Dear all,
             I was a participant in 5th UGC-refresher course in LIS at calicut University.
The course was from 5-1-2010 to 25-1-2010 at Academic Staff College. Threre were 45 participants including three from outside Kerala. The course was mainly aiming for providing hands on experience with various library softwares, especially digital library application packages.
     The course was inaugurated by Prof.Bavakutty, HOD, DLIS, Kannur University. Dr.K.X.Joseph, Director,ASC presided and Dr.Jalaja, HOD,DLIS, calicut university welcomed the gathering.
         Prof.Bavakutty conducted an excellent session on internet searching skills. He explained different ways of searching the Web with illustrations which was very useful. Dr.M.G.Sreekumar and Mr. Biju from IIM, Kozhikode explained about digital libraries and demonstrated Greenstone digital library applications. Sri. Rajasekharan, Librarian, KILA said that the librarian who is ignorant about building digital library is treated as illiterate in the digital age. He trained the participants on how to build digital library using Greenstone.
Dr.Rama Sesha from Mysore university conducted an excellent on information sources for research. He revealed that Acharya Rajaneesh read 1,67,000 books and maintained them in his personal library fully organised. Oh! What an intellectual Acharya Rajaneesh was!!! who was mis-represented by our main stream media. Dr. Rama also revealed the story of another bibliophile, Sri. Asuthosh Mukherjee who was keeping a personal library of 1,10,000 books.
     Sri.Tomson, Librarian, Devagiri college, Calicut and Dr.Dinesan Koovakai, Asst. Librarian from Central University Kasaragod demonstrated KOHA installation and its working in Linux platform. They informed us that KOHA is a free library management software and has all features of high cost proprietary softwares. Sri.Madhu, system administrator, Calicut university taught us important Linux commands.
      Prof. Bardol form Mangalore University spoke on professional ethics. He explained that library ethics are rooted in the Five laws of Library Science. Dr. Chandrasekhara from Mysore University conducted a session on Doublin Core meta-data standards.
   Sri.Husain, Librarian, Kerala Forest Research Institute said there is confusion among working librarians resulting from new generation library softwares and the practical difficulty arising during switching over existing data bases to new applications. Dr.Manikandan, Faculty from Dept. of Psychology, Feroke College Calicut conducted an excellent session on reserch design and use of SPSS package in data analysis. Dr. Muhammed Haneefa, Lecturer, DLIS, Calicut University, trained us on making web pages using HTML. This was highly effective. Dr. Kochu kosi, Librarian, Central Reference Library, Kolkata conducted an enlightening session on eary writing materials, eary printing and informed us about the recommendations of National Knowledge Comission on Librarires and LIS. Dr. Jacob Verghese, Faculty, IMG, Calicut had an inter-active session on inter-personal relations. He enlightened us that professional skills contribute only 20% in success while 80% contribution in success is from other areas especially human relation skills. Dr. Abdul Aseese, University Librarian(i/C), Calicut University showed us UGC-INFONET Service in the University and informed us that 9000+ journals are in the consortium.
During the course we could participate in a seminar on "Best Practices in Libraries" jointly organised by DLIS, Calicut Iniversity and KLA. SrI. Jayarajan, Country Head, British library India, Dr. Anil Chalambra, HOD, Dept. of Malayalam, University of Calicut etc spoke.
        On 20-1-2010, we had a good experiece of visiting IIM, Kozhikode. Dr. M.G.Sreekumar explained about the library services and about the digital library of IIMK. On the evening we visited Beypore beach, a place of historical importance.

By Sunny Joseph, Librarian, Govt.Institute of Advanced Study in Education, Thrissur.
sannyjoseph@yahoo.co.in

The INTERNET now has a personality. YOURS! See your Yahoo! Homepage.