Panjab University : Web Portal for Chemistry

Most universities subscribe to thousands of databases, e-journals and e-books

each year, but their usage is relatively low. This is compounded by the poor

design of many library websites. Most university students say that they use the

Internet for information search more than the library. To give a bird's eye view

of various resources on a specific subject a single window service was

conceptualized. The aim of this Chemistry portal was to provide information

related to chemistry and allied subjects, through a single user interface to

access a wide variety of electronic resources subscribed by the university

library and other scholarly information in the field available in full text on

the web.

After surfing continuously on Internet for almost two months they collected

scholarly information related to chemistry through Internet. After that a

well-structured Chemistry portal was designed for the Chemistry department and

is available at http://www.library.puchd.ac.in/chemistry.html. This portal

contains information about online databases, e-journals, e-books, thesis and

dissertations, conferences, patents, standards, etc. which is either subscribed

by Panjab University Library or freely available on the web. All students,

research scholars and faculty members of Chemistry and allied subjects will get

benefited by this portal. Taking cue from this portal, such portals in other

subject fields are also in the plans. The main benefit is to the researchers who

might be working in some other institution in the same subject field (as the

portal is available on the website of the university and thus can be accessed by

anyone).