Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:55:49 +0530 From: T. Shahab <tshahab@jamiahamdard.ac.in> Dear friends As a participant and non-official spokesperson, I like your valuable attention to the following reportage. The 26th All India annual IASLIC conference was held from 26-29 December at the University auditorium of the Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), a central University located in south Delhi. The theme of this year conference was "DIGITAL MEDIA AND LIBRARY INFORMATION SERVICES". Over 200 delegates participated from all over the country hailing from various universities and private institutions. Of them, them two were foreign representatives one each belonging to Pakistan and Bangladesh. The opening cermoney started with the recital of verses from the Holy Quran exhorting the mankind to read and research what he doesn't know. Later the JMI musical club presented the beautiful Jamia tarana. Prof. Mushiru Hasan, the vice-chancellor of JMI and Prof. Abdul Aziz, the vice-chancellor of AMU as the chief guiest graced the inaugural function. Whereas, Prof. Hasan drew the attention of the gathered librarians and information professionals to the importance of human factor in making the library professionals successfully deliver the information related needs of the users, the chief guest layed stress on the role of the librarians in meeting the challanges of information literacy; he also advocated the Kerala model where public libraries became the hub centres of information collections & disseminations; he also stressed the significance of digital conversion of the valuable unrecorded information sources so that posterity may benefit from it.The inaugural session came to a close with the singing of the national song Jana Gana.The 2nd. day plenary session received the thought provoking talk on significance of digital identity and the role of librarian in making information delivery sound and secure through digitisation; it was delivered by retd, Prof Syed Ismail Ahson from the dept. of Computer science, JMI. The day third plenary session started with a lively talk on practices in digitisation by Mr. Shukla from the CDAC centre NOIDA. The concluding day plenary session opened with the very informative talk delivered by Dr. Moni, Dy. Director General NIC.His talk was delivered in the backdrop of the Knowledge commision report on the significant role of libraries in bridging the digital divide as well as fulfilling the task of inclusive growth before the nation. Now on the fillip side. Whereas a record more than 100 academic papers touching the subject under discussion were repotedly received by the organisers only 75 out of these could be selected for publication in the IASLIC proceeding. Moreover, only 25 were actually read out during the conference. The level of discussions was mostly medicore. The responses from the scholars to the queries and supplementaries from the audience were at best half hearted. Regards. Shahab