- LIS-Forum - ncsi.iisc.ernet.in

Connotea-Free Reference Management Service from Nature
by Madhuresh 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

Nature Publishing Group has developed a tool to help you store, manage and share your online references and links. Connotea is a free, easy-to-use service, where you can save and annotate reference lists and links with one click, and discover new publications by viewing other user's links. In Connotea, every user's links are visible both to visitors and to every other user, and different users' libraries are linked together through the use of common tags or common bookmarks. Connotea also recognises links to certain websites, and automatically collects the bibliographic information for the article or book that is being linked to. The great advantage is that you can get to know the persons with similar interest and see their stored reference links. Also every article listing on Connotea has an RSS link at the bottom of the page. This allows you to be notified of new additions to the page by subscribing to the RSS feed in your RSS reader. However many reference management tools are available on the net but those are for general purposes. This tool is basically developed for research purpose with some value additions. I believe this resource will be useful for librarians and researchers. Point your browser to http://www.connotea.org/ Regards, Madhuresh Singhal Aurigene Discovery Technologies Limited, Electronic City, phase II, Hosur Road, Bangalore 560100 Phone 28521314-16 Ext.- 422 Mobile 98861 82822 E-mail: madhureshsinghal(a)yahoo.com http://nettalk2.tripod.com/

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Articles on Patents
by anand ulaya 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Dear Members Pls send me articles on 1.Software Patents 2. Computer Programme Patents With regards anandulaya Anand U --------------------------------- Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web Dear Members � Pls send me articles on � �1.Software Patents �2. Computer Programme Patents � With regards � anandulaya � Anand U Celebrate Yahoo!'s 10th Birthday! http://birthday.yahoo.com/netrospective/ Yahoo! Netrospective: 100 Moments of the Web

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Communication skills
by Mailing List Manager 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 02:18:47 -0800 (PST) From: sayali walimbe <sayaliw(a)yahoo.com> Hello Greetings! I belive there is no harm in acquiring new skills. We librarians are adaptable to every new thing. It is just a matter of common base language. We all are petriotic. We also have a "Lbrarian's language". Hence Hindi, English should not matter. When we have crossed the geograhical barriers then why language barriers?! Hindi is known to everybody. Just need to learn better English! Best Regards, Sayali Thite BAIF, Pune.

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RE: EU Software Patent Law may halt Linux Development
by Shalini R Urs 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Open source developers at risk - http://www.wirelessiq.info/content/topstories/479.html Shalini -------- Dr.Shalini R. Urs Director Information and Communication Division & Professor and Chairperson Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore-570006 India Tele-91-821-2514699 Fax -91-821-2519209 homepage:www.vidyanidhi.org.in/shaliniurs.htm  Open source developers at risk – � http://www.wirelessiq.info/content/topstories/479.html http://www.wirelessiq.info/content/topstories/479.html � � � Shalini -------- Dr.Shalini R. Urs Director Information and Communication Division & Professor and Chairperson Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore-570006 India Tele-91-821-2514699 Fax -91-821-2519209 homepage:www.vidyanidhi.org.in/shaliniurs.htm �

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FW: Google- the book scanning project- Microsoft of the future other issues- the scenario gets murkier
by Shalini R Urs 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

