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The purpose of this paper is to provide online access to valuable resource, i.e., rare books, institutional publications, historical reports, theses, success stories, etc. to the researchers, teachers, extension specialists, farmers and scientists working in the ICAR institutes and state agricultural universities.

Using open source software, the material in the repository was organized into institution-wise collection of documents such as books, journals, theses, reports, articles, etc. The process of digitization including scanning, cleaning, cropping, conversion to text (OCR), conversion to PDF/A, is currently being done at four different centres. So far, more than ten million pages from 19,495 documents have been digitized along with the necessary metadata.

The “KrishiKosh” is a collaborative project which envisages launching an Indian agricultural knowledge portal over the internet and sharing its research information including Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) with the rest of the world using latest information and communication technologies.

Users are able to access any information they want, from anywhere in the world, and at any time over the internet. It also culminated in launching of an Indian agricultural knowledge portal over the internet for sharing its research information including ETD with the rest of the world using the latest information and communication technologies.

The agricultural research community will have access to the vast amount of rare and precious literature to further research and developments in agriculture and allied sectors to achieve self-sufficiency in food production.

While the population of the country is heading towards 1.23 billion, Indian agricultural scientists are engaged in increasing the food grain production to address the food security challenge. The importance of agricultural production in the context of global competition has occupied a significant place in the national development plan. It helps to provide right information, in right time at right place to increase the agriculture production.

The Indian agricultural knowledge portal over the internet for sharing its research information including ETD among agriculture policy makers, scientists, etc. using latest ICT. The portal helps to avoid duplication and to acquire more resources to the agriculture knowledge centres.

The purpose of this paper is to critically analyse the Electronic Theses and Dissertation (ETD) repository creation efforts by various institutions in India and also analyse whether the guidelines issued for depositing ETDs by various government bodies in India are sufficient to implement the ETD submission nationwide.

The paper is the result of the analytical evaluation of the Indian digital repositories especially ETD repositories and the guidelines issued by various government bodies for acceptance of ETDs. To obtain a complete picture of the Indian ETD repositories literature review was conducted, browsed the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) and Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR), since these do not include all the Indian ETD repositories snowball technique was followed. Many of the sites were inaccessible during the study, they are discussed either on the basis of the earlier accessed record or the available literature.

Though in India University Grants Commission (UGC, 2005) and other government bodies have issued guidelines for ETD submission and UGC (in 2009) made it mandatory for all the universities to deposit a copy of the thesis submitted, in the National ETD repository, i.e. Shodhganga, yet the universities do not seem very serious about this issue so far. The study of the ETD repositories of most of the Indian universities and higher level institutions reveals that most of them are busy with the government-funded projects of retro-conversion of the PhD theses piled up in their libraries and have not taken sufficient steps for accepting the current ETD and ETD creating facilities for the researchers.

The Indian universities may expedite the process of accepting the current ETDs and plan training and workshops for the researchers, faculty, theses evaluators and librarians to make them aware about their respective responsibilities.

The Indian researches will be accessible globally resulting in the acceptability and implementation of the research findings for the society and will help in avoiding duplication of research, which means judicial utilization of the public funds, as mostly the research in India is funded by the government.

The literature survey about the ETDs in Indian libraries revealed that almost every article describes the availability of the ETDs and define the ETDs decoratively. All the existing repositories are not exhaustive and contain only retro theses, which neither anybody has tried to evaluate nor stressed on the need of starting accepting the current ETDs. This paper analyses the available collections in ETD repositories and policy provisions for ETD acceptance and also tries to identify the unclear issue before the Indian universities regarding accepting current ETDs.

This paper aims to examine the grey literature (GL) in National Digital Library of India (NDLI) with particular reference to synopsis, thesis, report and patent.

The National Digital Library of India (NDLI) was used to collect data from types of text content. After filtering text content, learning resource type was refined and four kinds of GL were randomly selected for further analysis in MS Excel.

As a primary source of information, a huge number of GL available in text form, in which the availability of reports are maximum, are selected. In NDLI, the majority of the selected grey resources, e.g. report, thesis, synopsis and patent, are open for access. It also discloses the significance of Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), from where majority of GL resources were extracted and the maximum number of resources is available in the English language.

