From the Chairman's Desk

A LETTER TO THE WEBSITE USERS

Sometime back I met the man who invented the 'mouse' which every computer user handles every day. You may imagine how this impacted my imagination, because it is truly quite an experience to meet a man who conceptualized and invented a machine I use daily. This meeting took place at a conference on 'the computer and the future of work' to which I was invited on account of my interest in labour history (it was held at the IBM research center in Almaden near San Jose, California; see www.almaden.ibm.com/institute/2004). The interesting thing I learned was that the inventor, Douglas Engelbart, was a total amateur, a radio operator in the United States army in World War II. And that he did it, as he told me, chiefly to make it easier to communicate with his friends.

The questions which cross my mind when I recall this experience are: Do we indeed make the fullest use of the internet for easy and instant communication, the way Douglas Engelbart first made it possible? Are not the opportunities to communicate with the community which shares our interest far greater than what we implicitly assume? When we talk of transparency in institutions and decision-making, do we fully utilize the potentials of the internet? To my mind the answers to these questions are, No, Yes and No. This can be said of most of the websites in India, specially those emanating from governmental agencies. This is worrying.

This website has played an important role till now in making very useful information available. What can be done to facilitate more efficiently to communicate information to its users, to ensure transparency, and to create a community of shared intellectual interests? Does this website serve the purpose it ought to serve? We will like to obtain from the users of this website their opinion. For instance: What are the bytes of information which will be useful to include in the website? Will it be useful to include a bibliographic guide to recent publications, monographs and articles in major research journals and in India and abroad, in the area of Indian history? Is it a good idea to carry in the website information of interest to professional historians and teachers, e.g. announcement of conferences, travel grants, various advisories of the University Grants Commission regarding syllabi, etc.? We already include in the website the ICHR Newsletter which is also sent in hard copy to numerous subscribers; should we also make available to our users the electronic version of the recent numbers of the Indian Historical Review on the internet?

It will be useful to pose to the users of this website questions such as these. We propose to circulate to them a questionnaire (I recently proposed a similar questionnaire to the readers of the ICHR research journal, The Indian Historical Review). The website of the ICHR will carry the questionnaire to enable readers to respond to the questionnaire by e-mail. (No anonymous comment will be accepted by our office). This feedback will help us to design the website and to consider the future course of its development.

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Chairman
Indian Council of Historical Research.