Dear Professional fraternity,
I read with interest the submissions made by Dr. Konnur, one of my students.
I know him even before he was my student, but the point that I would like to make is here is a person who has really risen from a humble beginning, and a real fighter and very ambitious. His rise in the profession is notable even as his teacher I could not achieve the kind of visibility and exposure he has received in the profession. My admiration is that I have many students of mine who have acknowledged of being my students and Dr. Konnur is one of them. Personally I feel Dr. Konnur has put his cards of displeasure at the happenings and some of his words of caution (he should have first observed) are noteworthy. As he has stated ;“Secondly my request to all research guides to be cautious before allowing their Research Scholars to put their names as a co-author” and it was also a word of caution spelt by me in my lengthy letter. It would also require to check the thesis thoroughly to avoid such situations. We being the watchdog on plagiarism and
advocate the protection of authors and creators on knowledge (Copyright) we should not fall prey to such acts. We are the guiding the paths of new knowledge to our youngsters, and if we guide them rightly they would reach their desirable goals and destinations and it is my earnest appeal to all..
I wrote a very lengthy letter to lisforum describing the happenings in the professional circles particularly about the publications and papers published in Journals and conferences by us – LIS professionals in India. Has anybody looked at and surveyed the literature published in foreign LIS journals, the books published etc. Please go through the supplements brought out to the prestigious “Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science”(ELIS) now almost reaching to 100 volumes. Among the subject encyclopaedias, I think ELIS is the only one which has reached to that height and that is the length, breadth and depth of LIS. Other examples are ARIST (Ceased in 2011) and the Advances in Librarianship. Compare these with the ‘Encyclopaedias ‘ on LIS published from India. Sometimes I express my agony for being older, and felt I should have been born at least 20 years later to enjoy reading all the latest literature on LIS. As a persistent
searcher of literature for a given assignment to perform well, one should not give up until you lay your hands on right type of material. Recently I am given an assignment on “Use Studies” and persistently I was looking for papers of right perspective on the subject, took the help of INTERNET and to my good luck I got one which was published in 1974, and it is my wish that one should read this and feel what is research ? (Tobin: The study of Library “Use Studies” in Information Storage and Retrieval, Vol. 10,1974, pp.101-103) It is a very simple but a thought provoking surveyof an Indexing journal in LIS the “Library Literature”. On getting this paper I had all the joy and happiness and this is what is persistence. I am bit lucky because of my access to ISI Library resources. Whether you are a teacher of LIS or Librarian, but the traits of a librarian should be inherent in us and should look for the right information, at right time in right
format, which we tend to offer to others, but first we must experience that joy of finding (and then as our former President Dr. Kalam often would say ‘the joy of giving’) . As famous British Librarian and Teacher of Librarianship, W.C. Berwick Sayers has put it Librarians should know their “Wares” and advises librarians to know the habits, education and occupation of their “people”(users in this context). This also recalls me to state, Dr. Ranganthan’s words; “Know thy books, Know thy readers and Know thyself”.
Why I am writing this; I know the potentiality of our young library professionals. As elderly person in the profession it is our duty to guide them to do the right and should not misguide them and accept whatever they have done, under the misrepresentation statement that I was very busy and stating that “ No guide for that matter can check the authenticity of the article more than this and I did so”. What he has done is only agreed to the survey conducted by his research student and has not but as the first author states, he has copied the Abstract, References and descriptions and has only substituted with his survey data and analysis.
While I was doing my doctoral research, fortunately I had a very beneficial interaction with Prof. G. Bhattacharyya of DRTC. He said the guide is not supreme, but the researcher, because the latter has seen all the literature. But the duty of the guide is very important that he cross checks all the references, sentences and statements made there to so he can avoid embarrassments. So the teachers must have a bird’s eye view of what is published in the subject of research they are guiding. On the other hand about the style and description of research findings there are quite good number of guides. There are many style manuals and the famous “Chicago Manual of Style” is one the bests and many such handbooks are available so that one should thoroughly study them before guiding and tell your research student to go through the same, if required give an assignment and in the present context it is very essential.
I think happenings in the last two to three weeks, after my lengthy apprehension about the LIS literature have created some awareness and brought forth a note of caution among LIS professionals in India. This reply is only again an appeal to my professional friends who are guiding the destiny of the youngsters in the profession to take utmost care and have an overview of the research in the area, and do some brainstorming with the students to draw as much as possible by inciting enquiry attitude among them. We should concentrate more on quality than on quantity – as the former gives happiness and satisfaction than the latter.
With best of all to our professional friends and well wishers.
Prof. A.Y.Asundi
Former Professor and Chairman,
Department of Library and Information Science
And Officer-in-charge, IT Centre,
Bangalore University, Bangalore – 560 056.
Mob: 9980815468
--- On Mon, 4/1/13, Pandurang Konnur