SDNP News

World Environment Day 2002 Cyber Cafe Programme

A three day cyber cafe will be organized at the National Press Club between June 5th and 7th 2002.

The programme will be organized by the National Press Club in collaboration with the UNDP funded Sustainable Development Networking Programme, (SDNP), Bangladesh on the occasion of the World Environment Day 2002.

There will  be training programme (theoretical and practical) on using internet for press club members during the three day programme.

The Programme Schedule:

June 05:
Inauguration at 10am at Conference Room.
Theoretical and Practical class between 2pm and 4am at hall room.

June 06 and 07:
Theoretical and Practical class between 10pm and 12am at hall room.  

Abdur Rahman Khan
Joint Secretary
National Press Club		 Dr. Hakikur Rahman
Project Coordinator
SDNP Bangladesh

SDNP Developed BSS Web Site

SDNP Bangladesh Web team has developed another professional website for Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS), the government managed news agency in Bangladesh.

The site has been launched on May 5, 2002 by Information Minister Tariqul Islam at BSS premises. The information minister said the BSS was put on the information super highway with the inauguration of its Website. 


 Information Minister Tariqul Islam Inaugurating BSS Website

The BSS Website will contain political and economic news, daily weather bulletin, facts about Bangladesh, life-sketch of the national leaders, news and views of the government and the opposition.

Besides, foreign policy, national investment policy, export and import policy, facts about national culture and heritage, environment, sports and games, politics, trade and commerce, science and technology, tourism, entertainment and news features will be available on the BSS Website.

The Website will also carry breaking news on important events and happenings of the country. It will also accept advertisements to promote services and products from Bangladesh.

The function was also addressed by Professor Emajuddin Ahmed, Chairman, Board of Directors of BSS, and Amanullah Kabir, Chief  Editor and Managing Director of BSS.

Implementation of Virtual Library Information System (VLIS)

Background

SDNP Bangladesh, a UNDP funded project of BIDS (one of the component of SEMP, GoB) has been working to promote sustainable development through information networking. Among many activities, mass information dissemination forms a major task of the project. The project has developed a web site for this purpose with content, data and information related to development activities in Bangladesh.

Apart from these activities, the project has taken an initiative to include available resources from reputed libraries and transform them to be accessible through web. BIDS library has more than 100,000 publications in the form of books, booklets, and journals. This lead the web team of SDNP to develop a virtual library information system (VLIS) and already several libraries have been included in this system.

To promote the product, its usage and include more participants a workshop was held on April 5, 2002 at the BIDS conference room with participants from about 15 organizations. Each organization sent two of their personnel, including the librarian and a personnel actively involved in library database.

The following list includes the name of participating organizations, universities and NGOs:

  • Association of Development Agencies of Bangladesh (ADAB)

  • Bangladesh Public Administrator Training Centre (BPATC)

  • Bangladesh Agriculture University (BAU)

  • Bangbandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agriculture University (BSMRAU)

  • International University of Business, Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT)

  • International Union of Conservation for Nature, Bangladesh (IUCN Bangladesh)

  • Department of Environment, Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF)

  • BRAC University

  • National Press Club

  • Bangladesh Sangbad Shangstha (BSS)

  • International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh  (ICDDRB)

  • Unnayan Shamunnay (US) and

  • Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

AGENDA

The Director General of BIDS welcomed all participants with the welcome address and
inaugurated the workshop.

Then the Project Coordinator of  SDNP informed the participants with the recent success stories of  SDNP Bangladesh and described its networking infrastructure.

The workshop was conducted with two sessions. In the first session, the Chief Librarian of BIDS gave an oversight on "Automation of BIDS Library" to familiarize the participants on the available and largely used library management software, CDS ISIS developed by UNESCO. The presentation and documents include step by step details of BIDS library automation.

In the second session the Web team of  SDNP introduced the "SDNP Virtual Library", its characteristics, facilities and available features. Through VLIS a remote administrator can add, edit and modify databases for efficient searching and any remote user can browse the content without knowing the database platform. For the demonstration, the virtual library has six sets of databases from four organizations.

After the second session, there was an interactive session where the participants discussed about the system, its introduction in their organizations, features for further improvements and other issues. 

The workshop concluded with vote of thanks from the Project Director, SDNP.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The following recommendations came out of the workshop:

  • Establish one or more cyber kiosks in the central public library or similar places in
    addition to the prescribed centres as indicated by the project.

  •   Enter into a long term partnership programme with the Library Association of Bangladesh (LAB). (LAB is organizing a training programme for about 100 librarians from different colleges around the country and SDNP agreed to provide technical assistance to them. In this regard, a batch of 25 librarians participated in a demonstration session on April 11, 2002 at SDNP training room).

  • Include more organizations in the database (a few of the participants including ICDDRB agreed to host their library database in the virtual library.

  • Held similar interactive workshops at regular interval with involvement of diversified organizations with library facility and assist them to computerize their library database utilizing available software like, CDS ISIS.

  • Develop a complete library management system to be used by all libraries.

For further information send mail to vlis@sdnbd.org

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