NIT Library | All you need to know about the insides

All the things, apparently, aren’t that apparent. And the thing applies more so to the entity which inherit this capacity either due to its hugeness, intricacy, complexity, convolution, or the simpler one; no one cares to strip open the cloth that hides the truth.

Walking up the 19 steps of the Great SVNITian ‘Central Library’, illuminated beautifully at night by 14 ornamental lamps(two of which don’t light up) you seem to get this same feeling. It’s like entering into Siberia- You know its there, but you exactly don’t know ‘what’s there’. As you stroll through the lines below, you will be surprised, dumbfounded, irritated, and informed. As to what actually lies inside that ‘love’ly building of ours……

So we enter in- you don’t have to be a Stephan hawking to understand that it’s a huge table providing you with the daily information you need in 3 languages and in totality with 8 papers. Walk through the room, give fleeting look to the computers kept (we’ll come back to it). 8 steps up we reach in the ‘MAGAZINES AND JOURNAL SECTION’ .Managed by Mr Atul Panchal, the room sits quiet and calm, housing 170 magazines. But wait!!....what are those stacks and stacks of bound black things, hid by everyone???....resembling the department of mysteries from the remains of Harry Potter’s sets, only the difference, here you have real mysteries on the stacks than prophecies! Ok, they are the bound volume of all the journals that the library ever housed. Take a look (of course with a handkerchief covering your face) and you are sure to be pleasantly surprised. A thing to note here- if you wish to add a magazine of your choice on display, just write an application to our librarian requesting him for the same, the need would be taken care of; if it’s a costly (ahem ahem..) subscription then it would adore the rack from January (yearly budget allocation you see)

Lets move back (of course 8 steps down) to main room, pass the computers again (we’ll come back to it)….pass the beeping gates (we’ll come back to it too). Reach for the basement-the area of our prime interest, either by choice or accident. Now the problem kicks in, you kind of want a needle in grass heap. Run up back to the computers, type in the name by author, by title or any of the five options. ENTER.

The number that you see, is for eg, 623.456 now this no, for a particular book remains constant all over the world. The six hundred series is for technology similarly five hundred for pure science and so on. The number after the decimal is placed taking into account the initials of the author’s name, which is also displayed below. A marvellous system all in all. So we have our stack, and thus the book. New systems are in development to ease the flow of information as to who has a book and so on. Some points to remember.

• Keep the book exactly at the place you took it from after browsing
• Never tamper the page with the tag
• Fine charges are one rupee per day
• Never keep more than three books on the KIOSK machine
• Always ‘EXIT’ don’t ‘LOGOUT’
• Forget for once that the forbidden fruit is the sweetest

Ah, the machine, it is yet another highlight feature, rather its working is. Here goes- you keep the book on the desk, it sense the tag in the book (mind you, it can sense four tags kept one on one-try fooling it now) and deactivates its reflecting properties, thus when you ‘issue’ the book legally and move out, the doors(technically known as RFID- Radio frequency Identification) don’t call for cops (in recent past when it used to, it was actually kept on trial mode) but try once to hoodwink the system and ‘steal’ a book, and you’ll have ‘the right to remain silent!’. One more such machine may adore the place soon.

Now we pick up the most deserted (or the most deserted of the more deserted(?)) region of the library- THE REFERENCE SECTION. If you for a second stand, and ponder near the issuing counter, you’ll notice that a stair leads to the upper level too (it may sound absurd for the people who frequent it, but for those who don’t….well, it’s a discovery). The section is one of the best, with books ranging from tips to bell the CAT, crack GRE, open the GATE and what not things we’ll have to get into. You can know more about India, learn french, german, and English!!-ya with such big dictionaries and sets of encyclopedias…..its a heaven. You also find all the books containing the ‘standard data’ about which we learn in class. The problem is that there is no one around to lend you the book. But we have a solution- when and ever you need a book, get to the staff present below. You’ll be personally escorted, to have your cheese and eat it too.

Coming down once again. We see a board displaying DIGITAL LIBRARY. It’s a place where at given time you do not find more than two people. Enter it, and you enter a world of knowledge. Here goes some lines about the most unused facility of our institute:

www.svnit.ac.in---->central library----->digital library.

TADA!! You see a whole list of big shots. IEEE, springers, wiley’s, ASME et all. You find papers journals, everything you could ever need to support your projects and general engineering needs, for which you always meandered google, and came out empty handed. Some of these papers costs more than 25$ and you have them free!!, the MHRD pays for them. This facility is provided to all the NITs and IITs exclusively. Take up for instance IEEE journal, you enter and log in with your ID and Password that being the same one as you use in CCC. me06647 ******* enter. And there it is, the heading “Welcome SARDAR VALLBHBHAI NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, Surat” . Once you use it you understand what amount of information you have at your disposal. To add to the charm, our librarian sir TB GOSH has created a site of his own, under the tag ‘eprints@svnit’ , I leave it for you explore.

Again some points to remember-

• This facility can be accessed even from CCC (unfortunately not from your hostel rooms)
• Use of pendrive is prohibited in the digital library, get your blank CDs
• It is unfortunate, that many people didn’t know about this, and thus not many hits were recorded, hence its plea- USE IT, atleast if not for yourself then for the people who want it. Or there may be a possibility that the MHRD backs off, and stops the subscription. As it sees itself paying Cores of rupees for thankless herd.
• With some 8000 e-books, 1061 encyclopaedias, 1800+ online journals. What else can we ask for???
• Set up the dgital library page as the homepage of your personal systems

Out of the room, there at the distance of 7 footsteps lies the CD-ROM section. All the disks are copied on the pcs there. The list of the same has been displayed. Come up and for sure have a look. Another thing is the “BOOK BANK” started for the category students, it offers books for a semester and has some 6200 titles.

It would not be fitting if we move out without meeting out dear librarian sir MR Gosh. The person behind all these developments, the man behind all the innovation, which even if unused and unthanked. continued to build up. Once you dig into the things you actually understand what it is to be a librarian. “With a devastating flood we lost 20,000 titles” he expresses his concern “but still we do have 60,000 titles”. One thing that I as student felt- the library is grossly understaffed. With new thousands of books lying just because there is no one to tag them. To this sir replies “there are no problems which can’t be solved, a bit of the co-operation more from the authorities to allot a bit more staff would very well suit all of us”. Point accepted. So here it is, we end our 50 cent tour, one hope which I personally have is- if from we have 30%(?) more public, using the facilties more by 40% (??) then the tree, out of which the paper you currently hold in your hand made, would be thankful and its cutting down would be justified. And hope by a month from now, we don’t have to use a handkerchief while browsing through stacks. “This is your institute, all these things are for you. Own it, use it” and there with the words from the librarian we have our FULLSTOP.