NICMAS is always open for the collaborative activities and accept project contracts on the information management of the organisations, institutions. Following paragraphs would give you some examples of previous experiences:

ASFA Coordinating centre for India:

For over a decade, NICMAS has been a ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts) centre. The main responsibility is to monitor the literature on aquatic sciences published in the Indian Journals and other sources. Central Institute of Fishery Technology (CIFT) in India is another such centre for the input. The activities at these centres are coordinated from NICMAS. Every year, a quality input of about 1000 items is sent to ASFA thus making Indian research known to rest of the world.

NISSAT Centre:

Within India, the National Information System for Science and Technology (NISSAT) had recognised this library and its services as the 'National Information Centre' in mid 90s. NICMAS provides user services as a part of the centres activity. Besides, the bibliographic datbase: IndOcean - a database of abstracts was also a product of this activity. NICMAS also developed a website www.indian-ocean.org aiming a gateway to the information on Indian Ocean as a part of this project.

Indian Mangroves database:

NICMAS undertakes the projects in the marine information area. Development and maintenance of a website www.mangroveindia.org is one of such ongoing activity. Development of this database is planned to get over by March 2005 identifying flora and fauna of mangrove ecosystem in India from the literature and providing appropriate information.

Retroconversion of the print ASFA to database and other ASFA related projects:

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) provided an opportunity to convert the bibliographic references in their print journal of the years 1972 and 1974 to a database as per ASFA input standards and methodologies. This work was carried out in a stipulated period and the quality output was submited to the ASFA for their database. This resulted in receiving several projects of analysis and input of the literature published by the ASFA centres on a record basis.

Sharing of expertise:

The staff of this library provides expertise to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of Unesco in their activites in capacity building in developing countries. Participation in the ODINAfrica project of IOC for 20 countries in African continent has brought international recognition to NICMAS. This also opened sustained collaborative efforts in various aspects of marine information management activities.

Development of Digital libraries:

At present, NICMAS is trying to build an inhouse expertise in development of digital libraries. NICMAS is looking for collaboration with the publishers in marine literature especially, relating to Indian Ocean origin and financial support for this activity.

contact: Murari P Tapaswi (murari@nio.org)