Dear All,
It seems that we need to discuss the issues raised by Shri Arun, in order to make the library field a little better. The scenario is far from satisfactory. There is no need to blame anyone for the sorry state of affairs. But we need to think of ways for improving the situation. So it seems that the teacher- friends in the forum should start the discussion airing their views. Probably they are are the people who can do something substantial to improve the situation.
Regards,
K Rajasekharan
Librarian , Kerala Institute of Local Administration
Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur -680591
Ph 0487- 2204097 (O), 2201428 ( R)
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 14:02:23 +0100 (BST)
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Subject: [LIS-Forum] Training in LIS
To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in, naglaxman@yahoo.com,
iatlis-owner@yahoogroups.com
Cc: haravu@newgenlib.com
Message-ID: <37633.41021.qm@web43144.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
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Friends:
I am concerned about the quality of training we
provide in our country to would be librarians and
information scientists.
The other day I had received my copy of the Bulletin
of ASIST, which I always find very readable. Prof.
Blaise Cronin, who won the ASIS&T Award of Merit for
2006, had written a two-page acceptance speech. He is
an extraordinarily good writer and I enjoy reading
him. In his acceptance speech, Prof. Cronin, whom I
first came to know more than two decades ago when I
reviewed his cute little book "The Citation Process",
had mentioned the names of many outstanding
information scientists, spanning more than two
generations, whose writings had shaped his career or
influenced him in some way. Among them are
Hans Peter Luhn
Robert Fairthorne
Cyril Cleerdon
Eugene Garfield
Wilfrid Lancaster
Gerard Salton
Tefko Saracevic
Henry Small
Don Swanson
Howard White
Bertram Brookes
Michael Buckland
Pauline Autherton Cochrane
Wiliam Goffman
Belver Griffith
Robert Hayes
John Martyn
Stephen Robertson
Karen Sparck Jones
Irene Farkas-Conn
Peter Taylor
Alan Gilchrist
Elizabeth Lowry-Corry
Brian Vickery
Robert Williams
Ben Ami-Lipetz
Derek de Solla Price
Nick Belkin
Boyd Rayward
Jack Meadows.
I met a young librarian with a Masters degree from a
leading Indian university and a couple of years of
work experience and showed him the article and asked
him if he had read any of these authors. He was honest
enough to admit that he had heard of the name of
Garfield in connection with indexing, and his teachers
never even mentioned the names of the others.
On another day I was asked to meet the final year
Masters students of LIS in a famous Indian university.
Some students would not speak a word, despite repeated
cajoling. Their knowledge was far below what one would
expect of a Masters student. Without preparation, they
may not be able to appreciate Tefko Saracevic's edited
volume "Introduction to Information Science" or Irene
Farkas-Conn's history of the field "From Documentation
to Information Science." To be fair, they may
understand some portions of Garfield's Essays of an
Information Scientist, as Garfield often wrote not for
the specialists but for the lay readers.
Many years ago I was in a selection committee in a
chemistry laboratory and I asked a candidate for the
post of an assistant librarian if he knew any
chemistry as his job would be to serve chemists;
scientists may want to make a substructure search and
unless one knows chemical structures it will be almost
impossible to make such searches. The candidate
replied that in the LIS school they taught
'organization of knowledge' and therefore there was no
need to know chemistry! When asked to explain 'open
access to journal literature' another candidate said
that some libraries allowed users to move freely in
the library and pick up the books and journals they
wanted to read, and he was totally ignorant of making
journal literature freely available on the Internet.
I have attended a few national conferences. There is
hardly any originality in the papers presented and the
level of discussion is appallingly low.
We need to do something and do it quickly. We need to
inculcate the habit of reading in our students. Blaise
cronin says that when he was a graduate student at
Belfast he "poured over copies of American
Documentation, Aslib Proceedings, IP&M, ARIST and the
Journal of Documentation with enthusiasm of a kid in a
candy store, stumbling upon seminal papers". We need
to guide our students to the masters and their great
writings. As the field is expanding, the need to keep
abreast of developments is becoming more and more
important. We need to improve the communication skills
of our students. We should award degrees only to the
deserving.
Years ago I had taught at the INSDOC Training School
and I had the great pleasure of working with people
like Prof. Thyaga Natarajan and Prof. Guha, and was
amazed at their simplicity and passion for reading and
teaching. Even the next level faculty had the
qualities of good teachers. I have heard about the
high quality of training imparted at DRTC, but have no
first hand knowledge, except attending a few
conferences and giving a few lectures to students. The
training imparted at NCSI, largely thanks to the late
Dr T B Rajashekar, is indeed very good. We need to
make sure that training imparted in every LIS school
in the country is of the highest quality.
As Greg Chappell said there should be a system where
those who do not perform are automatically sent out.
According to him that is why Australia performs very
well in cricket.
Best wishes.
Arun
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