ROLE OF COMPUTER AND TELECOMMUNICATIONTECHNOLOGY IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL·INFORMATION COMMUNICATION GRID

The inevitable r9£e of the preBent-daytechnologieB like computers, telecommunication,Lnol-udinq eat el l-i.teconrnmication, etc. has-been8tr~B8ed to handle the ever-growir~ mass of infor-mahan and data and to move it from one point toanother. Some of the on-line information networkshave been dealt with. Some of the developmentsand trendB along this direction in India are alsogiven.

I. NEED FOR COMPUTER AND TELECOMMUNI-CATION FACILITIES

The rapid growth of literature in its varietyof forms has forced the infocrats to give a secondthought to handle and transfer the info r rrrat ion anddata. Conventional methods are no longer effectivein coping with the ever-growing mass of informationarid data. Obviously, there is an urgent need fordeveloping powerful techniques to move infor rna.t ionfrom one point to another in order to s a t is fv theinc r e a s ing information needs both expeditiousl v a ndeconomically.

Today the information to be handled appearsin a variety of forms, namely, journal articles, con-

ference proceedings, technical reports, patents, dethat too at the rate of about 2,50,000 ite rns pe r vc a r ,a s in the field of Ag r icn It ur a l Sciences and technologyalone. Ii this information has to be brought to thenetice of co nce r ne d people, the storage and retrievalmethods must be such that they can keep pace withth is torrent of information flow. Computer is theoril y device to' manage this work because of its highspeed processing capability of large amount of in-formation. For example, International Info r rria t ionSystem for Agricultural Sciences and Technology(AGRIS), at the international level and CAN /SDI, atthe national I••vel a r e computer based. Computerprocessing is particularly stressed in the handlingof data because the selectivity of pertinent data isdifficult for manual information system. The dataservice plans of the cornrnittee On Data for Scienceand Technology (CODATAi and the National Inf'o r ;matics Centre, Electronics Commission, Delhi, arecomputer based. The present computer technologyoffers a 30"!. eoa t reduction every year and 10'10increase in processing capability.

Vol. Z6 Nes 1-4 (Mar - Dee) 1979

M.K. DHIRENDRA RAO

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research LibraryHonri Bhabha Road, BonDay - 400 005

The trend today is to interlink the existingand future information systems, services and sourcesat national and international levels. The UNISISTprogramme could not have been envisaged but forthe possibility of having interactive infor mat ion re-trieval systems of interconnected corn.pute r networks.The primary objective of telecommunication systemis to provide free access to global knowledge. Itprovides more convenient and ti.rnely access toinformation/data. Telecommunication facility notonly offers more selectivity but also covers moreexhaustively. Telecommunication techniques thuspromise to improve both the efficiency and effe ct ive ,ness of scientific and technical communication.

2. IMPACT OF COMPUTER AND TELECOMMUNI-CATION TECHNOLOGIES ON INFORMATIONHANDLING

The corn me nda ble developments in the fieldsof computer technology, telecommunication in cIudingsatellite communication, micrographics, photo-composition etc. are now promising methods ofhandling the vast amount of information and data.The advent of electronic computer has certainlyprovided a new dimension to the process of informa-tion storage, processing, retrieval and d is s e rn ina »

t iori, the beginning of which is represented by theestablishment of data ba ee s in machine readableform. There are more than 200 computerised databases in existence today. Some of the popularmachine readable data bases in the field of scienceand technology are: CA CONDENSATES for chemistryand Chemical Engineering; BA PRE VIEWS forBiological Sciences; COMPENDEX for Enginee ring;INSPEC for Physics, Electrotechnology, Computerand Control: 'v1EDLARS for Medical Sciences; lNISfor Nuclear Sciences; NASA for Aerospace Sciences:AGRIS for Agricultural Science ar.d Te ch nol ogv andSCI (Science Citation Inrie x}. These data oases canbe utilized to provide current awarenesS service andretrospective literature sea r ch

Developments in computer science andtelecommunication technology has made the ·\ongdistance on-line real-time information retrievalpossible. For example, LOCKHEED DIALOG of

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IlURENDRA RAO

.:Iy.tema Development Corporation (SDC), NationalLibrary of Medicine (NLM) located in the USA andESRIN, Frascati, Italy hold a number of nata baseswhich can be accessed on-line by users throughterminals located at distant centres.

