Speakers at an awareness-building workshop stressed the need to increase digital resource usage at both public and private educational institutions.
This awareness and the use of digital resources among universities are expected to expand and accelerate rapidly.
The workshop, held yesterday at Lakeshore Hotel in the capital, was organised by University Grants Commission (UGC), academicians, vice chancellors, co-task team leader of World Bank Dhaka Dr Md Mokhlesur Rahman, and librarians of member universities of the UGC digital library.
UGC chairman Prof Abdul Mannan said: “Today’s event is dedicated to building awareness among learners (both teachers and students) in 41 universities on how to use all the available resources. The traditional way of publishing resources is age-old, having lasted for more than 1,000 years. But now we stand at the threshold of making a big leap from this thousand-year-old service to a new service called e-learning.
“We will spread our technology to the education sector. In 1971, when Bangladesh became independent, the literacy rate was around 30%. Today, you will hardly find one in this country giving a left thumb impression. Everybody knows at least how to sign their name,” he added.
“Enrollment in primary school is now nearly 100%. The dropout rate may still be high, but it is shrinking fast.
In 1972, only 30,000 students studied general to specialised areas in six universities,” the UGC chairman said.
“We have 83 private and 38 public universities, enrolling three million students, of whom 63% study at private universities, a staggering number we achieved in 40 years. The spread is enormous, but the depth of education still has to be achieved. And there is no shortcut toward achieving this depth,” he added.
Regarding the traditional library, Manna said: “Books are very heavy and take up much space, making it an expensive source of resource.”
“Now, many universities, both public and private, have done an extraordinary job by digitising not only the catalogue system, but also the information system.
“UGC has built its own library, open to public and private institutions or research organisations. The library is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year,” he added.
World Bank has been generous in supporting quality higher education. UGC is now handling a $240 million soft loan; the remaining support is from Bangladeshi sources. The contract was signed by the ministry of education, World Bank and UGC for digital resources.
The UGC library aspires to provide high-quality e-content, ensure lower subscription rates, build inter-library collaboration, and add new resources to the platform. 89% of public universities 13% of private Universities are engaged with it.
At the workshop, UGC member Prof Dr Md Akhtar Hossain gave a presentation on “Digital library referring repository of electronic contents in digital formats, retrievable remotely through internet, preservation and conservation of knowledge, provide access of learning materials to HEIs.”
The programme was then followed by a technical session on digital resources.