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IFLA President in the hindu metoplus
by shihabudeen kunju 23 Mar '08

23 Mar '08

*Beyond words * ** ** ** Claudia Lux talks to SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY about how to make a roomful of books vibrant Photos: V.V. Krishnan *Of untapped potential International Federation of Library Associations President Claudia Lux in New Delhi * How many of us go to a public library these days? Honestly, not many. If you ask yourself why, the answer might vary from shortage of time for such luxuries, to easy accessibility of the Internet for information, to how such libraries are often full of only old books, many of which might be sitting on the shelves for years as someone tore off their vital pages. And then, there are the better run private libraries to rummage through or say those run with excellent facilities run by the likes of The British Council, The American Center, Max Mueller Bhavan, etc. Plus the convenience of having specialised libraries these days, some even digitalised, with multiple services for members with an interest in medicine, arts, culture, and so on. Stemming the tide Claudia Lux, President, International Federation of Library Associations, understands the times the public libraries are going through the world over in the age of immediate responses, specialisation and the IT revolution. But Lux also knows how this tide can be stemmed. "What you need first is a positive attitude," she says. And that is what, adds the German native, "I have told the delegates here." Lux is in New Delhi to take part in "Libraries on the Agenda!", an international seminar on library advocacy, organised by Max Mueller Bhavan this past week. The seminar emerged from the National Knowledge Commission's recommendations to turn our libraries into resource centres to help India become a knowledge hub. The NKC's list of recommendations also includes a library commission. "Such a body to look into library affairs can be useful, but what is also required is the coming together of library operators, private and public, to send out one voice to the commission to usher in changes," she feels. Talking about possibilities, she cites the Parliamentary library in Buenos Aires which has 24 hours free Internet facility for the public. "It has got four awards for creating possibilities for citizen participation." Then, there is a small library in one of the remotest corners of Malaysia with no phone connection. "With the help of the regional library, it now has Internet facility for the villagers besides providing information to farmers about special crops, market prices, etc." The possibilities are many, she says. "You can do a lot by connecting rural libraries to the regional ones." Though India has a culture of community libraries as in Kerala, "one needs more of that. Finally, all you need is Rs.60,000 to set up a good community library and Rs.30,000 annually to maintain it." On her second trip to India after a gap of over three decades, Lux has visited some city libraries. "The specialised libraries here have excellent competence," she feels, referring to the digitised library at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. She liked the Parliamentary library too. "Do you know, it has a children's corner too?" she asks excitedly. But what she saw in the Delhi Public Library was far from satisfactory. "Its children's corner particularly needs a change. It is too dark, has too many old books. Also as a central library, it is very small," she comments, adding, "It however has just started an Internet facility." Lux sums up with a clincher. "To make public libraries popular, more than policy designers, we need dynamic heads of libraries." *Libraries on the Agenda* *Stefan Dreyer, Regional Director, Max Mueller Bhavan * "The National Knowledge Commission's emphasis on making India a knowledge resource is extremely interesting. Taking this as a cue, we thought of providing a platform for exchange of ideas and also to bring perspectives on library advocacy from Europe. What followed is the international seminar on library advocacy, "Libraries on the Agenda". We hope to have created a new network, and maybe there will be follow-ups on the ideas discussed here." *Getting it right * ** ** ** ** Germany's Wurzburg public library director on how a promotional strategy restored its popularity Photo: V.V. Krishnan *The strategist Hannelore Vogt in New Delhi * Hannelore Vogt doesn't have that typical look of a staid librarian sitting behind an old table at a dank public library, with the hum of a lazy ceiling fan for company. She has a spring in her step, a wide grin on her cherry red lips, and a success story to relate. A story that many public libraries can learn from. If at all those who man them want to take the pains to make people see a library as much more than a mere house of old books. A bubbly Vogt, sitting on the lawns of New Delhi's Max Mueller Bhavan, takes out a file of computer printouts to illustrate her tale — how she, as the director of Germany's Wurzburg public library, turned it around. "We could have put our hands up and requested the Government to help us. But this would have given an impression to the public that it is an old library of no use. So we took the reins in our hands," says Vogt, here to share her experience at an international seminar on library advocacy. Brainstorming sessions with her staff led to an effective marketing strategy, to bring the public back to the once-popular library. Companies and cash Flipping the pages, she shows what that strategy was. "We went to some local companies. That included a popular roast chicken outlet and a well-known winery. When it comes to giving cash, companies often cringe, but they love to give their products," explains Vogt. So what worked out is this: "The winery pasted a picture of our library on a Riesling wine bottle, and we got 25 cents from every bottle that sold. Wurzburg is a tourist destination and it helped our cause, as people liked the picture of that place's library to take back home." The 25-cent strategy worked with the chicken outlet too. "We roped in the city mayor, and the local newspapers carried her picture selling chicken for the library." Children's events were also organised, and the prize was a night stay at the library. "We didn't have money, so we thought of that and made it exciting with activities like storytelling, etc." Also, a company made bags for plays that were mounted in the local theatres. With such schemes, Vogt and her staff turned a forgotten library into a public hub. "We used the money to give people more and more facilities. The continuous activities kept us in news," she states. So, it was only natural the Wurzburg public library was given the German Library of the Year Award in 2003. And became for the staid public libraries, a much-needed example. S.B.P -- Shihabudeen Kunju. S # 21, A-24, Patel Chest Universtiy of Delhi Delhi-7 mob: 09911928321 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Pronetos: Social network for scholar
by Mallikarjun 23 Mar '08