Another area where considerable work isgoing on is the development of adequate telecommu-nication net-works for data transmission. National,Regional and International Information Networks arein existence and also being developed. The nationalnetworks are CAN 10LE, ISIS, LIBRIS etc. Theregional networks are UDCS, Q/L - Systems. In-ternational networks are DIALOG anrl ORBIT.These networks avail of satellite communicationfacilities.

2.1. RECON-Remote Console On-Line InformationRetrieval System.

RECON (Remote Console) is an interactiveinformation retrieval system, developed by Lock-heed Aircraft Corporation, U. S. A. for NASA, whichallows the user to formulate simple or complexsearch requests via a v id e o zke vboa r d -lis pt a vterminal which is coupled to the Space Documenta-tion Service (SDC) IBM 360/65 Computer in theFrascati, Italy. The system P" r rn it s the user toretrieve instantaneously information held in EuropeanSpace REsearch Information Centre (ESRIN).

The RECON network co ve r s 10.000 K\1 andh a s 76 t e r rn in a l n~des all over Ku r op c (See Appendix1 for Geographical Distribution of prE sent RECONNetwork). The ESR IN Centre has at pre sent 19 databases and p r-ovid e s ac ce s s to ove r 8 million referen-ces in s c ie nc e and technology. The monthly additioncomes to s om e 1 DO, 000 r e fe r ence s , Some of thedata ba s e s covered are NASA, CA Co nd ens at e e ,INSPEC, COMPENDEX, NSA, the EnvironmentAbstracts, and SCI.

2.2. 'AEDLINE-'v1EDLARS ON-LINE

This system was develop. d by the U. S.National Library of Medicine (NLM) in Bethesda,Maryland. The sy~tem p r ov id e s use r s with l ist sof bibliographic c it at ion s and other informationfrom a computer readable data ba se of s om e 800, oDecitations of Biomedical literature.

MEDLINE was started on 29 Octob{'r 1971,a s a nationwide rapid a cc e s s r e ference retrievalservice for the b io rrrcd ica l communities in the U. S. A.and abroad. Today, the 'v1EDLINE i s among the'most used orr-.l in e retrieval systems. In the U. S. A.eom e 800 centres Use this on-line se r v ice . On anaverage, 25 users are s imu lt an e ou s l y s e rv ed. Thesystem has capacity for providing on-line concurrentservice to 50 us e r s , There are two MEDLINEnode.s in Europe.

With advances in telecommunication techno-logy, the national biomedical network has been

22

extended internationally with the establishment oiTYMSHARE nodes in Paris and London so thatdirect ae c e s s to NLM computer is made possiblevia this Iht)cage. MEDLARS centres are located inAustralia, Canada, France, Japan, Sweden, theUnited Kindom and Federal Republic of Germany.An international Organisation, the .W'otld HealthOrganisation (WHO) is also connected to MEDLARS(see Appendix 2: International Data CommunicationNetwork for MEDLINE).

At the NLM, MEDLINE is operated on anIBM 370/155 computer. The data base and theassociated indexe s are stored on IBM 3330 disk units.Telephone and network connections are handled byan IBM 2703 communication controllers, which hasover 80 data line s from the Bell Telephone Network,t he Federal Telephone sy s te m , the TeletypewriterExchange Network, and the TY'v1SHARE network.

2.3. ARPANET-Advcnced Research Project AgencyNetwork. .

The ARPANET is 2 de cent r al iae d d ist r ibut ednetwork configuration. It is composed of about 25computers at r-ese s r eh centres scattered throughoutthe Uni t ed States. Although the nodes of th e ARPAN-ET are connected to e zch other directly or indire-ctly, no single compute r serve s as the centralprocessor in this network.

2.-4. EURONET ~ European Community Network.

T'his is under development for providinga c ce s e to scientific, t e chrric a l , social and e c o n o rn icinformation. A joint working group was e st a bl is he d inearly 1976 to study rnr ana of co-operation betweend at a ba s e supp Iie r s and ho st computer op e r at rr onEtJPONET. 'I is expected that by about mid!" '.8OO'It 100 riot ba se e will be av a il a ble or. cl inr- ~ou~

I'l'RONET. (See Appendix 3 for the propose'; ; e le ;communications Network for EURONET).

A Si e rne , 3 7.7-40 rrrachi ne is pre s e.ntly be inginstalled in the, orn rrris s ion computer centre inLuxe rnb ou rg to oper at e primarily a~ a ho st computerwithin EURONFT.

