Multi-lingual library opens at PU

LAHORE
Punjab University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran Monday inaugurated indigenously developed Multi-Lingual Library and Information Management System for the university.
The inaugural ceremony was attended by Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran while Chief Librarian Haseeb Ahmed Paracha, Additional Registrar-I Kamran Abid and others were present on the occasion.
Giving a detailed briefing, Chief Librarian Mr Paracha said that Punjab University Library was engaged to automate its services since 2001 and initially a UNESCO developed database “Windows Integrated System of Information Services (WINISIS)” was used to record the English language material of the library. He said that in 2005, WINISIS was replaced successfully with another house made software named as “Multilingual Library and Information Management System (MLIMS)”. He said software had the facility of recording the library material available in oriental languages i.e. Urdu, Arabic, Persian etc. as well as English language. He said software also provided the facility of computerised circulation system for library users.
He said that in 2013, the university administration tried to acquire some other library software available in the market in order to automate its acquisition and serials management processes and for import/export of its bibliographic records along with some necessary reports. For this purpose, he stated, features of KOHA and VIRTUA (International fame Library Softwares) were examined in detail but none of them could fulfill the particular requirements of the library. He briefed that in this situation, library administration decided in 2015, after its several staff meetings and keeping in view the eight years good performance of MLIMS to develop an upgraded version of MLIMS named as MLIMS Version 2.0 with the support of I.T development team of MLIMS. He said database for new version of MLIMS V.2.0 had designed on latest versions of MS-SQL Server to keep millions of bibliographical records. MLIMS 2.0 follows international standards such as MARC 21 bibliographic format; Unicode based Universal Character Sets for multilingual bibliographic records. He said that this version had six modules Acquisition module, Technical Processing/Cataloguing, Circulation Module, Serials Management, OPAC and WEB OPAC and Stock Taking. Dr Mujahid Kamran congratulated the software development team and the chief librarian for achieving this milestone.