Dear Professional colleagues, I request all our professional colleagues to spend time and energy on professional development rather than on statutory or regulatory requirements, which need to be complied for self-survival. We should remember and accept that library is a supporting unit of an organization in particular academic institution (definitely an important component). All academic institutes including R&D organizations are moderated by regulatory bodies and their guidelines are to be fulfilled without any deviation for their continuation/survival. Library is not an exception to this rule. Whether we like it or not, we need to satisfy the regulatory guidelines. Any violation will have impact on parent organization and it has to face the consequences. Accession register (physical) is one of such mandatory features of AICTE, UGC and other regulatory bodies. To quote an example, we computerized our book collection in early 1990s. In 2005, our authorities suggested to stop handwritten accession register in view of computerized data availability and accordingly we discontinued the activity. But when AICTE team for inspection, they insisted for hand written Accession register. Immediately, we printed new accession register and within six months we prepared the hand written accession register containing 8,000 book records. Since our book database had complete details of book, we took print-out of the same for writing purpose. Later we submitted the evidence of manual accession register to AICTE and till today we are following the procedure without any deviation. Every year, we have to submit last five pages of manual accession register to AICTE. For this purpose, we go for jumbo Xeroxing of AR pages. Computerization, OPAC, etc. are all considered as facilities and cannot be treated as a replacement. However, there could be some exceptions to this rule. As most the members of different LIS forums are from academic institutes, it is our primary responsibility to go with parent body to satisfy regulatory guidelines. We need safeguard our institute's image and reputation by meeting the regulatory guidelines of approval/accrediting bodies. Manjunath -------------- Dr. Manjunatha, K |Chief Librarian| T.A. Pai Management Institute| Manipal – 576104| Udupi Dist.| Karnataka| India| |Ph: 0820-2701105(Off), 2575161 (Res) | e- manjunath@tapmi.edu.in ; manjunathak@gmail.com | http://www.manjunathakeralapura.weebly.com ------------ -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] On Behalf Of sbghosha8 Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 11:41 PM To: Sharmila Ghosh; Sunil MV Cc: lisforum Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Accession Register - Your Views The purpose of accession register is basically to satisfy the requirements of finance and audit. I think we should come out of the bureaucratic procedure. There are many ways by which this may be monitored particularly in the digital age. Prof S.B.Ghosh  Sent from my Samsung device -------- Original message -------- From: Sharmila Ghosh <milaghosh@gmail.com> Date: 30/06/2016 12:22 (GMT+05:30) To: Sunil MV <sunilmysore@gmail.com> Cc: lisforum <lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in> Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Accession Register - Your Views By virtue of working mostly with the development sector / non-governmental organisations, I had to deal with very off-beat library systems, far from the conventional methods we follow as library professionals. My experience as far as accessioning resources is concerned ... goes like this : NGOs usually are not focusing on the TOTAL number .. they prefer recording the number of resources on *particular topics/issues*. For instance, number of documents (all incl .. books, reports, unpublished monographs, audio, video and digital resources, journal articles, conference papers, photographs, posters, etc) on *major themes* .. gender issues, child labour, environmental issues, non-formal education, community health, crimes against women and children, human rights violations..  etc etc So, the accessioning process will be represented by alpha-numeric .. alphabet for the theme or topic and the number inserted in the order of resources arriving. A critical situation arises when a particular resource covers multiple themes or topics.. In such situations .. the program persons involved or subject experts take a call and do not encourage the librarians' methodology. Usually, the controversial resource will have the Acc No based on the greater topic coverage and will have the physical placement accordingly. In the beginning when I had to work this way, I found it very illogical, haphazard and unsystematic. But in later years while learning ontological approaches towards managing interdisciplinary knowledge, I developed a kind of interest towards this kind of accessioning. This system appears more of indexing than accessioning. But, at the end of the day, the purpose would be served... any resource however old it may be .. could be retrieved much quickly and easily as compared to large conventional libraries I worked with. As far as *physical* accession registers in this process are concerned, there would be as many as the number of major themes or topics. Usually not more than 10. The preference however is towards maintaining digital online accession records. On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 7:51 PM, Sunil MV <sunilmysore@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Professionals Friends,

Greetings from Mysuru!

This is in need of clarification pertaining to ‘Accession Register’ the core purchase record for any library.

As you are aware, we can see 3 types of accession record - One Register for One Library; Separate Register for each of the Information Type; Individual register for different information type and acquired process – if you have any other type please inform.

Further, requesting professional friends to share observations from the Auditors (both internal and external auditors) pertaining to ‘Accession Register’ maintained in your library.

Your views, ideas, comments, suggestions, will surely help us.

With regards, --

  Dr. Sunil M.V.   Librarian   Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara   Institute for Management Development (SDMIMD)   No. 1, Chamundi Hill Main Road, Siddharthanagar Post, Mysore - 570 011, INDIA   Mobile: 99864 39832 | Telephone: 0821-2429722 Extn: 3006

-- *Sharmila Ghosh* http://www.linkedin.com/pub/sharmila-ghosh/4/170/7b3 <https://www.facebook.com/notes/sharmila-ghosh/my-publications/105467056249278> -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.