The Google Library book scanning project has raised may issues in the world of information. Please read on the msg below for some more light (or is more dust in the cloud!) It makes an interesting read anyways - Shalini -----Original Message----- From: owner-ipr(a)mailhost.soros.org [mailto:owner-ipr@mailhost.soros.org] On Behalf Of Darius Cuplinskas Sent: 01 March 2005 14:02 To: ipr & public domain list Subject: [ipr] How Google will scan the world, 1 book at a time This project, although valuable, will not provide full-text access, and will entail severe restrictions even on "fair use" permitted by copyright law: "You can't print the book out or digitally cut and paste any of it, even for this, an out-of-copyright volume. The restrictions will be more severe on in-copyright volumes, essentially those printed after 1920, limiting searchers to seeing a line or two around their search term." Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive is bringing together a group of libraries to organize a rival project which would allow full-text access and put fewer restrictions on in-copyright materials. DC -------- Original Message -------- How Google will scan the world, 1 book at a time Steve Johnson Chicago Times February 25, 2005 As Google prepares to create the world's most comprehensive digital library, it's getting harder not to think of the company as the next Microsoft, morphing from a friendly Internet helper with a cutesy name into an awesome and inescapable force of digital nature. Already the dominant search engine, the California technology company is testing Gmail, a free e-mail service that's likely to be a blockbuster, Google Maps, a rival to Mapquest, and Google Desktop, a function that allows users to search within their computers much more quickly than Microsoft Windows does. And then there's the small matter of accumulating vast chunks of humankind's recorded knowledge. Even as you read this, Google scanners are busy making bits and bytes out of books from the Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and University of Michigan libraries, as well as from the New York Public Library, a project that ultimately could total more than 57 million volumes. The company's goal in all it does, it says, is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" (along with, you know, selling ads alongside the world's information). But another goal seems to be ubiquity, and as Bill Gates has learned, when you become unavoidable, you also become resented. Altruistic project For now, though, Google remains mostly well-liked because the core of its business, the search engine, is so good. And the book-scanning project it's taking on seems more altruistic than not because Google is bearing the enormous (and, of course, unspecified) cost of copying the books into the digital world. "There are [other] people who had that vision," says Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library. "What Google had was the vision and the ambition, the technical skill. ..." Shifting to a whisper, he adds the most important factor: "a lot of money -- in some sense I think more than they knew what to do with. .. For these kinds of people to invest millions and millions of dollars in it, it is a good exploitation of the profit sector for public purposes." The University of Michigan says its pre-Google digital collection of 21,000 volumes is among the country's "most ambitious." But making it -- actually placing the books, page by page, onto scanners and then making sure the result is clean and accurate -- is very slow, hard work. "At its current rate of digital production," the school explains in a press release, "it would take the university more than a thousand years to digitize the 7 million volumes in the collection. Google plans to do the job in a matter of years." Beyond vague talk about Google having developed a much more efficient process, the project's specifics are secret. At Harvard, for instance, Google won't allow reporters to visit or photograph the scanning currently being done -- of 40,000 volumes as a kind of pilot project, just to make sure the books don't get damaged or lost -- at the university library's 5-million-volume off-campus storage facility. But the aims seem transparent enough. It will bring to the