23 Mar '08

Dear All Pronetos is a home to communities and scholar of every academic discipline : a global think tank of the leader in your fields. it is a platform to network and collaborate with your collegue all over the world. You can share paper, find scholar, post course material, collaborate, find research ..... Visit to http://pronetos.com Mallikarjun Dora IIM, Ahmedabad ...The Future is here, Its just unevenly distributed..... http://curiouslib.blogspot.com/ Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Do you twitter? I am getting addict to it.
by Sukhdev Singh 23 Mar '08

23 Mar '08

Friends, As you know, I am always experimenting with one thing or the other. Few weeks back I came to know about something called "twitter" - http://www.twitter.com. It is light web based application where you can write short messages. Others can read these messages. If you wish, you can control who all can read these messages. Reading others' messages is called "following" in twitter's terminology. You can write whatever you feel like. It is basically meant to tell your friends on what you are doing at a particular moment. What is your mood? What are you thinking at a particular moment? Or how do you wish to react to your surrounding. You can write whatever you feel like provided it is limited to 140 Characters. If you share a long link, it will be automatically converted into a shorter link through "TinyURL" - http://tinyurl.com/ . You can write messages either by going to its site and logging in, or adding "twitter" as your buddy in your Instant Messenger like Google Talk - http://www.google.com/talk/ , or sending them by SMS (I have not tried it) or logging via your GRPS enabled phone. I normally login from my GPRS enabled phone while away from my system. My MTNL phone is quite affordable in this matter - just 2 Paise / KB for its GPRS service. Most handsets are now GPRS capable. But you have to subscribe to GPRS data service from your service provider and download and install settings. Your service provider will send you the settings through SMS on request. You have to simply save these. Once you have GPRS on your set, the Internet is in your phone. You can surf the net through you phone's browser. I would again like to recommend Opera Mini - http://www.operamini.com/ . You can download and install in your phone (Your phone should able to run Java applications). For better experience I would recommend smart phones starting from Rs. 7000 onwards especially with expandable memory. Now coming back to twitter, what is big advantage of using twitter? Well there is no answer to it. It is one of social networking applications. If you believe in online communities, then it is for you. There is other many applications built around the twitter. You can generate RSS feeds from it and Mash it on your blog or site. Libraries are experimenting with it elsewhere. What all I can say it that is a Hot application these days and I am already addicted to it. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/esukhdev . To some it may appear very silly thing to do, yes I was also not very much convinced to start with. But not now. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Why plagiarize when we can write?
by Sukhdev Singh 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

