Dear Dr. Arunachalam
You have really touched a very deep chord. We can no longer reject the truth
that we are faced with - however bitter it is. I know I have talked about
all these things to many people on one or more of these lists and definitely
with the individuals cc-ed on this list. I am also aware that there are a
handful of excellent dedicated librarians in India - but the number is
dwindling alarmingly.Also - they are buried deep in their institutions and
do not spread their wings across - mostly because they not permitted to. I
am praying hard that the National Knowledge Commission's findings and
reports may do some resurrection for the profession.
There are two things about this entire issue:
1) There is a "Vicious Circle" that we are talking about. - Poor quality
librarians (being produced in masses) ----> projecting the profession in a
poor light ---> not attracting the kinds of salaries that MBAs / IT
professionals or even next lower levels do ----> and thus no really good
students enter the profession. I mentioned "Circle" and because I am writing
in an email - I had to put down the entire thing in a linear fashion. The
circle obviously has no beginning. One grim reality is - except in rare
situations, the number of librarians who would send their children into this
profession is miniscule. If we ourselves will not - how do we expect good
candidates to come in? Today's scenario is that the average starting salary
for a Fresh MBA from a reputed instn is Rs. 50,000/- and I wonder how many
seniors in the LIS profession, take that much home at the fag end of their
careers (if we leave aside some Corporate librarians)
2) Where do we begin? I believe there must be lots of parallel processing.
a) Strong Foundations - School and college libraries need to be given very
high importance. The focus must be -
i) To inculcate the love of reading and information seeking in children /
teenagers
ii) To sow the seeds of the importance of libraries in their lives
The former will make them good library users AND good educated individuals ;
the latter will make them give the due importance to libraries - whatever
position they may be in.........and importantly if they are in decision
making positions
b) At a very Massive Level - promote awareness of the importance of the
profession - and make good students take it up. In a country of Dr. SRR, I
think that easily 8-9/10 people to whom I say "I have done Lib & Info Sc"
ask me if it is a Diploma after the 10th or 12th. This is something we need
to be ashamed of. People know about BBA / BMS / BMM etc - courses that are
all just a few years old, but how come they know practically nothing about
Lib & Info Sciences?
c) While we are getting good students in, we have to parallely ensure that
they have good jobs with good starting salaries, when they graduate. There
has to be some "handshake" between the process of these students getting
trained and organizations taking them in and starting them on doing
something by which they really produce measurable results in at least one
year. Also importantly, Communication and Soft skills simply MUST be
included in the curriculum.
As I said - fundamentally - all three processes have to go on and then each
feeds into the other.
Finally - I guess - the real question is "WHO WILL BELL THE CAT"? Take all
this to the major change that we seek? We need a bunch of people who will
work tirelessly towards this - and not give up - and hand over the baton to
the right people as and when required.
Vasumathi Sriganesh
Director, QMed Services
A-3, Shubham Centre, Cardinal Gracious Road
Chakala, Andheri East, Mumbai 400099, India
Tel: 91-22-40054474 / 75 Fax: 91-22-40054358
Indian Medical Sites- www.qmedin.com/medsites
----- Original Message -----
From: "Subbiah Arunachalam"
Friends:
I am concerned about the quality of training we provide in our country to would be librarians and information scientists.
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