The NSL's collection policy is to build resources with an emphasis on high end R&D reference sources, Indian S&T publications, foreign language dictionaries, library and information science, information & communication technology, computer science, conference proceedings, technical reports and other sources relevant to S&T community of the country.

CSIR Knowledge Gateway & Open Source Private Cloud Infrastructure (KNOWGATE) is 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) Network Project under Information Sciences cluster. The project would be implemented in a network mode by CSIR-NIScPR as nodal laboratory with 38 CSIR laboratories as participating laboratories including CSIR-M Complex & CSIR-HQ.The project will be implemented in phased by dividing 39 CSIR KRCs (Knowledge Resource Centres) in four groups.

National Science Digital Library (NSDL) aims at providing comprehensive S&T information to students of science, engineering and technology in the country. Begun as a Tenth Five Year Plan Network Project of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), NSDL is the only one of its kind that provides curriculum based content to address the information needs of the undergraduate students of science.

The National Knowledge Resource Consortium (NKRC), established in year 2009, is a network of libraries and information centres of 43 CSIR and 26 DST institutes. NKRC's origin goes back to the year 2001, when the CSIR set up the Electronic Journals Consortium to provide access to 1200 odd journals of Elsevier Science to all its users. Over a period of time, the Consortium not only grew in terms of the number of resources but also in terms of the number of users as more like-minded institutes evinced interest to join the Consortium.