"Right
information to the right recepients at the right time on right price" is
the philosophy that drives the quest for Information Literacy all over the
globe. Librarians at different levels of education and in a variety of library
environment can play a very useful role towards the task of universal
Information Literacy through diligence and professional committment.
But the present age of "copy, cut and paste" is making it a very difficult
task. In our own University, previously students used to depend heavily on
downloaded materials from the net for their assignments which used to have
repititative information haphazardly arranged. Now, they have been asked to
derive materials mainly from the journals. This has rekindled in them the the
zest for literature survey and brought back the smile on librarians face. We
have already burnt our hands while practicing the CAS and SDI. The academics are
a smug community. We thought that our best foot forward will also enliven them
to come over to the library to benefit from its knowledge resources. But
we only received phone calls for photocopies. The library management was already
hardpressed because of insufficent D group staff. Now, who will photocopy and
who will distribute the materails to each desk. After a few months this
initiative died. Otherwise the hands of a librarian are mostly tied in an
acdemic library og higher education to take independent decisions that involves
the precious commodity, money. Private organizations may be better placed to
tailor made their policies and arrange resources accordingly. Neverthess, best
wishes for the professionals who are honestly holding to their committment
towards promting Information Literacy.
Regards.
This is response to the optimum use of journals
subscribed.
This is a problem not unique to any particular college
alone.
To satisify the norms of the councils like MCI, PCI, AICTE, DCI, INC
and
various other councils, the libraries are forced to subscribe to
journals
inspite of the shrinking budget.
Apart from routing of
journals to the particular college/depts.,
we organize 'Journal Club'
where a student from every
college/department has to present a paper from the
latest journal issue
on a particular day of a week.
Again the
initiative has to come from the concerned department head
and a faculty
will monitor the session. This method seems to have a
double impact
wherein the student and the faculty are forced to go
through the latest
journal
articles.
Kumaravel.C
Sr.Librarian,
MTIHS,
Puducherry.
Kumaravel.C
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