3. SOME H.FCi-NT ADVANCES IN COMMUNI_CATION Tl CHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT ONINFORMA'IION TRANSFER SYSTE'v1S.

revelopments in the field of t e le co m rnurri c at ;ion tt chnology have made it p os s ib le to developeoph ist ic at ed t r ans rn is s ion s y st e rn s , In the recentpast. optical fibre cable has been developed andu sed to t r a n s m it in Io r rrixt ior, in digital form. Asingh' g l as s fibre, of 20 rnic r ons d i.ame t e r , cant r an s rn it I x 109 bib P' r second. It is believed thatby 1990 a cable of s uc h gL.s~ fibre could be usedcommercially to t r an s m it information from onepi" ce to another.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

T'e chno log ica 1 pro~ re 1111 in telecommunicationhall resulted in many new applications inv o lv ingcombination of voice, data and d Isp lay , In a numberof countries, modified video-phone terminals havebeen used for face to face conference, and documentt r arre m ia e io n. It has been predicted that the visualdisplay unit would have considerable impact on thetransfer of information. Some of the visual displayunits provided with keyboards are used in the busi-ness world as interactive terminals with a computer.Terminal devices such as light pencil/pen containingphoto-sensitive cells are also coming into f xtensiveuse.

Two recent developments in the telecommuni-cation systems are fascimile and videophone. F'a s ci-,mile telegram requires 15-20 minute s to transmita document over a telephone line. The ultrafast f a s c i-mile needs only 2-3 second" for the transmission ofdocument 21 x 29 cm in size. Videophone operatesin realtime which rn e a n s that within 1/25 of 8 secondboth voice and image is transmitted.

Existing terminal devices such as telephoneshave been modified to !!live better information trans-fer. As an e xa rrip l r d ia l system of t e lephone h"sbe e n modified to have push-buttons to carry thenu m er i c s l infor n . tion. It has been fo r e c s s t t h at

within c e r t a in limitations. it would be possible tointroduce a Ip h , _numeric c ap eb il it y by the provisionof additional buttons.

Remote sensing technology with its f a s t e s td a t a gathering and capability of surveying 1arg' are".in short time "pan, co upl e d with high speed e l e ct r nn i•..computer d at t processing e-t c , has grf. at pot ent io l forthe analysis, int e rp r et xt io n and updating of in Io r rnat ,ion ne c e e s a r y for optimal planning. man'-g.'m"nt. andm aintainance of in fo r rn at io n resources.

Advances in communication technology ha s ledto the development of specialized info r m at io n t r , n s Ie r-c o rnmu nic at ion s y s t e m s , which are more us e r c-o r ie nt ,ed. These systems are expected to be d e s ig nrd foran on-line interactive mode operation with the userin a f ie Id (not an information spec ia l is t ) clearly inmind. Future on-line systems would be o r ient edtow a r d s natural lang uag e rather then co nt r o llr dv ocaou l a r ie s and would require much less e-f'Io rt onthe part of the user. It is envisaged that the systemswould include facilities for error co rnpe n sat ion ,a ud iovv ide o cd i ep l ay and touch panel devices. Pnotherfuture possibility is the use of domestic T. V. receiv-er. in home or office. as terminals that can be usedto query remote d at a b a se s , It is also likely thatone will see increa sed emphasis in the future on thesystems that will provide on-line support to personalfiles.

4. INDIAN EXPERIENCE

In the recent past India has become a c t ivein utilizing computer for information and datil

Vol. 26 Nos 1-4 (Mar - Ded 1979

handling. SOTne of the or~anisatione which areknown to be doing some useful work in computerisedinformation h"ndling are: Tata Institute of Fundamen.tal Re s e s r c h (TIFRl. Bombay; Bhabha .AtomicResearch Centre (BARC), Bombay; Indian NationalScientific Documentation Centre (INSDOC). Delhi;Docu~entation Re s e a r c h and Training Ce nt r e t Dlt T'C]Bangalore; Physical Research Laboratory (PRL),Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Technology (II'n.\,1adras; .a nd National Informatics Centre. Delhi.

4.1 India's Participation in the InternationalInformation Systems.

India has been participating in the Inter-national Nuc l e a r Information Sy st e rn (INIS) rightfrom the beginning of its inception. May 1970.BARe. Bombay. is the national inputting cent refor the INIS. INIS lays strong emphasis on themaximum possible computerisation for informationhandling in a highly d e c ent r a l is e d set.,up for bothinput control and retrieval operations.

Indian Council of Agricultural Research(ICARl. Delhi. is the national inputting centre forboth the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)Projects. ViP., International Information Systemfor Agricultural Sciences and Technology (AGRIS)and Current A~ricultural Research InformationSystem (CPRJS'.

