It is necessary to debate on this issue with focus. I feel Dr. Ranganathan would have coined a new name for us, if he was to be alive today.  1. LIS is no longer a single discipline and it has grown into multidisciplinary in nature with knowledge skills needed from many related disciplines. 2. Name is important to reflect the work that we do and we need to focus on it. When the concept of Library is changing with time. We need to look at changing the name with appropriate and acceptable to all including the organizations where we are part of it. Uniform title for Library and Librarian need to be coined.  3. Name change without skill improvements with the changing times will not help the profession. Skill improvement should come from the LIS departments or with add-on specialized courses with emphasis on hands-on experience or involving in self-learning to start with. 4. Teaching and Research areas should cover contemporary and futuristic areas/ issues with more specializations and less emphasis on traditional areas/issues 5. Teaching Departments should take the lead in upgrading their skills to handle the new areas. Can we make it possible. It will be good for the departments to recruit or invite people with expertize from other areas to teach and involve in research because of the multidisciplinary nature of our discipline. They do need infrastructure for it. We need to look unitedly involving teachers and practitioners to focus on the issue raised by Mr. Sathyanarayana from Informatics. rama reddy   Dr. E. Rama Reddy, Ph D Flat # 4 Siddartha Apartment 22 Santosh Nagar Colony Mehdipatnam Hyderabad- 500 028. India mobile: 9000955729 enukondar@yahoo.co.in enukondar@gmail.com   ________________________________ From: "sathya@informindia.co.in" To: Vasanth ; lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in; LIS forum Sent: Tuesday, 19 April 2011 11:59 AM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: APERSPECTIVE Let us debate on this: "If Ranganathan were to be alive today, would he have come out with a  new name for LIBRARY and LIBRARIAN?" Sathyanarayana Informatics Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel -----Original Message----- From: Vasanth Sender: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:06:24 To: LIS forum Subject: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: A     PERSPECTIVE Dear Sir/Madam, As we all know the year 2011 mark the completion of 100 years of LIS Education in India. Though LIS education was started in 1911, LIS education in India got a huge boost with the Ranganthan’s metamorphic shift to library science from mathematics. Ranganathan’s path breaking efforts have laid a strong foundation for the growth of library movement in India and elsewhere. However the post-Ranganathan era has gone through a tremendous change with advent of information technology and the Internet blurring the space and time constraints. The easy availability of Information in varied formats has put LIS education in a threshold of radical change. But there is not much discuss on how LIS education has to reposition itself in a constant changing information environment. The following points discussed below bring out some of the problems that the LIS education is facing in India. ·        LIS Research in India:Since 1957, India library professionals have significantly contributed for the growth of LIS research in India. More than 1000 Ph Ds have been awarded across the country (Manjunatha, 2011).  The numbers seems incredible but the quantum of the research has been limited to largely few areas, mainly Bibliometrics, Library Management and Service, Information Seeking Behavior or User Studies. Still research in these areas has been taken up by many scholars. This indicated that India LIS research has not ventured into other areas of research as it should have been. Many of the areas that mentioned above have been repeated with slight changes.  Many of the studies have used survey research largely questionnaire method. Other methodological approaches have not been employed in many research reports.  The lack of strong theoretical approach to the LIS research has hampered the Indian LIS research at the global map in the post Ranganathan era. ·        Missing S. R. Ranganathan’s legacy : Today we clearly miss the legacy of S. R. Ranganathan.  Ranganathan’s contribution to the growth of the LIS profession put India in global LIS domain.  But today intellectual caliber and leadership quality of Ranganathan is missing in Indian LIS community.  To revive the LIS in India we need people of Ranganathan’s stature, who can bring leadership quality to the LIS community with strong professional bent of mind.  ·        LIS Education and Changing Information Landscape : Because of changing information landscape, digital information replacing the analog form has resulted in changing LIS curriculum to suit the changing information environment.  Even many of the library schools in US and other part of the world have removed the word “library” and have named their LIS schools as “iSchools” (information Schools). But not much discussion has taken place in India on this, although ISiM (International School of Information Management) has started iSchool movement in India in 2005.  