masses these great research institutions, full of books one would normally need a plane ride and permission to access, and make them as easy to search for and within as a particular city's restaurant listings. "The company as a whole has been really excited about it," says Susan Wojcicki, Google's director of product management, in part because it relates to the company's roots. "The founders were working on a library digitization project when they wound up creating a search engine that today is called Google. "We're just really excited to be working with these institutions as well. A lot of them have been around for hundreds of years," adds Wojcicki. Google's age: 6 1/2. Libraries will get copies The books will be gathered by Google in the Google Print company subdivision, known previously for trying to get publishers to put their current books in print up for public perusal. The libraries will also get their own copies of their texts turned binary. "We're very anxious to make sure this is of real service to our own users and a public good, as well," Verba says. "We're very sensitive to not having somebody come back and say, `Look, you've just turned over to a monopoly something that should belong to the world.'" The project, almost everybody agreed at its December announcement, holds enormous promise. Scholars will be able to learn, at the press of a button, which books have discussed Francis Bacon, for instance, and in what manner. Journalists and bloggers can add books to their research repertoire; previously, they have used mostly other journalism, the already-digitized and quickly searchable record of newspapers, magazines and some television shows. "There'll be more of that contextual information which you'll be able to get more readily," says Harvard's Verba, "How that'll change the way people think, I don't know, but it's really exciting. "It will give us this huge digitized file of our books to do things with that we don't know yet what they are. Searching text is really a thing that's on the frontier. As it evolves, we will have a text to search. We are thinking of it as a very valuable resource for things that are not 100 percent clear." Ordinary users can see the project at work already. Type "books and culture" into the company's familiar search interface, and you get access not only to all the Web pages Google has indexed that contain those words, but also, right near the top of your search, to one of the early books to be scanned in, an 1896 tome of that title by Hamilton Wright Mabie. Right away you notice that there are no ads on the page, and there are no plans to add them "at this time," Wojcicki says. You may also notice there are links to help you "Buy this book" and to "Find this book in a library." No printing allowed You can't print the book out or digitally cut and paste any of it, even for this, an out-of-copyright volume. (The restrictions will be more severe on in-copyright volumes, essentially those printed after 1920, limiting searchers to seeing a line or two around their search term. But Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, writing in the Los Angeles Times, questioned the right of Google to make available even "snippets" of copyrighted material.) Verba says you can certainly make notes on it, and that a print-on-demand feature is worth considering. In the meantime, want to know whether Mabie's "Books and Culture" contains the word "ominous"? Type the word into the "Search within this book" field. There it is on page 193, in a sentence praising the ability of the cultured man to recognize the characteristics of his era. The thing that's really encouraging, Verba says, is that the project turns the current fears of scholars and parents on their ear. "There's no academic and in fact there's no parent with a teenager who isn't worried about the fact that that generation will believe that all knowledge is on the Internet and on Google and will never want to open a book again," he says. "The nice thing about this project is that it's a kind of, `If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.' People will go to Google, and they will find books, and they will have to then go to the library and get the books. We think this is really a nice way of squaring that circle." ----------

