Dear
All,
Mr Ehtesham has
done a very good job of pointing out the most essential
tools, modern librarians should know in the
digital age.
It
is good that a few librarians, who are familiar with FOSS
technologies and tools, are taking individual imitative of different
sorts in helping the fellow librarians to learn and use those
tools for furthering information activities for which the profession
stands. This kind of peer training- learning process may help the
profession in its strides in gaining better status, pay and role in this
digital environment.
Sometime
ago, Mr G K Manjumdar & Mr Singh had made some efforts in
developing a public database of such IT friendly librarians. That
attempt did not go much ahead. This is the right time to give a
push to the voluntary peer training, given up once.
Simultaneously, some
of the new learners can self-learn some of those tools with the help of
simple tutorials available in the net. They can seek the support of the
peer tutors for comparatively complex tools or on the part where
support is needed. In self-learning, one should
start with the simple and the most useful. So it seems that the
best bet, as the first priority item, is the Greenstone Digital
Library Software.
Greenstone
installation has become much easier by now. Installation of
Greenstone 2.81 is a matter of a few mouse clicks on the
pre-requisite Java2 Runtime Environment and Greenstone software. Building
a digital library with it is a simple exercise of giving a name, gathering some
documents and clicking on the Create button. Creating Browsing
Classifiers and Search Indexes are the items that require some
knowledge.
The
voluntary peer-training will also work well with those who tried the tools
themselves and learned the whereabouts.
Regards,