But, how LIS education is going to serve the net savvy information users and how LIS professionals reposition themselves in a changing information landscape is largely missing in Indian LIS discourse. ·        Universities Reluctant to Start LIS Schools : Another impending problem of the LIS is, many of the recently established universities have not keen on starting LIS schools. We have more than 500 plus universities in India, but only 95 universities have found to be offered Ph D program in LIS (Manjunatha, 2011). The reluctancy can be attributed to the changing information environment.  Moreover, library education or library profession has never been on par with the teachers. Library profession has been seen as a supporting mechanism rather on par with teaching professions. There is a need to understand and examine why new universities are not keen on opening LIS schools. ·        Identity crisis: LIS profession is facing the problem of identity crisis.  The library science, information science, knowledge management and other similar nomenclature have been part of the LIS discourse. But we have not been able to identify ourselves in one umbrella.  The one set of professionals who are part of traditional (college or university) libraries are part of library profession and other who work in special and corporate libraries are part of information or knowledge management profession.  The ambiguity of various nomenclatures associated with library and information profession has created identity crisis in LIS field.  This is appropriate time to discuss some of the issues raised above to herald a new era of Library and Information Science education in India. ------------------------- With best wishes Vasantha Raju N GFGC-Periyapatna Mysore -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

Congrats to the LIS Friends on LIS Education centenary! I am not clear about Mr. NVS thought about renaming the word “Librarian” even if Ranganathan was alive today, why he would have thought of it? Even after 100 years we are not able to make the society understand – Who is this Mr. Librarian? And what is his role in the Society? The societal belief of a librarian is to give and take books and maintaining the library. My question is, when the word ‘Librarian’ is not made clear to the society, why do you want to confuse them and young generation with the new terminology? I feel that it is not the word ‘Librarian’ to be renamed, the change should be brought in ‘the input to the LIS courses, what has been taught in LIS schools, what we perform as duty and responsibility, what we serve, what we think and what we re-search’ In the discussion, Mr. Vasanth Raju has mentioned about leadership, Yes, I totally agree with this. Even after several years of IT revolution and being among top software exporters in the world, India could not contribute a simple, elegant and standard ILS (Integrated Library System) to manage our library. We can see several projects in this line by Government organizations / Institutions which have neither been appreciated nor accepted by the Indian LIS community. Before thinking of research, identity and Ranganathan, we should think about what has been taught in our library schools is meeting our professional requirements? Whether ‘Librarian’ to be called by different nomenclature or not, but LIS schools should impart the course curriculum from ‘iSchools’ to bring ‘quality in’ and ‘quality out’ products (students). It is not so easy to reduce the digital divide among the librarians community which is the effect of so many factors like LIS course in distance education mode, non-uniformity of LIS curriculum across the country, ability of professional to inculcate IT, etc. Hence, instead of renaming Librarian to something, we should concentrate on how to bring the young dynamic community towards the LIS Schools with iSchool touch. Sunil MV Librarian SDM Institute for Management Development No. 1, Chamundi Hill Road Siddartha Nagar, Mysore Phone : 0821 - 2420490/491 2429722/161 Fax: 0821-2425557 ________________________________ From: Enukonda Rama Reddy To: "sathya@informindia.co.in" ; Vasanth ; "lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in" ; LIS forum Sent: Wed, April 20, 2011 5:32:54 PM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: APERSPECTIVE It is necessary to debate on this issue with focus. I feel Dr. Ranganathan would have coined a new name for us, if he was to be alive today. 1. LIS is no longer a single discipline and it has grown into multidisciplinary in nature with knowledge skills needed from many related disciplines. 2. Name is important to reflect the work that we do and we need to focus on it. When the concept of Library is changing with time. We need to look at changing the name with appropriate and acceptable to all including the organizations where we are part of it. Uniform title for Library and Librarian need to be coined. 3. Name change without skill improvements with the changing times will not help the profession. Skill improvement should come from the LIS departments or with add-on specialized courses with emphasis on hands-on experience or involving in self-learning to start with. 4. Teaching and Research areas should cover contemporary and futuristic areas/ issues with more specializations and less emphasis on traditional areas/issues 5. Teaching Departments should take the lead in upgrading their skills to handle the new areas. Can we make it possible. It will be good for the departments to recruit or invite people with expertize from other areas to teach and involve in research because of the multidisciplinary nature of our discipline. They do need infrastructure for it. We need to look unitedly involving teachers and practitioners to focus on the issue raised by Mr. Sathyanarayana from Informatics. rama reddy