Date: Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:55:49 +0530
From: T. Shahab
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
