Role of National Digital Library of India (NDLI) for facilitating open access resources (OARs): an investigation on COVID-19 research repository

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to proffer a glimpse of diverse e-resources and materials accumulated by National Digital Library of India (NDLI) for facilitating open access resources (OARs) during the difficult times of global pandemic. Out of all the resources, an attempt has been made to place a focus on COVID-19 research repository maintained at NDLI platform to facilitate related research activities for envisaging experiments by scientists and researchers. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on COVID-19 research repository assimilated by NDLI, and a detailed investigative research has been made about various resources and materials available for research community. The official website of NDLI (direct link of NDLI website: https://ndl.iitkgp.ac.in/) has been referred for collection of requisite data for study. The collected information has been presented through eight tables, two charts and two figures, which have further been analyzed and interpreted to attain the objectives. Findings The brief examples in this paper indicates that a wealth of OARs related to COVID-19 such as scholarly communications, data sets, documents and videos and journals and conferences, etc. are available for access and research by scientists and researchers to expand their research during and also beyond this global crisis. Social distancing has forced academics to displace to online platform from physical deliverables. Institutions are forced to adopt new technologies for delivering education in online mode such as online teaching, online access of educational resources, online conferences, webinars and a host of such related activities. NDLI has been instrumental in this journey by accumulating providing research materials through its platform. Originality/value In addition to the blended learning process, this paper provides a structured overview about COVID-19 research repository facilitated by NDLI to provide access about related research activities by scientists and researchers. This investigative research on NDLI platform has been done originally by the author with a sacrosanct aim to help serious academia and has a high referral value for the scientific, technocratic and realistic researchers with deep thrust on availability of all materials under one roof, i.e. NDLI.