[LIS-Forum] Reporting IASLIC Conference 2007

[Mailing List Admin]

Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:55:49 +0530
From: T. Shahab <tshahab at jamiahamdard.ac.in>

Dear friends

As a participant and non-official spokesperson, I like your valuable
attention to the following reportage.

The 26th All India annual IASLIC conference was held from 26-29 December 
at the University auditorium of the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), a central 
University located in south Delhi. The theme of this year conference was 
"DIGITAL MEDIA AND LIBRARY INFORMATION SERVICES". Over 200 delegates 
participated from all over the country hailing from various universities 
and private institutions. Of them, them two were foreign representatives 
one each belonging to Pakistan and Bangladesh. The opening cermoney 
started with the recital of verses from the Holy Quran exhorting the 
mankind to read and research what he doesn't know. Later the JMI musical 
club presented the beautiful Jamia tarana. Prof. Mushiru Hasan, the 
vice-chancellor of JMI and Prof. Abdul Aziz, the vice-chancellor of AMU as 
the chief guiest graced the inaugural function. Whereas, Prof. Hasan drew 
the attention of the gathered librarians and information professionals to 
the importance of human factor in making the library professionals 
successfully deliver the information related needs of the users, the chief 
guest layed stress on the role of the librarians in meeting the challanges 
of information literacy; he also advocated the Kerala model where public 
libraries became the hub centres of information collections & 
disseminations; he also stressed the significance of digital conversion of 
the valuable unrecorded information sources so that posterity may benefit 
from it.The inaugural session came to a close with the singing of the 
national song Jana Gana.The 2nd. day plenary session received the thought 
provoking talk on significance of digital identity and the role of 
librarian in making information delivery sound and secure through 
digitisation; it was delivered by retd, Prof Syed Ismail Ahson from the 
dept. of Computer science, JMI. The day third plenary session started with 
a lively talk on practices in digitisation by Mr. Shukla from the CDAC 
centre NOIDA. The concluding day plenary session opened with the very 
informative talk delivered by Dr. Moni, Dy. Director General NIC.His talk 
was delivered in the backdrop of the Knowledge commision report on the 
significant role of libraries in bridging the digital divide as well as 
fulfilling the task of inclusive growth before the nation.

Now on the fillip side. Whereas a record more than 100 academic papers 
touching the subject under discussion were repotedly received by the 
organisers only 75 out of these could be selected for publication in the 
IASLIC proceeding. Moreover, only 25 were actually read out during the 
conference. The level of discussions was mostly medicore. The responses 
from the scholars to the queries and supplementaries from the audience 
were at best half hearted.

Regards.

Shahab