prior, UAMS, USA

If you have an image bank where you can collaborate all your images, and then you look at certain features, you can probably come up with information which goes beyond the human eye. Imaging when combined with pathological information can then improve outcomes for our patients – Dr. Simon Pavamani, CMC Vellore

It is a kind of personalized medicine. Where a set of images of a particular kind is treated in a particular way which helps predict a specific treatment for each individual patients – Dr. Subhas Gupta, AIIMS, New Delhi

NDLI: Book Lovers’ Paradise

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It is difficult for book-lovers to control themselves when they see their favourite volumes stacked in racks. However, despite the temptation, it is seldom possible to buy all the books that one may desire – our pockets rarely run that deep. However, at the 43rd KOLKATA INTERNATIONAL BOOKFAIR, being held at Central Park in Salt Lake, you can do exactly that.

You can download any number of your favourite books, for free, using QR codes at stall no 383!

The National Digital Library of India (NDLI) has over 1.5Crore free content in over 300 languages as books, papers, thesis, audiobooks, simulations, short-stories and multiple other formats.

Registration is absolutely free, and volunteers at the stall are more than happy to assist you to log in via computers or install the app on your mobile phone.

Sponsored by MHRD and developed by IITKGP, this is the first time an online library has established a physical presence at the book fair. The stall has been receiving massive footfall since day one, learners of all ages and interest groups have been visiting the stall and downloading books of their choice.

IITKGP students and professors have been manning the site – the digital library is AI enabled to learn and grow with you and your learning needs.

Mr. Bibhas Samanta from Team NDLI said, ‘If you go into any of the other stalls, you might be buying one or two books to fit your budget. The best part of our stall is that you can walk in without a paisa in your pocket and take home as many books as you want at the click of a button!’

Content and Photos contributed by NDLI team