Dear Members, As part of the National Library Week, 14-20 November, J.R.D. Tata Memorial Library, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru and Karnataka State Library Association (KALA) take immense pleasure in inviting you to join us for 2 interesting talks on 2 different contemporary topics by 2 eminent speakers. The program schedule for today, Friday, 15 November 2019 is as below: High-tea: 4.30 - 4.50 PM Talk No. 1 Speaker: Prof. R S Deshpande, Honorary Visiting Professor, Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bengaluru. Title: Institutional Data in Social science. Date & Time: Friday, 15 November 2019 @ 5.00 PM Venue: Seminar Hall, JRD Tata Memorial Library, IISc Talk No. 2 Speaker: Dr. M.S. Sridhar, Head (Retd.), Library & Documentation Centre, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bengaluru Title: Future Libraries: Romance of LIS with Futurology Date & Time: Friday, 15 November 2019 @ 6.00 PM Venue: Seminar Hall, JRD Tata Memorial Library, IISc Synopsis of Dr. Sridhar's talk: Talk is focusing on the topical area of ‘Future of Libraries’ including the long history of excessive indulgence of LIS on its future including the implicit doubt about the existence of libraries and librarians in future. Many past predictions were only technology-based and either hyped (fictitious) or strongly negative (or both) like the flaw of ‘disintermediation’ threat, the resultant ‘repositioning options’ of LIS till the latest indulgence in whether robots will replace librarians. Talk stresses the need for imagination coupled with reason to turn experience into foresight, identifies the continued importance of physical space, content, ambience of libraries to move from ‘Transactional library’ to ‘Relational library’ and from a ‘Center of information’ to a ‘Center of culture’. LIS predictions have not only ignored non-ICT innovations, but also focused exclusively on future technologies as if ‘future libraries’ equals ‘future technologies’. Technologies need to be considered as general, short-term and long-term for their relevance, appropriateness and adoption to enhance value of library services. It is strongly believed that libraries are marginalized in digital era. Unfortunately, new era has put the ‘access’ before ‘selection’ (avoiding filtering at the input stage and ignoring the traditional value addition of libraries, namely ‘selection’. ‘Access to excess’ and ‘speed’ of digital era are over-riding the validity and the quality of content, which is leading to distraction and dissatisfaction of users. The era is wrongly equating the ‘provision for access’ to ‘utility’ and lacks better understanding of user-behaviour in digital domain. You may read/download the full article from the ResearchGate site, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337049758_Future_Libraries_Romance_... Best regards, Francis Francis Jayakanth JRD Tata Memorial Library IISc, Bengaluru