N V Sathyanarayana, popularly known as Sathya, is an information entrepreneur and the founder of Informatics Limited. He is currently the Chairman and Managing Director of Informatics, a company providing library services and research software.
Sathya is a former Librarian and an Information Scientist turned Information Entrepreneur. He started his professional life as a Library Assistant in Poornaprajna College, Udupi, from 1972-74. Later worked at the Indian Institute of Science from 1974-75 before joining the library at Smith, Kline and French. He left GlaxoSmithKline to join the library at Hindustan Machine Tools. Sathya was heading the libraries in three of the four institutions and it was during this period he conceived the idea of a private company that would help provide information using database tool.
Informatics
He founded and promoted the company Informatics in 1980 to develop and market information products and services in the pre-internet era. He started the business as an information broker and in the coming years of Informatics, Sathya along with his then employees carried out manual information search for their initial clients and also started marketing compact disk based database products in India. In 1984, Sathya visited Dialog in Palo Alto to attend their basic training program in online searching. In the next six years, he mainly worked on expanding international partnerships with companies like Dialog, Predicast and Faxon. During the period of dot-com bubble, he strongly advocated the need for consumption of information in India and the values it generated. Today, he has spoken on many occasions about the need for growth of Research in India.
Other works
In 1998, Sathyanarayana became a Member of The National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development constituted by the then Prime Minister of India. He was elected as the president of the Karnataka State Library Association for two consecutive periods. Today, he is an active member of the same. During the 2002-2003 period, Sathya was a visiting Professor of the Department of Studies in Library & Information Sciences, University of Mysore, Mysore. From 2003-2008, he was the Vice President of Society for Information Science and remained an active member till-date. He was also the Chairman of the Working Group on Libraries & Knowledge Network of Karnataka Knowledge Commission in 2012 and Member of the Research Council of National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources., New Delhi. In 2014-2015, he led MILAN activities as the president of the committee and is currently a Chief Patron member. He also serves as a member of the advisory board of the Center for Educational and Social Studies
Awards
In 1992, Society for Information Science awarded him as the Young Information Scientist for his contribution in pioneering the introduction and promotion of online and CD-ROM technology products and publishing in India during the 1980s.
Publications and Conferences
Sathya has authored several research papers primarily focused on library technologies and information access; a few of them are:
Open Access and Open J-Gate in the Journal of Library and Information Technology in January 2008.
Digital Libraries: Dynamic storehouse of digitized information
Collection Development in the E-Content World
He is a well-known speaker at various library conferences and events, like the Informatics Endowment Lecture series on Digital Libraries, Charleston Library Conference, and the International Conference on Future of Libraries..
