Kuensel retrieved

Library developed and functional

July 1, 2016 News 1 Comment 992 Views

Council: The government has developed an e-Library portal and e-Library studio.

This was revealed in its responses to the National Council (NC).

The government also stated that the installation and commissioning of the entire network will be completed by August end.

“The e-Library would be a collection of digital objects that will include text, visuals, video, audio among others stored as standardised and customised electronic media along with means for organising, storing, and retrieving the contents from the e-library repository,” the government states in its response which is available on the NC’s website.

The response also stated that the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) assigned with the project has developed e-library portal and is functional now. It can be viewed by visiting: http://14.139.61.149/elib/.

The syllabus for all classes from preprimary to higher secondary along with textbooks is available.

As of June 2016, the CDAC project engineer stationed in Thimphu visited 49 schools and identified 40 schools for site readiness to implement the project.

The project engineer also discussed with the Royal University of Bhutan and education ministry on 12 schools and three colleges where the project could be launched.The education ministry is currently processing custom clearances for the equipment to be used for the e-Library.

Once the e-Library is established, training on its use and management will be conducted in September. Content creation for Bhutanese would be initiated from October this year.

Each of the 49 schools will be provisioned with three computers connected through local servers so local content can be accessed and stored.

A central repository is proposed to be located at a data centre in the country, preferably the Thimphu Tech Park, to host the e-Library portal.

In places with poor Internet connectivity, the contents of the local server will be periodically updated with the use of a movable media such as hard drives. The contents will also be accessible by users on their own devices outside the e-Library section using Wi-Fi facility.

The e-Libraries will also be facilitated with televisions so that content can be broadcasted to students. While each schools would be given three computer, each of the 12 tertiary institutes will be provided with five computers.

The e-Library will also have a studio to create digital content for digitalising books, documents and audio-video, which will also be connected to central repository to upload contents to the library’s portal either with use of internet or movable data.

Meanwhile, the purchase order for supply, installation and commissioning of IT hardware for the central repository, colleges, schools and studio has been placed. The vendor is processing to dispatch hardware from India and Singapore. Delivery and distribution of IT hardware to all locations in Bhutan would be done between June-July this year.

Tempa Wangdi