Dear All, Dr Shahab has raised a very pertinent issue. Librarians were appointed, given all the responsibilities and not provided with necessary enabling environments. So libraries are tend to fail in delivering the services normally. Why does this happen? Many librarians are happy with confining themselves to some routine duties and not interested to think, plan and implement library development and services. Some others are incapable of functioning as a professional librarians due to their poor exposure and lack of interest. Other capable and innovative librarians do not get the luxury of a supportive and enabling environment for their professional work. Very few institutions provide reasonable environment for library development. This is a very bad situation. The book selection is considered to be a domain of some experts and librarian is considered not capable of proper book selection. The selection of books should be in tune with the information needs of the users. Book selection can be done without the deeper knowledge of the subject or reading seriously, if you know the criteria to evaluate a book based on the quality consideration of the publisher, book reviews and even the citation statistics, if one is a capable librarian. On the other hand teachers, having doctorate degrees etc and incapable of making a good selection for the library, are provided with the right to selection based on the knowledge that they are experts and librarians are ignorant. We need to change this situation for which the library professional associations should raise this issue, promote the concept and should show good results at least in some institutions where librarians can build a better collection, if provided with a free hand. Unless the librarian is supported with facilities like men money, materials , methods etc, they cannot go ahead reasonably in proper library development. In this age of interdisciplinary studies, proper book selection require very good understanding of the main subjects in general and their inter- relationships. Librarian should develop that knowledge by becoming a generalist, rather than a specialist. Library schools should work as a breeding ground of such new breed of library professionals. Regards, K Rajasekharan Librarian, Kerala Institute of Local Administration(KILA) Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur - 680581 , India Original Message Subject: [LIS-Forum] Seeking discussion on problems with a balance BOOK SELECTION POLICY & PROCEDURE From: T. Shahab <tshahab@jamiahamdard.ac.in> Dear Memberss, Through the popular LIS-Forum for exchanging professional ideas, I wish to engage the valuable attention of the practicing librarians to the ever increasing problem of breach in librarians' domain by faculty members in light of the shrinking role of librarians in determining the policy and procedures involving many of the library activities, particularly the collection development through BOOK SELECTION. In some libraries that I know, the Acquisition Dept. has been turned into just like a clearance house; the librarian is not consulted on matters of Book selection; even the budgeted amount under the Central library has to be used on the authorization of the Vice-chancellor or one of his/ her nominees. Book suppliers will directly contact the faculty members get the books recommended and pass-on the recommended lists to the Acquisition Dept. for necessary followups. Some times, two or more departments may recommend the same title, and the librarian being unaware of the reason, has only to meekly put his/her signature. Even in matters of acquiring multiple copies of the already purchased books (on students' demand), the hands of a librarian is bound. A Librarian being in close touch with the students is always approached by them with their requests on different library related matters, but the librarian is most of the cases is unable to make any firm committment for a facility or extension of services to the students. This change in power dynamics in Universities is making the job of a librarian a very unsavoury one; most librarians are feeling dejected and professionally emasculated. Please, take the above write-up as a point of discussion. Feel free to express your considered opinion on this matter of great importance. Regards. Dr. T. SHAHAB -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.