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Shirkat
Gah has been maintaining specialized documentation centers at
Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar.
 Lahore
Centre represents one of the most comprehensive collections of
published and unpublished reading material related to women
issues. Through its precious collection the centre aims to
provide a comprehensive perspective regarding women struggles
for empowerment and development programmes and schemes. It
caters the information needs of its internal and external users.
Collection Development
Lahore documentation centre is growing steadily, till November
2005 its collection includes 7900 books, 4370 articles, 1231
periodicals, 594 annual reports, 484 A.V. material and 97 CDs
and 22 Floppy disks, besides general books on gender/women
studies, it also includes Reference books, Bibliographies,
Encyclopedias and Dictionaries, Handbooks, Directories, Reports
of committees, Commissions, Working groups, Census, Laws and
Acts. It has built up an impressive collection of newsclippings
which is heavily used by researchers for current issues like,
role of women in development, environment, reproductive health,
violence against women, women rights, honour killings, karo-kari,
marriage and divorce, dowery etc.
Documentation centre has vast sources of material in form of
Journals / Newsletters / Bulletins received gratis and
purchased. It subscribes 8 foreign 15 local journals and eight
local news papers for clipping on more than 150 subject
headings.
Database
The centre currently maintains DBTEXTWorks database for
easy/speedy storage and retrieval of information. The components
of the database are as under:-
Books
It consists of entries of books, monographs, institutional
publications, government documents, conference proceedings upto
November 2005 entries are 7900.
Articles
This data base comprises entries of selected articles from
Newspapers, periodicals and e-mails etc. These are classified
according to Akshara scheme and total entries are 4370.
Audio-Visual
It comprises entries of video films on women issues, audio
cassettes and CD’s. Total entries are 484 in the database.
Journals
It consists entries of newsletters/journals, gives basic
information about titles along with its holdings, names of
authors, articles and subjects etc. (under process)
Information Services
The centre acts as clearing house of information in area of
gender studies and provides a number of information services to
its users viz. It responds to reference and research queries
through phone/post and e-mail. Literature searches,
Bibliographic services and reprographic services. For current
awareness, “Current Aware Service CAS weekly” is provided to
internal users. It consists of photocopies of content pages of
journals received as gratis or subscribed. Its back files are
maintained for potential users.
Users
The centre essentially caters the information needs of Shirkat
Gah’s internal users but a large number of research scholars,
activists, students, media persons, faculty members of colleges,
universities and other institutions use the centre for their
research projects approximately 300 users annually use the
centre facilities.
Timings
Lahore Documentation Centre remains open five days a week from
Monday to Friday from 9.00 am. to 5.00 pm.
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