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Re: [LIS-Forum] Communication skills
by Mailing List Manager 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2005 07:04:09 +0000 (GMT) From: Prof. N. Laxman Rao. <naglaxman(a)yahoo.com> hello let me share the experiences of our university. our dept is in the college of arts and social science, of osmania university. the college has english language training centre. every year, six to eight week programs are offered to all the students at free of cost. those who r desirous can attend. this optional opportunity is due to the fact that--many urbanites from english medium do not want such course it is an established fact that skills are essential to survive as well as grow. laxman rao Prof.N.LAXMAN RAO, Dept.of Library & Information Science, Osmania University, HYDERABAD- 500 007 (INDIA) President, Indian Association of Teachers in Library and Information Science (IATLIS). Ph:+91-40-27171565 (res): +91-40- 27682290 (off) 9246547599 (Mobile)

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Communication skills
by Dr. T.B. Rajashekar 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Dear All It has been a fascinating week or so of discussions on this important issue. Several very useful practical suggestions have been made many of which we would like to consider for our training programme at NCSI. Some thoughts based on my experience with NCSI training programme. I think there is a strong case for introducing a formal course in communication (English) and other soft skills in L&IS courses and training programmes. As part of a 1 credit course on communication skills (IS 210) we have included in our training programme (see http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/training/courses.html) we had experimented with a faculty from our Foreign Language School in IISc, specializing in scientific/technical communication, teaching English communication skills and presentation skills to one batch of trainees. We did see appreciable improvement towards the end of the course. Unfortunately this faculty has left IISc and we are yet to find a way of regularizing this course. We also have a formal 1 credit course (IS 249), in second semester, called Seminars (see above URL page). Trainees are given select papers and are expected to give presentations after studying these. Apart from these, each instructor also makes the trainees to give ample number of presentations based on assignments. NCSI alumni association (NCSI-NET) also organizes occasional guest lectures on communication skills/ personality development as part of its monthly meetings in Bangalore. While these are a few of our efforts, we still have a long way to go in getting these efforts to produce consistently good results. I think it should not be difficult to introduce a formal 1 or 2 credits course in L&IS programmes in universities since most universities have full-fledged departments in English/ Journalism/ Mass communication. Nice to see this being done at Mysore University. British Council conducts exams and provides training material related to Business English. I believe they also conduct English proficiency exams for corporate employees. Is there someway we could get British council to conduct a few workshops for L&IS teachers? I think there is much scope in this area. I remember several workshops on scientific/ technical writing skills used to be conducted a few years back. Mr. Arunachalam (of MSSRF, Chennai) used to be an instructor a few of these courses. Could these be revived? Practice of some instructors to apportion some marks for correct use of English in the exam papers is a very useful one (something most secondary/ high schools do!). I wonder if this should be a mandatory feature in L&IS programmes. As we all know, language is something that is learnt more by practice. I find many students are either shy or scared of speaking, worrying about making mistakes. In as much as it is in their hand to overcome this, it is also the responsibility of the teachers (and fellow students) to encourage such students, instead of making fun of them (verbally or through body language). I know couple of our trainees, who were quite poor in communication, made very good progress simply by being bold and not afraid of speaking (and making mistakes). I agree with Ms. Nagarathna that in the final count, the onus is on the student doing well should come from within instructors can provide opportunities, directions and feedback based on their performance. Also, does it make sense to encourage students to spend some time reading English literature (e.g. fiction)? Though such reading habit is usually picked up in younger age, we also know that this is one easy way of improving English usage. There is lots of very useful self-learning material available online on this topic. I feel we should prepare a good gateway site pointing to quality learning material. On our training site we currently make available tutorials and self-learning material related to technical topics (see http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/training/Tutorials.htm) We can easily extend this to communication skills related material. InfoLibrarian site could also host such material. Finally, a word of caution about pushing McLuhans saying Medium is the message too far. We should avoid emphasizing this message too much, lest our students begin to think that form and style is more important than content and message. Certainly message/content should be the prime focus (Content is king!), and not form and style. I feel employers should avoid assessing potential employees based only on their communication abilities. We know competencies vary some are good in doing and relatively poor in expressing. We need to recognize this and find the proper mix of job and worker competencies. Regards Rajashekar ------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. T.B. Rajashekar Associate Chairman Tel: +91-80-23600271, 23601427 National Centre for Science Fax: +91-80-23601426, 23600683 Information (NCSI) E-Mail: raja(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Indian Institute of Science URL: http://144.16.72.189/raja/ BANGALORE-560012 (India) ------------------------------------------------------------- SciGate: http://www.ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/ The IISc Science Information Portal

