The Information Services Centre (ISC) obtains ISO 9001 Certification

Posted on 2006.11.03

The Information Services Centre (ISC) of the ITI obtained certification to ISO 9001:2000 Quality Management System on 3rd August 2006, and was officially awarded the certificate at a ceremony held on 16th October 2006. This was the first library to receive this certification, the SLSI library having obtained certification to the 1994 standard, which is now obsolete.

Being the information arm of one of the leading multidisciplinary research institute in Sri Lanka, the ISC has to keep up with the new trends in the library and information field, while aligning itself with the activities of the Institute as a whole. With the setting up the Quality Assurance Department, the aspect of quality gained much importance. The ISC commenced work in 2004 and after an arduous two years, their efforts were rewarded.
One of the significant features of this revised standard is the attention paid to the Customer, and the Center was able to streamline its services and provide a more effective service to its own customers by virtue of this standard

Another feature in the standard is the attention paid to Continual improvement of the systems and this coupled with the clause on corrective and preventive action provides the impetus to aim for the delivery of an error free system with new features being added continuously. The need to set targets relating to the objectives set out in the Quality Manual is yet another significant factor in the standard which enables the centre to monitor and measure its performance against the set targets. All in all the adherence to the standard enables the ISC to streamline its services and continuously improve the quality of the service provided to its customers and even helps to build a comprehensive collection of books and other resources.

Through out its half a decade history ISC secured its place as a leader in Scientific and technical and information provision. It was one of the first libraries to computerize its resources, operate an integrated library system, and offer an open access system through the web. It was also the first library to provide an interactive web based library system to its members, wherein they could carry out transactions remotely. To maintain the numerous reprints of scientific articles in an easily accessible manner, electronic filing was resorted to several years ago, and constitutes one of the valuable assets of the library.

The ISC will continue to play its role as a provider of scientific and technical information having always offered its resources freely to the public.