GL is regarded as a valuable primary source of locally generated information. No such study was carried out specifically regarding NDLI. Besides, this study aids to understand the archiving method of GL. These findings also help the users to filtering or sorting out to access accurate information sources.

This case study outlines the marketing, strategic and organizational issues facing the ever-expanding agri-inputs market in India, through the perspective of Agroy – an agri-products company. This case can be used to assist in the teaching courses such as marketing management, rural marketing, business strategy, operations and logistics management, among others, for students of MBA or other specialized courses in management. The case has been developed to make students aware and to understand the arduous nature of setting up a company catering to the huge Indian agri-inputs market. This case delves into the complexities of marketing in rural India that is characterized by low technological awareness, low volumes of digital transactions and immense language barriers. The Indian agricultural market is huge and has undergone a considerable amount of change owing to competition among multinational companies and traditional local micro-retailers. This case discusses the various challenges faced by multinational companies in entering India and how they need to strategize to modify their Western model of a distribution channel which faces huge challenges when put to test in India. Specific learning outcomes include: the case study would help students to comprehend the new business strategies that an MNC could adopt in emerging markets. Some companies work on changing traditional and conventional value chains of activities to fit the emerging market customer’s best and hence companies needs to figure out a unique business model to compete in emerging markets. This case study gives readers the opportunity to think about strategy in an uncertain environment. The case illustrates the challenges associated with innovating new business ideas that would help the company serve a greater number of people from a diverse background. It highlights the importance of thinking about real options, a portfolio of projects and the type of organizational structure required to tackle the uncertainties associated with foreign companies aiming to enter the Indian market. It also explores marketing and distribution issues – which are the type of customers to target and which are the suitable geographic areas with suitable linguistic compatibility in which there shall be ease in doing business. Finally, it is an avenue for students to think about the changes necessary throughout the distribution channel to successfully implement and commercialize a project in rural India. The case is intended to work well as a learning tool for strategy implementation where uncertainty is inherent and as an application to lectures on real options and risk or for discussions related to marketing and distribution channels and its challenges.

The Indian agricultural market plays an important role in India’s economy having a staggering 58 per cent of rural households depending on it as the principal means of livelihood. However they have very small landholdings, and hence, they find it difficult to order either large quantities or in bulk, as a result of which the cost of agricultural inputs gets enhanced. Agroy, an MNC, is one of the many companies that have stepped in to bridge this gap by trying to tap into the huge agricultural market. Agroy aspires to be the “UBER of agriculture.” Agroy is a cloud-based buying platform for farmers to buy agri-inputs efficiently at scale and at the best price from around the world. With big data and smart farming, the company aims to enhance farm sustainability and productivity. Agroy’s competitors like Agro Star and Big Heart also have similar business models and hence the competition is stiff. The three debatable questions that the case poses are: Will Agroy be able to shatter the age-old loyalty that Indian farmers have toward local retailers and other Indian companies that have an existing strong foothold in the market? Will similar distribution models as practiced in developed Western countries work in India, given the distribution challenges in deep rural Indian hinterland? Will Agroy be able to create sustainable business models by marketing agri-inputs at low prices in India?

MBA in courses such as entrepreneurial marketing, strategic marketing, agricultural marketing.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the level of awareness and usage of open source digital repository software (DRS). The paper also studies the factors, which influence the level of awareness and usage of different open source DRS by academic librarians in India.

The study administered an online questionnaire to academic librarians in India to know their level of awareness and usage of open source DRS. The questionnaire aimed to gather the awareness and usage of open source DSR. In total, 374 complete responses were collected from academic librarians in India and the collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Moreover, Fishers’ exact test was used to identify whether factors i.e. qualification and participation in workshop/seminar influence the level of awareness and usage of open source DRS.

The results of the study reveal that the level of awareness and usage of open source DRS, namely, DSpace (Mean = 2.92, SD = 0.906) and Greenstone digital library software (GSDL) (Mean = 2.18, SD = 0.699) are high amongst the academic librarians in India. In total, 33.4%, 11.5% of the participants are using DSpace and GSDL, respectively, on regular basis. Fishers’ exact test shows that factor(s) i.e. qualifications and participation in workshop/seminar affect the level of awareness and usage of open source DRS. The results show that there exits strong relation between participation in workshop/seminar and awareness and usage of DSpace (Fishers’ exact test = 13.473, p < 0.05).