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Fedora 2.0 Press Release (fwd)
by Shyam Prasad pujar 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 14:28:20 -0500 From: Sandy Payette <payette(a)cs.cornell.edu> To: diglib(a)infoserv.inist.fr Subject: [DIGLIB] Fedora 2.0 Press Release Hello there, Below (and attached) please find the press release for Fedora 2.0. The Fedora Project provides powerful open-source digital repository software and is a joint developed effort by Cornell University and the University of Virginia with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information go to the project web site at: http://www.fedora.info/ <http://www.fedora.info/> - Sandy Payette ================================================================ For Immediate Release Fedora 2.0 - A Powerful Open-Source Solution for Digital Repositories The Fedora Project (http://www.fedora.info) is proud to announce the release of version 2.0 of the Fedora open-source digital repository software. This release represents a significant increase in features and functionality over previous releases. New features include the ability to represent and query relationships among digital objects, a simple XML encoding for Fedora digital objects, enhanced ingest and export interfaces for interoperability with other repository systems, enhanced administrative features, and improved documentation. More than ever, Fedora is capable of serving as the foundation for many types of information management applications, including institutional repositories, digital libraries, records management systems, archives, and educational software. As with prior versions of the software, all Fedora functionality is exposed through web service interfaces. At the core of this functionality is the Fedora object model that enables the aggregation of multiple content items into digital objects. This allows objects to have several accessible "representations." For example, a digital object can represent an electronic document in multiple formats, a digital image with its descriptive metadata, or a complex science publication containing text, data, and video. Services can be associated with digital objects, allowing dynamically-produced views, or "virtual representations" of the objects. Historical views of digital objects are preserved through a powerful content versioning system. The new Fedora 2.0 introduces the "Resource Index" which is a module that allows a Fedora repository to be viewed as a graph of inter-related objects. Using the Resource Description Framework (RDF), relationships among objects can be declared, and queries against these relationships are supported by an RDF-based triple store. Fedora 2.0 also introduces "Fedora Object XML" (FOXML) which is a simple XML format for encoding Fedora digital objects. To support multiple XML standards, Fedora's ingest/export interface has been enhanced, permitting digital objects to be encoded in different formats. Currently, there is support for METS and FOXML. In future releases other XML formats will be supported, including MPEG21-DIDL. Other new features include a mass-update utility for modifying objects, a new administrative reporting interface, improved documentation, and tutorials. The Fedora open-source software is jointly developed by Cornell University and the University of Virginia with generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Fedora 2.0 marks the final milestone in Phase I, a three year project to develop the core Fedora Repository system. Now underway, Fedora Phase II is a three year development project that will focus on advanced features including workflow, digital preservation, policy enforcement, information networks, and federated repositories. For more information, contact Ronda Grizzle (rag9b(a)virginia.edu) Technical Coordinator; Sandra Payette (payette(a)cs.cornell.edu) Co-director Cornell University; or Thornton Staples (tls(a)virginia.edu) Co-director University of Virginia. Sandy Payette Cornell Information Science 301 College Ave. Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14850-4623 Tel: (607) 255-9222 URL: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/payette

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RE: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives
by Vyasamoorthy＠icicikp.com 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

