I have been following with interest the threads of postings on the status of librarians. I would like to raise a few fundamental issues. The problem of status seems very specific to Indian librarians. From my experience overseas, this does not seem to be an issue at all. 1. Status to a profession is something that is *given* by a society or community based on the usefulness of the professionals to that society or community; status is not *demanded*. 2. Each profession, vocation, or calling has a distinct role to play in society. The conception that some people are more equal than others, have a higher status or a better status, is an unfortunate distortion, an egocentric distortion that some of us propagate to give it legitimacy. 3. Another unfortunate definition of status that most of us have is that of the salaries we earn. We would all definitely like to earn good salaries and we should strive to make them at par with similar professions to ensure that the same caliber people are available to do justice to the profession. But, just because someone earns less than another no one needs to relate that to status. A mother or grandmother in a family may earn nothing at all, but if she is doing a wonderful job running the home, she will attract status. Good nurses in hospitals are regarded as indispensable because doctors cannot do without them. This even if they earn less than doctors. 4. Good teachers are put on a pedestal by students and their families and very often are remembered by them for life and even helped in ways that money cannot compensate. *A teacher's status arises from what she gives and not what she gets**.* I would again reiterate that every profession should have its status and the right salaries. Sometimes this does not happen. But it will not get corrected just by demanding for it. We need to sow the seeds for it and make it happen. 5. If librarians feel that they don’t have the status they deserve, I think they need to do some serious introspection. I would urge my library friends to ask themselves these questions: How useful have I been today to a student? What can I do to make myself more useful. Are my services relevant to the community today, or am I doing these because they have been done for so many years? When was the last time that I interacted with a faculty member? Do I know what topics are being taught in the various subjects of? Have I found out if the books being bought are useful, and if so how? These are only a few of the questions. There are many more such questions that I am sure you can think of. 6. I think that librarians in India do not interact with their users effectively and regularly. One of the serious problems is the general lack of good communication skills by librarians in India. This alone puts them at a great disadvantage. We are too much involved in the nitty gritty of librarianship (or library science) and not enough with those who need services. 7. One rather obvious symptom of the inferiority complex of librarians is seen in the number of Fetschrifts of librarians. As soon as a librarian retires, his/her junior colleagues take upon themselves to ask for contributions to a Fetschrift. A friendly publisher comes forward to sponsor or publish it. The articles are not necessarily of much value. I wonder, why we seek such satisfaction and recognition. The work you leave behind, the colleagues to whom you provide leadership, the users who remember you is adequate according to me. I wrote a case study for our book on Teaching Library Management using Case Studies. The story is a hypothetical one of how a librarian asking for status was guided by a professor and the actions that the librarian did to raise the status of the library and hence also his status. Though the story is hypothetical, I believe it is not beyond the possible. L J Haravu -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.