Just back from a seminar organized by Department of Library and Information Science, Panjab University Chandigarh. This seminar, Trends and Strategic Issues for Libraries in Global Information Society, took place at the university itself from 18th to 19th March 2008. While going through the printed proceedings of the seminar, one paragraph looked very familiar to me. Oh, we had written it only few months back to report a group discussion on open access. This report, we made widely available over net through various discussion forums. We also archived it in our repository. This familiar looking paragraph was included in a paper. I quickly jumped to reference section to see if we are lucky to get a citation. In vain, I should have remembered that people, who plagiarize, don't mention their actual source. Well, not even indirectly. For them, references are mere formality, so they will cite sources, which they might have not even seen before. But why get got? There are number of softwares for rewriting articles. Read "The best article rewriting software on earth" (http://snipr.com/229vs ). It mentions WordFlood 2.0, Content Rewriter Pro and Essay Town. With the help of these tools one can rewrite articles and hope to escape being caught by search engines like Google. However, do you know the best software? No prize for guessing it right, it is our brain. One can definitely use tools along with brain. WordWeb could also be of great help. It is a small free utility to serve as English thesaurus and a dictionary. There are no copyrights on ideas. Only well documented innovations are protect through patents. But coping ideas' written expressions as such without acknowledging the original authors is called plagiarism. It does not go well in academics when someone is trying to project others' idea as one's own. Punishment is mostly in form of bad reputation among the peers and negative employer's assessment. Better would to express the idea in one's own words. Tools can help you if you are at lost for better words. Importantly, it won't cost anything if you cite the original author. At the most you will have to add more line in your word processor. It is always a bad idea to plagiarize Open Access material because everybody knows about it. Being openly accessible, such material is widely indexed by Internet search engines. It will always show up. Modern search engines are designed in a fashion to understand which one is original and which one is plagiarized. --Sukhdev Singh, NIC. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Re: [LIS-Forum] Library science curriculum
by Jai Haravu 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

Dear All It is indeed a good sign that a library school has begun looking at revamping the syllabus for the Bachelor's degree in Library Science and is seeking the help and advice of concerned professionals. Having had some experience of interacting with both students and tecahers of library science, I feel that the following issues are vital to be addressed. 1. The quality of intake into B.L.I.Sc and M.L.I.Sc courses is key to ensuring that future professionals in this field provide the leadership and ensure greater advocacy to libraries and visibility of the profession with the users, managers, and decision makers. I think it is well known that most students who come to library schools in India are those who do not make it to the other so called elite courses. In other words, people who join library courses do so without really a career in their minds. To most of them a degree in library science is a way to a job, any job. Unless our admission norms along with the content are made attractive both to students and potential sectors of the country like corporates (who require innovative information managers, knowledge coordinators/facilitators), research and development centres, academic and public libraries. Academic libraries need to see how their presence is felt in respect of the teachng and learning objectives of the academic environment they are to serve. 2. The course curriculum at present, in my view, is too much steeped in traditional subjects. These are required but need to be re-oriented to their application in computer- and web- based environments. Fundamental concepts and the theories underlying these are important to be emphasized and then how these are used in both a traditional library and in information systems needed across application environments is required. 3. My own experience of most new library science graduates have very poor soft skills. Their oral and written skills are extremely poor, evidence of the backgrounds from which they come. This does not help them in their jobs, nor are they able to create an impact on others. They need also to be trained to think logically. It is essential that they should be taught life skills in understanding and improvong their self confidence and self image, the value of their skills to society, and in seeing the bigger picture in which they exist as professionals. I beleive these are sorely lacking in most of our library courses. 4. Many library schools do not provide adequate access to past and current literature (both books and current journals) although the syllabus does contain many topics of current interest. Faculty and students in these courses cannot keep themselves updated and refer to classic writings in these fields. 5. My experience is that even in post graduate courses the student is not encouraged to become self-reliant. The emphasis is on completing the syllabus and passing the exams rather than learning and skill development. This can only be done by asking students to do assignments that help them understand the subject or skill (e.g., subject indexing, searching). Performance in the assignments and the student's capability to present his work are important skills that need to be inculcated in these courses. 6. Many others will, I am sure, spell out in detail new topics in the computer and web related areas in which library professionals need to be equipped with. I congratulate the university library school in thinking of changing the syllabus. Haravu On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 Subbiah Arunachalam wrote : > Friends: > > A leading Indian university library school is in the > process of revising its > BLISc curriculum. The school is seeking the opinion of > many experts. I am > also asked to give my suggestions - perhaps as an avid > user of academic and > special libraries and as one involved in scholarly > publishing. > > I will be grateful if you could give me your valuable > ideas and suggestions, > latest by 29 March. Surely the situation has changed a > lot from the days > when most of us went to college. Then there was no > Internet, no Web, no > journal aggregators or online journals, no > institutional repositories and > the list can be really long. But the purpose of > libraries remains the same. > The tools have changed and the way we do things are > somewhat different. The > question is how best we can train the new librarians to > excel in their > profession in today's context. We are not concerned > only with academic and > special libraries; graduates will find jobs in the > corporate sector, in > government and public libraries as well. > > Best wishes. > > Arun > [Subbiah Arunachalam] -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Digital library software
by rajesh kusanur 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

