Dear Friends,
I would like to congratulate Dr. Jaideep Sharma of IGNOU for taking
this bold step of initiating revision of BLIS Syllabus that too by
asking open suggestions through this forum.
I would be repeating (about half of ) what has already been
communicated to him directly in response to his personal email arrived
that before this email through lis-forum.
This would be a great opportunity to look into what is being taught
for last two decades. There has been number of changes that happened
on the educational scenarios and the information needs of the society
taken collectively. 'Net' is the major landmark revolution after the
printing press revolution. And this has happened in roughly last two
decades only. The earlier revolution changed what libraries were
before printing press. 'Net' revolution would also change as how the
libraries would be in near future. I had made a little prediction as
what would be academic libraries in the year 2020 around Dec 2005.
Some of you did not agree to my assumptions ( Path to discussions is
available at http://snipr.com/lib2020 ). Again let me stress that
changes would be dramatic. Perhaps some smaller institutions would be
outsourcing their 'libraries'. Only today (27th Feb 2008) in Times of
India, there is a News that Delhi University may be allowing its
Libraries accessible to the students of other universities on payment
of nominal fees. You may call it resource sharing, to me it is
outsourcing (of library services and content) by other institutions
and universities of Delhi from DU.
Ok, let me come to the actual point of revision of Syllabus. This
opportunity should be utilized to incorporate present day requirements
of Library and Information Professionals. Since it is a professional
course, the experience of working professionals would be more
appropriate. Thus it would be great opportunity to take views of the
working professionals.
I do not know whether the structure presented here is the revised
scheme or existing one. Whatever it may be it needs to be revised
drastically. Perhaps it will take me few other rounds of emails to
give my comments but to start with, I would just like see drastic
changes in the first paper itself - i.e. Library and Society. This
paper actually establishes and justifies the need of library for the
human society. In this "net" age, first of all we have to
re-establish the relevance of library. The conventional libraries
could become more and more irrelevant to the society if these are not
molded to the young and future generations of mankind. They are
already saying that Reference Books are Dinosaures in Libraries
(http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2008-02-05-voa37.cfm) I
would myself key-in few words in Google (over cell phone) than to
visit library and check out encyclopaedia. I may be mature enough to
evaluate and discount my 'net findings'. But the "google" generation
is not that mature. [A report (PDF - http://snipr.com/ggreport ),
sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems
Committee, tries to get beyond the stereotypes to find out just how
good young people are with information technology, and what the
implications are for schools and libraries.] And this is where we
should come in.
A new concept - Library 2.0 is to be definitely is there. Then comes
marketing of services by professionals. The philosophy of 'Open
Access', which I believe is same what Ranganathan referred by saying
"Books are for Use" has to be embedded within the future generation
librarians.
I have a point of view that:
The educational scheme for Library and Information Science
Professionals should have three concentric cores (facets):
1 - CORE - having the essential LIS philosophy, theory, Tools and Best
Practices.
2 - MIDDLE CORE - comprising of Information Technologies (All ICE
Technologies) that boosts the effectiveness of the CORE (1).
3 - INTERFACE CORE - This is the face that is perceived by Prospective
Employers. It takes the feedback from the job market, adjusts the
MIDDLE Core to satisfy the Employers' requirements.
(http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/pipermail/lis-forum/2007-November/006454.html)
I would put the Library Users under the INTERFACE CORE. Applying
Library 2.0 Concepts to this would mean mechanisms be taught were
Professionals develop processes in their library systems to capture
the user behaviour and further refine and enrich library services and
Content by encouraging collaborative feed back from users. For example
- OPAC may be developed to allow tagging and adding to their
'favourites'.
We should re-look entire syllabus and relate to the present day
requirement. What I can suggest is to make a formal committee for
that. I would be happy to participate in that. Whatever it may be -
the best should come out.
--Sukhdev Singh, NIC.
You may SMS me at 09868960074
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 12:38 PM, jaideep sharma
Dear Friends,
There have been recently a number of debates about the LIS Professionals and the LIS Education. Professionals feel that the LIS Education in India needs a complete revamping. IGNOU is planning a revision in its BLIS programme. We request fellow colleagues to give their views on the syllabus of the BLIS programme. Please find attached below a broad structure of the BLIS syllabus of IGNOU. It would be appreciated if responses are specific, pertaining to different courses.
.......... ..........
Syllabus BLIS-01 : Library and Society
Jaideep Sharma, Reader, Faculty of Library and Information Science School of Social Sciences Indira Gandhi National Open University Delhi-110068
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