Re: [LIS-Forum] National Education Policy, 2019 (Draft) and Libraries

Dear LIS-forum members, Perhaps this may not be the right time for us to talk about the falling standards of LIS profession, when we are confronted with an urgent task of explaining the importance of libraries in education to the Union Government; but we should certainly give a serious thought to what Dr. Asundi had said with pain and anguish. Earlier, there were many discussions in this forum on the falling standards of LIS profession, and the people or groups responsible for this downfall; but nothing happened except a dim silence. I am glad that Dr. Asundi has clearly explained how our LIS profession has failed to 'deliver' its promises; the disregard for LIS profession by the Government; and how we are unable to influence the Government on policy matters. (Incidentally, he forgot to mention the mushrooming of LIS departments/centres, when there is an severe unemployment in the LIS profession due to substandard education). In my opinion, either collectively or individually, we did not show any resentment or learnt any lessons from the past mistakes, but kept on going without any action to bring some change in the profession. It is high time for us to seriously do some thing to regain our lost professional identity and contribute to the National Education Policy through a good set of recommendations. I thank and wish all my senior colleagues involved in this task Best Wishes. The opinion expressed here are my own and personal. Dr. M Koteswara Rao former Librarian University of Hyderabad ________________________________ From: LIS-Forum on behalf of Ashok Asundi Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2019 11:24 AM To: GANAGANUR MANJUNATH Cc: lis-forum Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] National Education Policy, 2019 (Draft) and Libraries Dear LISFraternity, I am goingthrough the discussion on draft NEP andits discontented importance about the libraries in education. The informal group of library professionals prepared a good dossierforwarded the same to the concerned authorities. Prof. M.K. Sridhar, the formerMember-Secretary of Karnataka Knowledge Commission initiated to prepare a draft note to be sent to the concerned . I present my views here on the state ofhappening in the LIS profession for which entire fraternity is concerned but nosolution have come forth These are my personal views being still very active in the professional development and with a background of experience of more than 50 years in LIS profession in different capacities. 1. Over the years the profession hasbeen loosing its identity; the fact that a) The decline is visible throughthe successive education commission reports since 1920 starting with Sadler committee Report (CalcuttaUniversity Commission) b ) The New Education Policy, 1986and revised in 2001 has not taken recourse to the recommendations on the importance and provisions of library facilities in education in particular from school to university education - the named reports are Mudliar commission on secondary commission, Radhakrishnan and Kothar i Commission Reports of 1948-49 and 1964-65. c) The two UGC Reports under the Chairmanshipof Dr. Ranganathan were the firstand the last Reports on LIS Education and Academic Libraries After the demise of Dr.Ranganathan there was no force to reckon with to push the library cause and we fought only on status and salary scales, that bestow ed with political leaders But the case of good library facility in general has taken a back seat. d)Hardly no new appointments are made in the libraries;whether Public, College or Universities. The condition of school libraries isbetter not to mention. e) The profession gets its identity with men holding keypositions and almost all universities in the state and most (Except Govt)college libraries are without professional staff. We thought that by adoptingtechnology we would give a facelift to the profession but it has marred theprofession, as the library organisation has been least concerned function in libraries. f)The profession grows, develops and gets an imated only when there is good organisationalset-up. Where do we find a model organisation that we can teach and implement. Wepresent good images only in Papers presented in the conferences. g) We have borrowed many ideas, concepts and tools from west. Take for example the OSS onLibrary Automation, we spend to the tune of Rs. 20-50 lakhs on RFIDtechnology. But we have not made any cost - benefit analysis on their implementation and it is worth to go forsuch hard technology. h)What does our organisations and associations aredoing? Visualising the serious dearth ofworking professional manpower in thelibraries; contrary we are producing enough from our library schools; noassociation has made any representation to the Governments to look into thisissue. The Governments think on the other hand the libraries can be managedwithout adequate people. There are many one man libraries. i)The heads of our Associations are more or less satisfiedbecause they can become members of oneor other committees in the Government or gain some benefits to attend the conference abroad by virtue being ahead of the national body. j) So no imagebuilding efforts have been on the anvil of our associations and more or lessthey have lost the National identity and have been functioning as just regionalassociations for the last severaldecades throughout, without country wide representation and activities.. 2. Library Science Education andResearch is at a very low ebb. a) We have almost forgotten Ranganathancontributions and their importance in LIS education and research and in library organisation, whereas thewesterners are serious in reinventinghim and doing research on him. This isone on the serious gaps also in our research studies. b) No theoretical research is being undertaken. 99% of researchstudies are on survey based (Onlyquestionnaire data) No testing of samplesize on its adequacy. Where does all data is applied? If sample size is smallboost it up arbitrarily (double the responses) c) Compare the research papers publishedin Indian and Foreign Journals on library science d) We have failed to identify new areasof application of library techniques other than the bibliographic data. Thereis need for total diversification and India is the only country which has thatpotential, in the background of its history, culture and traditional knowledge. e) If we had done some multidisciplinaryresearch and we would have gained dentityand image from other disciplines. f) Look at the western librarianship.Apart from Library professionals more than 100 scholarly individuals havecontributed to the problems and issues of information management, handling,search and transmission. J.C.Licklider, a professor of Computer Science, at MITauthored a book on Libraries of the Futurein 1960s. HP Luhn, Prof. J.D.Bernal,Eric de Solla Price, Gerald Salton, LeoEgghe, Vannever Bush, Fred Kilgour, Alister Macleish, F.B. Rogers, Donker Duyvis, to name a few have contributed to the LIS profession who were not LIS people. g) The entire British LIS fraternity hasdigested Ranganathan's ideas and even today he is admired and studied in that country. The Royal School ofLibrary and Information Science,Copenhagen, Denmark has prescriptions on SRR ideas on Indexing and Chain Indexing wascompared to Yahoo search engine. Did any school explore this and also that anURL can represent PMEST and their manifestations of rounds and levels. h) There is a total lack of library culture in our country which has to be nurtured from school level and we need good schoollibraries. To quote an example the school children are introduced Dewey byusing the Mickey Mouse cartoon caricatures to present the first summary of DDC. 3. We have seen the fate of National KnowledgeCommission recommendations of Library Working group. If I had been a member of that working group, I would havesuggested only one subject to thecommission “ Prepare a National Libraryand information Policy” which would have taken care of the total librarydevelopment and efforts to implement it. Where does the National Commission onLibraries stand now? When would the National Institute of Library andInformation Science be established. On this account I made a paper in 1990sthat a Council of Library and Information Science Education and Research beconstituted with broad structure, on the lines of ICSSR and other Councils of research. 4. I think now it is high time tolook towards image building and gainingidentity to the profession and our efforts should be towards that end. Even ifthe NEP accepts our recommendations, the fate of our profession is not going tochange if our efforts are not concerned with the issues I have raises. We have to do an introspection andconsider the discontent attitude of NEP as a blessing in disguise and our allefforts should focus on image buildingand gaining identity. I have spelt some points above and hope they would beconsidered in this regard. Sincerely yours Prof.A.Y.Asundi FormerProfessor and Chairman Departmentof Library and Information Science, Officerin Charge, IT Centre BangaloreUniversity, Bangalore ashokasundi@rediffmail.com 9980815468 On Wednesday, 26 June, 2019, 5:24:09 pm IST, GANAGANUR MANJUNATH wrote: Thanks to Mr.Satyanarayana for sharing his observations about the draft NEP, May I request some one to please share the set of thirteen policy recommendations made by the librarians to NEP in a meeting held at NAAC ? thanks, G.K.Manjunath Director of Libraries Ahmedabad University Ahmedabad. On Thu, 20 Jun 2019 at 22:39, Sathyanarayana NV < sathya@informaticsglobal.com> wrote:

Dear friends of LIS Profession

The Ministry of Human Resources Development released the National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 (final draft) early this month inviting public opinion and feedback from all stakeholders. The good news is, unlike in the earlier draft report of NEP released in 2016 as an input to the policy which mentioned the word library just in one place coming as part of a quote, NEP 2019 mentions library in more than 30 instances, in its 480 page report, spread over 23 chapters. But the disappointment is, library is just mentioned in a few contexts as part of various infrastructure support. As policy guideline, there are only two statements on libraries:

- “Expansion of school and public libraries and building a culture of reading and communication” (p68)’

- “Enhancing access to libraries and online journals” (p241) – This policy statement in particular suggests setting up a mechanism to enable the Government to be the single buyer for online access to journals for all public institutions to replace the present practice of funding premier institutions for subscriptions to journals.

The treatment given to library is more of a “such as” facility.

In October 2017, the committee set up for developing the new NEP 2019 had arranged a meeting of a few librarians in NAAC, Bangalore. This group of librarians had given a set of thirteen policy recommendations. None of these recommendations is found as specific policy statement in the NEP 2019 draft report which is surprising.

I consider it important that the LIS groups initiate quick debate on NEP 2019 (draft) and its implications on the future of libraries in the country if accepted without according adequate and appropriate focus on library as an integral part of and yet distinct role player in education. It is highly desirable that LIS groups and in particular the professional associations like ILA, IASLIC and others initiate quick debate to evolve a national library policy document and submit to the NEP 2019 (draft) committee for inclusion as a distinct chapter in the report.

|N. V. Sathyanarayana| |Chairman & Managing Director|Informatics India Ltd.|Bangalore 560004|INDIA| |www.informaticsglobal.com|+91-80-40387777|

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