I thank Shalini for the quick response. The clarity she has brought in regarding LIS schools in a University set up and Training Institutions is worth remembering by everyone. The odds against which the LIS educator has to carry out his/her duties look insurmountable indeed. But then, nobody kicks a dead horse - It is only the active, energetic, enthusiastic & innovative teachers like Shalini and others get criticized! My only humble suggestion is that teachers like her should continue to serve the student & research community without getting dismayed by occasional criticisms. It is not possible to set things right overnight. Suggestions from 'users' like me may be considered as 'wish-lists', at the best. Vyasamoorthy, P -----Original Message----- From: Shalini R Urs [mailto:shalini@vidyanidhi.org.in] Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 4:51 PM To: VYASAMOORTHY /IKP/HYD; LIS-Forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: RE: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives While thanking Vyasamoothry for his response and kind words, let me also share some of the concerns (and the burden/responsibilities) and the challenges that we- the LIS educators face. 1. Given the fast paced changes that are sweeping the LIS world, evolving a right balance of 'conventional and contemporary topics' ; 'theoretical and practical aspects of the field is a major challenge 2 .It is also felt (justifiably so), that in our efforts to transit to the digital age, our students neither have a good grounding in the conventional areas (classification and cataloguing-which I still consider as the very core of the profession) nor the contemporary ones such as Dublin Core or Ontologies or DSAPCE or Greenstone. I guess there is the danger of falling between the two stools! 3. Meeting the demands of a heterogeneous 'employer market- ranging from a small college library to a KM centric corporate sector' is kind of tough 4. LIS schools (like in any university setting) are not 'Training Institutes' (there is a big difference between education and training) 5. We are expected to provide broad theoretical grounding- which is a long term thing, which may not be appreciated by the short term needs of 'employers' 6. We only have two years (or 4 semesters) at our disposal and we have a conventional examination system to contend with 7. Our students have to be taught the ABC of Libraries- as their exposure to and understanding of libraries is minimum, especially since our education system being what it is- it is not library centered 8. On top of it all- our students lack the general communication and other skills -tools that are required to imbibe the knowledge Some times we feel overwhelmed by these issues and do try to address them as best as we can, but then LIS teaching fraternity continues to be the favorite whipping boy of the LIS community Shalini -------- Dr.Shalini R. Urs Director Information and Communication Division & Professor and Chairperson Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore-570006 India Tele-91-821-2514699 Fax -91-821-2519209 homepage:www.vidyanidhi.org.in/shaliniurs.htm -----Original Message----- From: Vyasamoorthy(a)icicikp.com [mailto:Vyasamoorthy@icicikp.com] Sent: 01 March 2005 14:41 To: shalini(a)vidyanidhi.org.in; LIS-Forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: RE: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives Dear Dr Shalini I am very happy to read your succinct statements on the importance of Language and Communication skills. Laudable are your efforts in DLIS to tackle the problem of Language deficiencies among LIS students. I suggest that all other Universities too may try to include a paper on Communication & personality development and teach this topic with equal seriousness. Many senior working librarians and LIS teachers act as resource persons during interviews to select librarians. They have lot of ideas about the situation obtaining now and they may have solutions too. LIS schools may benefit by obtaining this 'knowledge' from Interviewers through some survey/study. Such studies would indicate not only gaps in Language skills but in other areas as well. If the results of the study are used, there is a possibility of market demands being met fully by the products turned by LIS schools. Regards Vyasamoorthy, P ============== -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in]On Behalf Of Shalini R Urs Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 6:00 PM To: LIS-Forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Cc: lis-forum-bounces(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives Dear Friends, Having followed with interest the discussion in this regard, I thought of sharing the following with you all. * Criticality of 'Language' as a conduit for 'carrying knowledge' and as an inevitable means of expressing and articulating ones ideas cannot be over emphasised. * Ideas/Knowledge is as good as it is packaged and presented in a medium. Let us not forget the McLuhian 'Medium is the message' axiom * Ranganathan's 'three planes of work' concept in the realm of Classification applies to all aspects of work in general. It is important that we understand the influence and impact of the verbal plane on the idea plane and vice versa * The field of Psycholinguistics has wrestled with the issues of language , concept formation and thought processes without reaching a consensus * Our ancient Indic Scholars had very skillfully and adroitly explicated the importance of interplay of 'language or words' and 'thoughts and meanings' in this way- they recognised three genres of 'UKTI' (speeches or statements'): MANTRA (Vedic Verses); SHASTRA (or precepts-learned works); and KAVYA ( Poetry or literature in general). According to our sages, words and their meanings have different levels of 'import' in these three categories. In SHASTRA ( i.e. scientific knowledge' ) the language is a tool to learn, to understand the world and we reach out to the world outside through the language. Knowledge or truths (as knowledge was known as) is assimilated through the meanings of words. If the link between 'concepts' 'words' and meanings are broken, then the world of knowledge gets segregated resulting in a kind of turmoil. Since it is not possible to express knowledge without language, it is necessary THOUGH NOT PRIMARY We at DLIS, Mysore believing in the significance of Language and communication skills have always striven to help our students augment their language skills through a variety of activities. For example some years back, we used to conduct 'what is the good word' contest. Some of our recent efforts in this direction are- 1. In the new revised syllabus for M.L.I. Sc (coming to effect from the academic year 2005-2006), we have introduced one full paper on ' Personality development and communication skills' (carrying 100 marks) in the first semester (thanks to our Board of Studies, which deemed it fit to introduce this change). Visit our website- www.lisc.uni-mysore.ac.in <http://www.lisc.uni-mysore.ac.in/> 2. We have also introduced a novel competition for the students. Recognizing the importance of reading habits in strengthening communication skills, a monthly newspaper reading and clipping contest with two prizes- of INR 100 and 75 -where in students identify, collect newspaper write ups relating to 'Information world' and submit a well presented and bound volume 3. Weekly 'English coaching classes' for students * the above two have been voluntary efforts and initiatives by the faculty Shalini -------- Dr.Shalini R. Urs Director Information and Communication Division & Professor and Chairperson Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore-570006 India Tele-91-821-2514699 Fax -91-821-2519209 homepage:www.vidyanidhi.org.in/shaliniurs.htm