Dr. E. Rama Reddy, Ph D Flat # 4 Siddartha Apartment 22 Santosh Nagar Colony Mehdipatnam Hyderabad- 500 028. India mobile: 9000955729 enukondar@yahoo.co.in enukondar@gmail.com ________________________________ From: "sathya@informindia.co.in" To: Vasanth ; lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in; LIS forum Sent: Tuesday, 19 April 2011 11:59 AM Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: APERSPECTIVE Let us debate on this: "If Ranganathan were to be alive today, would he have come out with a new name for LIBRARY and LIBRARIAN?" Sathyanarayana Informatics Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel -----Original Message----- From: Vasanth Sender: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2011 01:06:24 To: LIS forum Subject: [LIS-Forum] CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF LIBRARY EDUCATION IN INDIA: A PERSPECTIVE Dear Sir/Madam, As we all know the year 2011 mark the completion of 100 years of LIS Education in India. Though LIS education was started in 1911, LIS education in India got a huge boost with the Ranganthan’s metamorphic shift to library science from mathematics. Ranganathan’s path breaking efforts have laid a strong foundation for the growth of library movement in India and elsewhere. However the post-Ranganathan era has gone through a tremendous change with advent of information technology and the Internet blurring the space and time constraints. The easy availability of Information in varied formats has put LIS education in a threshold of radical change. But there is not much discuss on how LIS education has to reposition itself in a constant changing information environment. The following points discussed below bring out some of the problems that the LIS education is facing in India. · LIS Research in India:Since 1957, India library professionals have significantly contributed for the growth of LIS research in India. More than 1000 Ph Ds have been awarded across the country (Manjunatha, 2011). The numbers seems incredible but the quantum of the research has been limited to largely few areas, mainly Bibliometrics, Library Management and Service, Information Seeking Behavior or User Studies. Still research in these areas has been taken up by many scholars. This indicated that India LIS research has not ventured into other areas of research as it should have been. Many of the areas that mentioned above have been repeated with slight changes. Many of the studies have used survey research largely questionnaire method. Other methodological approaches have not been employed in many research reports. The lack of strong theoretical approach to the LIS research has hampered the Indian LIS research at the global map in the post Ranganathan era. · Missing S. R. Ranganathan’s legacy : Today we clearly miss the legacy of S. R. Ranganathan. Ranganathan’s contribution to the growth of the LIS profession put India in global LIS domain. But today intellectual caliber and leadership quality of Ranganathan is missing in Indian LIS community. To revive the LIS in India we need people of Ranganathan’s stature, who can bring leadership quality to the LIS community with strong professional bent of mind. · LIS Education and Changing Information Landscape : Because of changing information landscape, digital information replacing the analog form has resulted in changing LIS curriculum to suit the changing information environment. Even many of the library schools in US and other part of the world have removed the word “library” and have named their LIS schools as “iSchools” (information Schools). But not much discussion has taken place in India on this, although ISiM (International School of Information Management) has started iSchool movement in India in 2005. But, how LIS education is going to serve the net savvy information users and how LIS professionals reposition themselves in a changing information landscape is largely missing in Indian LIS discourse. · Universities Reluctant to Start LIS Schools : Another impending problem of the LIS is, many of the recently established universities have not keen on starting LIS schools. We have more than 500 plus universities in India, but only 95 universities have found to be offered Ph D program in LIS (Manjunatha, 2011). The reluctancy can be attributed to the changing information environment. Moreover, library education or library profession has never been on par with the teachers. Library profession has been seen as a supporting mechanism rather on par with teaching professions. There is a need to understand and examine why new universities are not keen on opening LIS schools. · Identity crisis: LIS profession is facing the problem of identity crisis. The library science, information science, knowledge management and other similar nomenclature have been part of the LIS discourse. But we have not been able to identify ourselves in one umbrella. The one set of professionals who are part of traditional (college or university) libraries are part of library profession and other who work in special and corporate libraries are part of information or knowledge management profession. The ambiguity of various nomenclatures associated with library and information profession has created identity crisis in LIS field. This is appropriate time to discuss some of the issues raised above to herald a new era of Library and Information Science education in India. ------------------------- With best wishes Vasantha Raju N GFGC-Periyapatna Mysore -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.