Dear Members Kindly find Minutes of Second lecture held on 13th March 2015 at SRELS, Rajajinagagr, Bangalore Topic:“Metamorphosis of library space to virtual environment” Speaker:Prof. Lalitha Aswath, Bangalore University, Bangalore Organizers:NCSI-Net Foundation, Karnataka State Library Association (KALA) and Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (SRELS) Date &Venue:Friday 13thMarch 2015 at SRELS, Rajajinagar, Bangalore. The event started sharp at 6.15 P.M. Francis Jayakanth welcomed the gathering and briefly introduced Dr. P.Y. Rajendra Kumar, Director General, National Library of India, who chaired the lecture. Dr. Rajendra Kumar, introduced the speaker and presented his views about Library space management, which has gained significance in the context of more and more scholarly resources made available online. He also appreciated organizers for selecting a very relevant topic related to Library space management for the lecture. Dr. Rajendra Kumar briefly touched upon the activities of the National library of India. Prof. Lalitha Aswath, the speaker, in her introductory remarks raised several questions pertaining to the library buildingsin the contest of sweeping changes taking place in the wake of developments taking place in the realm of ICT– Do westill need library buildings, will the library buildings survive the web, is there a future for the library as we know it?She pointed out that until about 30 years ago, a library was characterized by a physical location, physical collection, physical discovery tool in the form of card catalogue. The library professionals acquired, processed and maintained the physical resources. Naturally, most of the library transactions were mostly happening in the library premises. Library buildings during the first half of the 20th Century were designed keeping in mind the specific, known,and predicable functions of a library. Such building served the purpose well as long as the library functions remained constant. During the second half of the 20th century, the function of academic libraries and others, were no longer constant. Three principal items revolutionized library planning, resulting in the massive changes to the library building: the changing role of and expansion in education; new forms of communication and access to information; the massive development of all forms of relevant technology. These developments resulted in library buildings that are adaptable, enlarged, and changed to rearrange functions and activities of a library, easily. Although internal arrangements and user services vary from library ro library, recent library buildings of all sizes have several common factors, which have been referred to as Faulkner Brown’s Ten commandments. According to Faulkner, a library building should be: flexible, compact, accessible, extendible, varied, organized, comfortable, constant in environment, secure, economic. The talk also touched upon the predictions of FW Lancaster, Richard L. Walters, and Carton Rachel, Allen Veaner, and Ken Dowlin pertaining to the impact of IT in all walks of life including library and its services. She pointed with appropriate examples as to how some of these predications turned out correct and some didn’t. The speaker pointed out that although there has been a paradigmshift in the way library services are being rendered with the advent of web and related technologies, world over, the physical space of the libraries have not shrunk. The physical collections of the libraries continues to grow. The speaker also touched upon the publication of literature pertaining to planning and designing of library buildings. The literature indicates that world over, it is academically active area, butfrom India, there has been only 30 publications during the period 1968-2011 as reported in LISA Finally, the speaker touched upon the important aspect of the changes to expect of the libraries in the days ahead. In her view, Library buildings can transform into other types of locations: in universities they can become meeting places and study facilities, including free wifi areas; it be a place where intellectual interaction with past and present take place (Combination of many factors)? The speaker concluded her talk with a series of questions like:Will the libraries cease to exist? Will libraries become tourist attractions? Will libraries adapt to the changing world and shift focus to serve other, related purposes? Are professional librarians’ skills useful in a digital information world? A very useful discussion took place based on the questions raised by the speaker. Several professionals gave examples WRT their libraries. The lecture was attended by more than 30 professionals from academic, R & D, corporate, student community. The lecture was well received and appreciated by the participants. Dr. Jagirdhar thanked the speaker for her informative talk and Dr. Rajendra Kumar for presiding over the lecture. Jagirdhar also thanked audience for making the Bits and Bytes lecture successful by their active participation and in good numbers, too. About BITS & BYTES Lecture Series: A Joint lecture series initiated in Bangalore by three LIS organizations namely - NCSI-Net Foundation, Karnataka State Library Association (KALA) and Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (SRELS). Organizers welcome others to join the initiative. The lecture would be held on second Friday of every month at 6.15 pm at SRELS, Rajajiangar, Bangalore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Minutes Prepared by: Shivaram inputs from Francis Jayakanth & Ananda Byrappa Shivaram BS ICAST, CSIR-NAL Kodihalli Bangaluru-560017 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.