Dear LIS Professionals, Karnataka State Library Association (KALA) is happy to invite you to the Monthly Lecture Series. The sixth talk of the series has been scheduled on Tuesday 5th July 2011 @6.00pm at the following Address: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), SJM Towers, No.18, Seshadri Road, 6th Cross, Gandhinagar (Near Ananda Rao Circle) Bangalore - 560 009 Karnataka, India. Title: LIS Profession: Quo Vadis? Speaker: Dr. Shalini R. Urs, Executive Director and Professor, International School of Information Management (ISiM), University of Mysore, Mysore. Abstract: Quo Vadis! is a Latin phrase, meaning "Where are you going?". There are some professions, which are always in a state of flux and LIS is definitely one of them. Given the pervasive and invasive nature of impact of the Internet and the attendant evolving nature of everything in this society, it is but natural that a profession such as LIS which is intertwined with the world of information is at the cusp of things. For a pessimist, it could be the end of the road; for an optimist there is the promised pot of gold along the road; for a realist it is time for a reality check. It is time that the LIS profession studies the law of the land of information in all its ramifications and redefines and repositions to the changed scenario. The framework for the redefining process begins at the notion of information (content) and its use (consumption). The digital medium has wrought in transformative changes; one of them being "access" and the concomitant issues of "democratization" and "participation". This talk will throw more questions than answers. One fundamental question this talk will pose is- with the internet heralding the new golden age of access, what is the role of LIS profession, which has always prided itself as the bridge between "content" and the "consumer?" The second pertinent question is about the social nature of the profession. Social networking is happening online riding the bandwagon of with the web 2.0 technologies. What can the LIS profession do? Can we reclaim or do we reposition? What are our choices? These are some of the questions, the talk will ponder over. About the Speaker: Prof. Shalini R Urs has been a faculty at the University of Mysore, since the last 32 years. She has done her Bachelor's degree is in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics; Master's degree is in Library and Information Sciences, and post graduate diploma in computer applications. Her doctoral research on 'relevance' in information retrieval brought out the strong correlations between cognitive sciences and information science. As Executive Director of ISiM, She is currently working towards making ISiM a world class educational enterprise in collaboration with University of Pittsburgh, Syracuse University, University of Michigan in USA and Dalhousie University in Canada and through strong linkages with industry majors such as Google, Microsoft, InfoSys, Rediff.com and others. She has initiated an annual International Summit series called InfoVision (www.infovision.org.in http://www.infovision.org.in/ ). She has spearheaded the digital library movement in India, through various academic endeavors such as organizing major international conferences, workshops, meetings and carrying out R & D projects. She was a visiting professor at the DRTC, ISI, Bangalore during 1998 and 1999. She was a Fulbright scholar and visiting professor at Virginia Tech, USA during 2000-2001 and taught a course on digital libraries at Virginia Tech, along with Prof. Edward A. Fox. Her major accomplishments include - the Vidyanidhi Digital Library project (www.vidyanidhi.org.in http://www.vidyanidhi.org.in/ ), which is one of the internationally known Indian digital libraries initiative. She is a member of many high level committees and organizations including the National Knowledge Commission's subcommittee on libraries, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology's Working Group on Digital Libraries and also a member of the Steering Committee of the Working Group on National Digital Preservation Programme. Currently she is the Vice-Chair and Chair elect of the Steering Committee of the Asian Digital Libraries. She has been successful in mobilizing enormous resources totaling about Rs. 5 crores for various initiatives including R & D Projects, Workshops, and Training Programmes. She published over 100 research papers. Along with Ed Fox, She has have authored the review paper on digital libraries published in the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology published by the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Prof. Shalini's areas of research interests include - Digital libraries; Social networks and Research collaborations; Topic Maps, Ontologies and Semantic web; Text mining and data analytics; OCR and Natural Language Processing. --------- Please confirm your participation as we need to make arrangements for your entry. RSVP: Raghavendra Patil (Mob: 9900606332, e-mail: raghav.patil@tcs.com mailto:raghav.patil@tcs.com ) & Anuradha (080-67246007, e-mail: anuradha.a@tcs.com mailto:anuradha.a@tcs.com ). Thanks and Regards, Rajendra Babu H General Secretary Karnataka State Library Association (KALA). Regards, Rajnedra Babu H Consulting Manager Talent Transformation Wipro Technologies, EC-1, Electronics City, Hosur Road, Bangalore - 560100. 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