4.2 Computer-Based National SDI Service UsingC"m.nl rcial Data Ba ses

Under the UNISIST Programme.the CanadianGovp.rnment offered to assist Un e s co rne rnb er- stateswho wish to establish a computer based nationalSDI s yat c m along the lines of CAN/SDI Soft w a r e,Ba.ed on this offer an experimental p r o je ct usingCAN/SDI software and CA CONDENSPTES data basewas c a r r ir- d out at IIT. Madras, using IBM 370/155c orn put e r during 1975-76. The project was s upp o rt ;ed by UNESCO/UNISIST. The CHEM/SDI s e r v ic ein now being continued by INSDOC under the NISSATprogramme. The scope of the service has beene nha nce d by incl ud ing INSPEC A &. B data basesand by increasing t he number of user pr o fi l r s toabout 300. M ore data b a s c s such as COMPENDEX,Biological Abstracts. USGRA et c are planned to beadded in fut ur e.

4.3 On-Line pccess to For<-i~n Data Bases.

In order to d e m on s t r a te the possibility ofintroducing on-line interactive information retrievals y st ern s u.ing t c le c orn rnun ic at ion f ac il it ie s in thedeveloping countries, UNESCo/UNISlST spo nsor cdin Ind ia , in September 1976. a p r o je ct Viz .•'!':SRINiRECON On-Line Dem on at r at ion Project-l in kirig to world source. of information.". It waso r gan is e d by the De pa r t rn c-nt of Science and Techno-logy (DSTj, Overseas Communication Service(OCS). TIFR. BARC and INSDOC. Use of the s a te L,

23

OOIRENIJRA RAO

lite communication link between Bombay and RomeWas made for the demonstration. A special tele-communication link to carry data transmission at4800 bps was laid between oes building, Bombayand TIFR for the project by the P & T Department.'Five terminals were set up at TIFR, Bombay link-ing the ESRIN computer. Of these, two terminalswere provided with video screens and high speedon-line printers, while three of them were rne r e"d ial c up Lt e r m in al s , The successful demonstrationhas lea d to a proposal to install a permanent on-line terminal at Bombay and Delhi.

CONCLUSION

Today Librarians and Documentalists are inthe midst of an intellectual and technological r evolut »

ion. Future Libraries and Information Centres willbe the Communication Centres developed not solelyfor independent use but to function as nodes in nat ion.a I and international networks. Moreover the hand-ling of information and data has become mo r-e spe c ia-l is ed and the capability of the older approaches tos e rve the new require me nt s ha II d imin ishe d , Adap-tation to new me t hod s and technologies is the onlysolution to keep in consonance with the needs of theu s e r s .

REFERENCES

1. Euronet News, .August J 976, Issue No.2.

2. Kumar, S.K. and Kamath, V.A.: Access toworld bibliographic data bases and ESRINIRECON onc l ine demonstration in India. AnnLib Sci Doc. 1976, 23(3). 205-212.

3, Kumar, S. K. and Rag hav e ndr a Rao, M. K.:Mod er n trends in information transfer andcommunication systems- need for traininginformation personnel in this area. To bepresented at the Seminar on National Planfor Education and Training of Libraries/Information Science Personnel, Lucknow,1978.

4. Ne e la rne ghan A: Information s y s tem a anda ct iv it irs of organisations in the UN Sy:stern.Lecture not os for Third DST Course inDocumentation and Information Services,BARC, Bombay, Sept. 6-21, 1976.

5. Neelameghan A : \1EDLINE. Presented atthe Seminar on Ac c e s s to Bibliographic .DataBases, Bombay, J8 Sept. 1976.

6. Parthasarathy S: Modern trends in infor-mation processing. Presented at the Seminaron Ac ce s s to Bibliographic Data Bases,Bombay, 18 Sept. J 976.

APPENDIX 1

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Geographical ~istr ibut io"... or Present R[a:rv~twf.'E.!<.

Ann Lib Sci Doc

Int s r nat ion,,] Data COMmunJcal icn f,lolwork for I"EDLINE

KEY:6 Concontrators

A Rooole Concentrator

'6' Hod., (Ilet.ork Swl-~ :chlng Cenlre s]

~~8 Kbl" per second-- 9.6 Kblts por .oc.

ProposeD relacommunicdti.cns Uel:work for EUIlI'NET-------.-.-.---~-- - - - - - ----

Vol. 26 NOB 1-4 (Ma r M De c I 197'!

APPElI.'DIX 2

'APPENDIX 3

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