This paper is the new type of study exploring level of awareness and usage of open source DRS by academic librarians in India. It identifies the factors that affect the awareness and usage of open source DRS. It is the first study to analyze the statistical significance between Indian librarians’ participation in workshop/seminar and their level of awareness and usage of different open source DRS.

This paper aims to examine how health consciousness, perceived nutrition of cereals, hedonic eating values and utilitarian eating values would influence consumers’ attitudes towards cereal consumption, willingness to pay for cereals, actual consumption of cereal products, cereal product consumption satisfaction and continuance of cereal consumption.

The research embraced a quantitative approach. The examination was completed in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa (SA). A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 380 Generation Z consumers of cereal products. Structural equation modelling analysis was used using the smart partial least squares software to test the hypothesized model.

The results uncovered that the study variables were significantly associated, and surprisingly, the relationship between hedonic eating values and attitudes towards cereal consumption was found to be insignificant. It was also found that attitudes toward cereal consumption positively and significantly mediated the relationship between health consciousness and willingness to pay for cereals, perceived cereal nutrition and willingness to pay for cereals, hedonic eating values and willingness to pay for cereals and utilitarian eating values and willingness to pay for cereals.

This research adds new, fresh knowledge to the established body of knowledge on cereal consumption behaviour. This area has had little research attention in developing African countries like SA.

This paper aims to explore how team processes relate to employee team learning that leads to innovation in higher education (HE) and provides leaders with an adaptable model with recommendations for implementation.

This research was guided by theories of experiential learning, action learning and organizational learning, as well as change theory and design thinking. The process and results are grounded in mixed methods action research including document analysis, interviews, observations and surveys. Team-level data were analyzed using content analysis, process analysis, frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha and Wilcoxon signed-rank.

Universities struggle to prioritize proactive approaches to serving students. This research indicates teams engaging in frequent welcoming, ideating, synthesizing and mentor-seeking behaviors developed higher quality and more innovative proposals for organizational improvement when compared with teams engaging in these behaviors less often. Team member individual innovative ability increased at a statistically significant level after participation.

This research is based on one HE setting in the USA.

The model used in this study could be adapted to fit a variety of contexts especially in HE. Findings could inform training development to facilitate team learning that leads to innovative action.

This study adds to the existing learning organization and HE administration literature by expanding on the role of team behaviors in effective team learning by considering team processes over time. This research adds to a paucity of literature related to employee team learning in HE.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce PDF/A to replace TIFF as the preferred file format for digitization of textual documents. In addition, PDF/A can be used as an open archival information system (OAIS) submission information package (SIP) container to reduce digitization and digital preservation costs.

The author first reviewed the current digitization guidelines, the OAIS model and provides on an overview of the development PDF and PDF/A as international standards. Then literature review of the uses of PDF/A is presented. The author analyzed pitfalls of TIFFs as the preferred format for digitization, and showed how to use PDF/A to code digitization SIP.

TIFF file format has been the preferred master file format by Federal Agency Digitization Guidelines Initiative digitization guidelines for the past 20 years. However, there are drawbacks of TIFF format. Literature reviews show that PDF/A has been the preferred standard for coding born-digital documents in court, government and business sectors. PDF/A-2 and PDF/A-3 are relatively new standards released after 2010. However, few understood the standards and have utilized the full potentials in digitization. The author shows that PDF/A can be used as an OAIS SIP container.

In order to delivery OAIS SIPs, current practices require a combination of files, directories and various types of metadata. The author shows that PDF/A (PDF/A-2 and/or PDF/A-3) can be a better file format for textual document digitization with coding various types of metadata in extensible metadata platform and arbitrary file/data can be coded in PDF/A-3. These features in PDF/A provide much better ways to deliver SIPs in a cost-efficient manner.

PDF/A has been recognized as the preferred standard for born-digital documents, but it has not been used as the preferred file format for digitized materials. The author recommends that: PDF/A with lossless JPX compressions as the preferred file format; and PDF/A with lossless JPX compressions along with metadata/data as the preferred OAIS SIP container. As a result, the uses reduce costs in digitization and digital preservation and also increase productivity. The author recommends to update the national and international digitization practices using PDF/A.