Dear Sir/Madam, As we all know the year 2011 mark the completion of 100 years of LIS Education in India. Though LIS education was started in 1911, LIS education in India got a huge boost with the Ranganthan’s metamorphic shift to library science from mathematics. Ranganathan’s path breaking efforts have laid a strong foundation for the growth of library movement in India and elsewhere. However the post-Ranganathan era has gone through a tremendous change with advent of information technology and the Internet blurring the space and time constraints. The easy availability of Information in varied formats has put LIS education in a threshold of radical change. But there is not much discuss on how LIS education has to reposition itself in a constant changing information environment. The following points discussed below bring out some of the problems that the LIS education is facing in India. · LIS Research in India:Since 1957, India library professionals have significantly contributed for the growth of LIS research in India. More than 1000 Ph Ds have been awarded across the country (Manjunatha, 2011). The numbers seems incredible but the quantum of the research has been limited to largely few areas, mainly Bibliometrics, Library Management and Service, Information Seeking Behavior or User Studies. Still research in these areas has been taken up by many scholars. This indicated that India LIS research has not ventured into other areas of research as it should have been. Many of the areas that mentioned above have been repeated with slight changes. Many of the studies have used survey research largely questionnaire method. Other methodological approaches have not been employed in many research reports. The lack of strong theoretical approach to the LIS research has hampered the Indian LIS research at the global map in the post Ranganathan era. · Missing S. R. Ranganathan’s legacy : Today we clearly miss the legacy of S. R. Ranganathan. Ranganathan’s contribution to the growth of the LIS profession put India in global LIS domain. But today intellectual caliber and leadership quality of Ranganathan is missing in Indian LIS community. To revive the LIS in India we need people of Ranganathan’s stature, who can bring leadership quality to the LIS community with strong professional bent of mind. · LIS Education and Changing Information Landscape : Because of changing information landscape, digital information replacing the analog form has resulted in changing LIS curriculum to suit the changing information environment. Even many of the library schools in US and other part of the world have removed the word “library” and have named their LIS schools as “iSchools” (information Schools). But not much discussion has taken place in India on this, although ISiM (International School of Information Management) has started iSchool movement in India in 2005. But, how LIS education is going to serve the net savvy information users and how LIS professionals reposition themselves in a changing information landscape is largely missing in Indian LIS discourse. · Universities Reluctant to Start LIS Schools : Another impending problem of the LIS is, many of the recently established universities have not keen on starting LIS schools. We have more than 500 plus universities in India, but only 95 universities have found to be offered Ph D program in LIS (Manjunatha, 2011). The reluctancy can be attributed to the changing information environment. Moreover, library education or library profession has never been on par with the teachers. Library profession has been seen as a supporting mechanism rather on par with teaching professions. There is a need to understand and examine why new universities are not keen on opening LIS schools. · Identity crisis: LIS profession is facing the problem of identity crisis. The library science, information science, knowledge management and other similar nomenclature have been part of the LIS discourse. But we have not been able to identify ourselves in one umbrella. The one set of professionals who are part of traditional (college or university) libraries are part of library profession and other who work in special and corporate libraries are part of information or knowledge management profession. The ambiguity of various nomenclatures associated with library and information profession has created identity crisis in LIS field. This is appropriate time to discuss some of the issues raised above to herald a new era of Library and Information Science education in India. ------------------------- With best wishes Vasantha Raju N GFGC-Periyapatna Mysore -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.