National Resource Centre

The Network of NIFT Resource Centres is the only Fashion Information System in India serving the fashion professionals, would-be professionals and fashion educators. Its integrated collections of print, visual and creative materials resources are the only systematically documented sources of information available in India for study of international and contemporary Indian fashion. The system is a decentralized network, partially automated and is co-ordinated by the National Resource Centre at NIFT, New Delhi .

The Resource Centres  also provide information services to the design community, industry practitioners and entrepreneurs. The Resource Centre at NIFT New Delhi was established in 1987. The Resource Centres at Chennai, Gandhinagar, Hyderabad , Kolkata and Mumbai were established in 1995, RC at Bangalore was setup in 1997 and that of Raebareli was set in 2007.

Network of Resource Centres                                                                            

- Resource Centre
- Services
- Membership
                                                                        

The National Resource Centre (NRC) acts as the co-ordinating body for the development of all the Resource Centres (RCs) in terms of collection development, manpower planning, information management, infrastructure planning, automation, and standardization. The activities of the NRC include the following:  

NRC does selective collection development for all RCs or any particular RC for special or newly introduced programmes.  

• Consortia subscription print & online databases/journals

NRC manages the NIFT consortium for subscription of print and online databases/ periodicals for all RCs.

• Conservation of rare & fragile materials 

NRC is responsible for basic conservation of rare & fragile print and non-print materials including textiles, costumes, accessories etc. in the collections of all RCs  

• Resource sharing activities & Creation of centralized databases

NRC is responsible for resource sharing activities among the RCs and creation of common databases related to fashion industry eg. National Products & services directory,  Fashion information bank for all RCs.   

• Standardization of activities

NRC formulates general policies for standardization of professional and administrative activities, not requiring local variations, for all RCs on recommendations of the Head Librarians.  

• IT application to Network of RCs

NRC is responsible for the automation of the RCs, that includes selection of software, selection of hardware and networking through WAN.

• Training/Retraining of RC staff

  NRC acts as nodal center for implementation of training programme for RC professionals.

Vision

A Digital Fashion information system  

A Digital Fashion information system is being designed through digitization of the valuable print and non-print collections. Selective digitization of precious reference collections such as slides, news clippings, rare books and photographs of all the resource Centres will be taken up shortly. The entire collection of textiles and costumes spread across the network of RCs are also being digitized into an interactive multimedia format.