New Delhi: The "National Library and Information Services Infrastructure for Scholarly Content (N-LIST)" was formally launched by Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Human Resource Development, here today.

The N-LIST project provides access to more than 2,100 electronic journals and 51,000 electronic books to students, researchers and faculty from colleges and other beneficiary institutions through server(s) installed at the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre.

"Authorized users from colleges can now access e-resources and download articles required by them directly from the publisher's website once they are duly authenticated as authorized users through servers deployed in the INFLIBNET Centre," said an official press release.

Faculty, staff students and researches from colleges covered under section 12B of University Grants Commission (UGC) Act are eligible to access e-resources through the N-LIST project. These colleges are required to register themselves on the N-LIST Website.

Currently, 665 colleges are registered members. Registered colleges are issued Log-in IDs and passwords for their authorized users including faculty, staff, researchers and students. Colleges that are not covered under 2F/12B Act of the UGC may join as N-LIST Associate Members.

The N-LIST Project is being jointly executed by the UGC-INFONET Digital Library Consortium, INFLIBNET Centre and the (INDEST-AICTE) Consortium, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

The project provides for cross-subscription to e-resources subscribed by the two Consortia, i.e. subscription to INDEST-AICTE resources for universities and UGC-INFONET resources for technical institutions.

It also provides access to selected e-resources to colleges. Also present at the launch were Ashok Thakur and Sunil Kumar, Additional Secretaries in the Ministry of HRD and also N.K. Sinha, Amit Khare and Dr. Anita Bhatnagar Jain, Joint Secretaries in the Ministry of HRD.