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RE: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives
by Vyasamoorthy＠icicikp.com 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

Dear Dr Shalini I am very happy to read your succinct statements on the importance of Language and Communication skills. Laudable are your efforts in DLIS to tackle the problem of Language deficiencies among LIS students. I suggest that all other Universities too may try to include a paper on Communication & personality development and teach this topic with equal seriousness. Many senior working librarians and LIS teachers act as resource persons during interviews to select librarians. They have lot of ideas about the situation obtaining now and they may have solutions too. LIS schools may benefit by obtaining this 'knowledge' from Interviewers through some survey/study. Such studies would indicate not only gaps in Language skills but in other areas as well. If the results of the study are used, there is a possibility of market demands being met fully by the products turned by LIS schools. Regards Vyasamoorthy, P ============== -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in]On Behalf Of Shalini R Urs Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 6:00 PM To: LIS-Forum(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Cc: lis-forum-bounces(a)ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] Communication Skills- LIS-DLIS, Mysore initiatives Dear Friends, Having followed with interest the discussion in this regard, I thought of sharing the following with you all. * Criticality of 'Language' as a conduit for 'carrying knowledge' and as an inevitable means of expressing and articulating ones ideas cannot be over emphasised. * Ideas/Knowledge is as good as it is packaged and presented in a medium. Let us not forget the McLuhian 'Medium is the message' axiom * Ranganathan's 'three planes of work' concept in the realm of Classification applies to all aspects of work in general. It is important that we understand the influence and impact of the verbal plane on the idea plane and vice versa * The field of Psycholinguistics has wrestled with the issues of language , concept formation and thought processes without reaching a consensus * Our ancient Indic Scholars had very skillfully and adroitly explicated the importance of interplay of 'language or words' and 'thoughts and meanings' in this way- they recognised three genres of 'UKTI' (speeches or statements'): MANTRA (Vedic Verses); SHASTRA (or precepts-learned works); and KAVYA ( Poetry or literature in general). According to our sages, words and their meanings have different levels of 'import' in these three categories. In SHASTRA ( i.e. scientific knowledge' ) the language is a tool to learn, to understand the world and we reach out to the world outside through the language. Knowledge or truths (as knowledge was known as) is assimilated through the meanings of words. If the link between 'concepts' 'words' and meanings are broken, then the world of knowledge gets segregated resulting in a kind of turmoil. Since it is not possible to express knowledge without language, it is necessary THOUGH NOT PRIMARY We at DLIS, Mysore believing in the significance of Language and communication skills have always striven to help our students augment their language skills through a variety of activities. For example some years back, we used to conduct 'what is the good word' contest. Some of our recent efforts in this direction are- 1. In the new revised syllabus for M.L.I. Sc (coming to effect from the academic year 2005-2006), we have introduced one full paper on ' Personality development and communication skills' (carrying 100 marks) in the first semester (thanks to our Board of Studies, which deemed it fit to introduce this change). Visit our website- www.lisc.uni-mysore.ac.in <http://www.lisc.uni-mysore.ac.in/> 2. We have also introduced a novel competition for the students. Recognizing the importance of reading habits in strengthening communication skills, a monthly newspaper reading and clipping contest with two prizes- of INR 100 and 75 -where in students identify, collect newspaper write ups relating to 'Information world' and submit a well presented and bound volume 3. Weekly 'English coaching classes' for students * the above two have been voluntary efforts and initiatives by the faculty Shalini -------- Dr.Shalini R. Urs Director Information and Communication Division & Professor and Chairperson Department of Library and Information Science University of Mysore Mysore-570006 India Tele-91-821-2514699 Fax -91-821-2519209 homepage:www.vidyanidhi.org.in/shaliniurs.htm

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