Hi Friends, I would like to know the Digital library software (Commerical) other then Green stone Digital Library software. with regard Rajesh K A rajesh.ka(a)rediffmail.com raajesh.ka(a)gmail.com -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Our paper: Opportunities and Challenges of establishing Open Access Repositories
by Sukhdev Singh 21 Mar '08

21 Mar '08

Singh, Sukhdev; Pandita, Naina and Dash, Shefali S. (2008) Opportunities and Challenges of establishing Open Access Repositories: A case study of OpenMED@NIC. Trends and Strategic Issues for Librarians in Global Information Society: ICCSR Sponsored Seminar, March 18,19, 2008, Organized by Department of Library and Information Science, Panjab University Chandigarh. pp. 98-104. http://openmed.nic.in/2762/ National Informatics Centre had established a subject repository in May 2005. It is meant for Medical and Allied Sciences and named as OpenMED@NIC <http://openmed.nic.in>. It has MeSH(R) based subject categorization and this makes it one of its own kind. Taking OpenMED@NIC as a case – this paper discusses key issues in establishing and maintaining an open access repository. Librarians and information science professionals can play active role in providing access and exposure to quality research and academic content generated in their institutions. Mature and standard open sources softwares are now available for setting up repositories. Libraries can install one of these on existing institutional or library servers to setup repositories. However to ensure better access and faster response time, dedicated hardware and reliable connectivity would be required. Librarians and information science professional can play important role in exposing intellectual content produced by their organizations. They can take of various roles like – generating awareness among staff, researchers and students about benefits of self arching in institutional or subject repositories; training them in uploading their articles and other documents in such repositories; acting as meta-data editors and repositories managers. Establishing a repository, administrating and inviting authors to deposit their articles and other works in it is golden opportunity available to librarians and information science professionals. This opportunity should be grabbed with open hands. The presentation can also be viewed from: http://snipr.com/229f4 --Sukhdev Singh, NIC -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Just Published: "Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives the South Asian Scenario" (UNESCO, New Delhi)
by Puna Das 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

Dear Colleagues Just Published: "Open Access to Knowledge and Information: Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Initiatives the South Asian Scenario", by Anup Kumar Das; edited by Bimal Kanti Sen and Jocelyne Josiah. ISBN 978-81-89218-21-8 Published by: United Nations Educational Scientific & Cultural Organization (UNESCO), New Delhi Pages: 137 About the Publication: This book discusses successful open access and digital library initiatives in India and other South Asian countries. This book may be considered an authoritative source-book on Open Access development in this sub-region. For getting a free copy of this book for your library, please write a request letter and along with a self-addressed stamped envelope (a good quality A4 size envelope, affixing Indian postal stamp worth Rs. 52.00, for sending by Registered Parcel) to: Ms. Audrey DSouza, UNESCO House B5/29, Safdarjung Enclave New Delhi-110029 Thanking You With Best Wishes Anup Kumar Das New Delhi Email: puna_05(a)yahoo.co.in Mobile: +91-9911479926 --------------------------------- Why delete messages? Unlimited storage is just a click away. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Need article
by Murugan 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

Dear All, I would be grateful to anyone send the full text journal artilce for the following. Land Use Policy, (Vol. 22, No. 2) April 2005, Pages 75-93. 'Received Wisdom' in agricultural land use policy: 10 years on from Rio. Sincerely, Thank you very much. B. Murugan Information Resource Center M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation 3rd Cross Street, Institutional Area, Taramani, Chennai. 600 113. -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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happy holi
by Satendra Dhaka 20 Mar '08

20 Mar '08

Wish you a very Happy Holi. Please celebrate Holi keping in view the sentiments of others. Take care of health. again very very happy holi. -- Dr S.S.Dhaka Director(Library & Information) Ministry of External Affairs Patiala House, Annexe "B" Tilak Marg, New Delhi-110001 Phones: 0091-11-23073685, 23389073 Fax: 0091-11-23386340, 23387700 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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