Re: [LIS-Forum] Ranganathan’s Five-Laws re-invented by OCLC for the world of e-Libraries and e- Learning!

I concur with you Harinarayan. I am not able to understand the logic of both reordering and re-wording (almost re-defining) these laws. For example, the fourth law - Save the time of the Reader, which is reordered as the first law is re-stated by the Authors of the report as *"Embed library systems and services into user's existing workflows". *This is at best one of the strategies for implementing the spirit of the law. The report is interesting to read. Good research has gone into the report. It is a welcome re-visit to Five Laws. What is important is -- his laws published in 1931 are as relevant today. *Sathya* *N.V. Sathya Narayana* *Informatics (India) Ltd, Bangalore. India. * *www.informindia.co.in http://www.informindia.co.in* On 11 August 2015 at 21:11, N.S. Harinarayana wrote:

'Happy Librarians Day'!

Thanks for the timely posting by Sri N.V. Sathyanarayana. Thanks also to him for making the article in SRELS publicly accessible.

The post in the LISFORUM made me to read through (all most simultaneously!) the article in SRELS and the original document (still reading, not yet completed) with intermittent thoughts about the reordering of the laws. Both the summary (by KSR published in SRELS) and the original are excellent and worth reading by all LIS professionals.

My initial and immediate reaction is that I some how feel that the laws have only ordinal value and do not necessarily reflect the order of importance. Hence, reordering or not does not make much sense. However, as the authors say each of these laws need to be revisited and interpreted in the light of new digital environment that we are in.

With regards,

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 4:48 PM, Sathya wrote:

...

*Happy Librarian's Day!*

The intellectual spirit of S R Ranganathan is alive and rocking in the new world order of information, education and learning. Thanks to OCLC, which came out with an independent report last year (2014) titled – “Reordering Ranganathan: Shifting user behavior, shifting priorities”. This report is a well-researched effort to bring in a new perspective to Ranganathan’s Five Laws in a digital landscape. The report expands the scope of the five laws to the e-Content domain of all types in all media including e-learning systems. The expanded scope covers users beyond the purview of traditional LIS. One can see this in the illustrated examples in the report like “Every Google map its traveller”. How universal and relevant are Ranganathan’s Laws is convincingly brought out in this report by the two OCLC researchers (Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Ph.D. and Ixchel M. Faniel, Ph.D.

This 130 page report is also excellently summarized by Dr. K. S. Raghavan in a 30 page article published in the recent issue of the SRELS Journal of Information Management [Vol 52(1), Feb. 2015, p. 3–23]. This was the journal founded by Dr. Ranganathan fifty one years ago: ( http://i-scholar.in/index.php/sjim/article/view/60392/51360) The original report can be accessed form OCLC site: (

http://www.oclc.org/content/dam/research/publications/library/2014/oclcresea... )

The complete digital archive of SRELS Journal on Information Management form Volume 1 is now available, published by Informatics Publishing Ltd., (a subsidiary of Informatics India Ltd., Bangalore) on its i-Scholar platform . (www.srels.org)

As the LIS profession readies to celebrate Librarian’s Day on 12th August in honor of Dr. S R Ranganathan, I extend my hearty greetings to the members of the LIS community and wish the profession many new vistas to explore and strengthen its value contribution to the Society at large.

Do we need to re-invent or re-order Five Laws for our Digital Times? This will be an interesting question to debate over this report. Librarian's Day is the right occasion for this debate.

*|**N. V. Sathyanarayana**|*Chairman & Managing Director*|*Informatics India Ltd.*|*Bangalore 560004*|*INDIA*|*

*|*Ph.+91-80-40387777*|**www.informaticsglobal.com http://www.informaticsglobal.com/**|*

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