Dear Sir/Madam, In response to recent discussion thread: Who is responsible (dated 29th Sept 2009) I wanted to share my thoughts in this regard. The decline of LIS profession is not because of associations or curriculum, but it is because of information and its wide spread availability in different form through contemporary technologies.

From time immemorial libraries were the major source of information. But ever since WWW became public, it has radically altered the dynamics of information dissemination. Google, Amazon (if you have Kindle reading device, certainly you will not visit library), Microsoft, and Yahoo time and again came up with new information delivery products (Google Scholar, Windows live and many more). These tools were very easy to use then some of the traditional information retrieval tools. This aspects gives them an advantage to become very famous. Initially librarians have thought that Google, Amazon, and other similar companies would not come into the way of libraries. But it was the other way around.

PEW Internet and American Life Project surveys, OCLC College Students Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resource survey and Taiga reports all have shown that today's information users are no more think that library is the primary source of information. They are very much relied on Google or other similar products. There were efforts to design library OPACs interface to look like that of Google search interface just to keep information users away from Google. But all these efforts have failed to give positive results. Google has gone further ahead from digitization to publishing books online. The mission statements of Google, ALA and Australian Library and Information Association have closely complemented with each other. Google mission is to organize the world information and make it useful. The mission statement of the American Library Association (ALA) includes the aim of ensuring "access to information for all". Similarly, objectives of the Australian library and Information Association relate to information provision and include promoting "the free flow of information and ideas". (The above verbatim(mission statements) is taken from Waller recent study on "The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information" which is appeared in the recent issue of First Monday) This clearly depicts Google's mission to organize and disseminate world information which is similar to that of ALA and Australian Library and Information Association goals. Somewhere this echo as a replace for libraries. All this happenings were closely watched by LIS professionals and organizations around the world and have shown keen interest to refine the identity of LIS profession. This interest has given birth to I-schools (information schools)in US and Canada initially and later in other parts of the world( International School of Information Management-ISiM is an example for that in India). One of the reason to start I-schools is the explosive growth of digital information(http://www.ischools.org). I-schools have engaging in social informatics, data mining, Sociology of Science, Linguistics, discourse analysis, media studies, spatial information, natural language processing, cyberinfrastructre, philosophy of science, information visualization, political economics of information etc. Students of varied background ranging from literature to hard core software professionals are joining I-schools. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research is emerging from this. It is time for us to think in this direction. Google has come up with another new venture of publishing books online. This has already triggered lot of interest and apprehension among authors, publishers, vendors and libraries. If Google succeeds in this deal, it will have a bigger impact on book industry and libraries. Will stop this long write up with Bob Dylan song .... It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls.... ------------------------- With best wishes Vasantha Raju N Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger.yahoo.com/download.php -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.