[LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: APERSPECTIVE

[sathya at informindia.co.in]

Let us debate on this:

"If Ranganathan were to be alive today, would he have come out with a  new name for LIBRARY and LIBRARIAN?"

Sathyanarayana
Informatics

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

-----Original Message-----
From: Vasanth <gooche_1981 at yahoo.co.in>
Sender: lis-forum-bounces at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:06:24 
To: LIS forum<lis-forum at ncsi.iisc.ernet.in>
Subject: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: A
	PERSPECTIVE

Dear Sir/Madam, 


As we all know the year 2011 mark the completion of 100 years of LIS Education 
in India. Though LIS education was started in 1911, LIS education in India got a 
huge boost with the Ranganthan’s metamorphic shift to library science from 
mathematics. Ranganathan’s path breaking efforts have laid a strong foundation 
for the growth of library movement in India and elsewhere. However the 
post-Ranganathan era has gone through a tremendous change with advent of 
information technology and the Internet blurring the space and time constraints. 
The easy availability of Information in varied formats has put LIS education in 
a threshold of radical change. But there is not much discuss on how LIS 
education has to reposition itself in a constant changing information 
environment. The following points discussed below bring out some of the problems 
that the LIS education is facing in India. 

 
·         LIS Research in India:Since 1957, India library professionals have 
significantly contributed for the growth of LIS research in India. More than 
1000 Ph Ds have been awarded across the country (Manjunatha, 2011).  The numbers 
seems incredible but the quantum of the research has been limited to largely few 
areas, mainly Bibliometrics, Library Management and Service, Information Seeking 
Behavior or User Studies. Still research in these areas has been taken up by 
many scholars. This indicated that India LIS research has not ventured into 
other areas of research as it should have been. Many of the areas that mentioned 
above have been repeated with slight changes.  Many of the studies have used 
survey research largely questionnaire method. Other methodological approaches 
have not been employed in many research reports.  The lack of strong theoretical 
approach to the LIS research has hampered the Indian LIS research at the global 
map in the post Ranganathan era. 

 
 
·         Missing S. R. Ranganathan’s legacy : Today we clearly miss the legacy 
of S. R. Ranganathan.  Ranganathan’s contribution to the growth of the LIS 
profession put India in global LIS domain.  But today intellectual caliber and 
leadership quality of Ranganathan is missing in Indian LIS community.  To revive 
the LIS in India we need people of Ranganathan’s stature, who can bring 
leadership quality to the LIS community with strong professional bent of mind.  

 
·         LIS Education and Changing Information Landscape : Because of changing 
information landscape, digital information replacing the analog form has 
resulted in changing LIS curriculum to suit the changing information 
environment.  Even many of the library schools in US and other part of the world 
have removed the word “library” and have named their LIS schools as “iSchools” 
(information Schools). But not much discussion has taken place in India on this, 
although ISiM (International School of Information Management) has started 
iSchool movement in India in 2005.  But, how LIS education is going to serve the 
net savvy information users and how LIS professionals reposition themselves in a 
changing information landscape is largely missing in Indian LIS discourse. 

 
·         Universities Reluctant to Start LIS Schools : Another impending 
problem of the LIS is, many of the recently established universities have not 
keen on starting LIS schools. We have more than 500 plus universities in India, 
but only 95 universities have found to be offered Ph D program in LIS 
(Manjunatha, 2011). The reluctancy can be attributed to the changing information 
environment.  Moreover, library education or library profession has never been 
on par with the teachers. Library profession has been seen as a supporting 
mechanism rather on par with teaching professions. There is a need to understand 
and examine why new universities are not keen on opening LIS schools. 

 
·         Identity crisis: LIS profession is facing the problem of identity 
crisis.  The library science, information science, knowledge management and 
other similar nomenclature have been part of the LIS discourse. But we have not 
been able to identify ourselves in one umbrella.  The one set of professionals 
who are part of traditional (college or university) libraries are part of 
library profession and other who work in special and corporate libraries are 
part of information or knowledge management profession.  The ambiguity of 
various nomenclatures associated with library and information profession has 
created identity crisis in LIS field.  

 This is appropriate time to discuss some of the issues raised above to herald a 
new era of Library and Information Science education in India. 


 
-------------------------
With best wishes
Vasantha Raju N
GFGC-Periyapatna 
Mysore 

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