This is a topic after my heart. Ever since I became a qualified librarian in 1990 (a little late in my life, as I stayed at home for 12 years after graduation) I have been feeling that the average person does not know enough about the work done by librarians. As I grew in the profession, (it is now 25 years), I have noted this all along. If in India, the country of Dr SRR, we still get a question - "Oh, do you have to do a special course for being a librarian? Is it after 10th or 12th?"... and so on, something is wrong somewhere. As another person said "How many of us have sent our own children to the profession"? There is no question that there are hundreds of excellent librarians in the country, but that has not still changed the fact that a vast majority of the population knows little about librarianship. In mails written by others, several reasons and suggestions have been stated, and almost all are excellent. I personally feel (these are my own views) - that a) Each of us must do our best work and project the work to our target group and to society in general (this CAN be done without boasting) b) Collectively, each of our associations have to do lots of selfless work to change things for future professionals and for society The 2nd is not obviously easy, but if dedicated people work this way, things CAN change. Let me share personal experiences. Some of you in this group know me. I gave up working in libraries several years ago, and today I run a not for profit Trust as well as a company. The company does work that brings in some money to keep our office running. The Trust operates in the area of Medical Education and Research - we teach all health science students, staff and professionals - the techniques of online searching and managing their references Initially people asked "why do you have to teach us how to search". With persistent efforts, today we are regularly contacted for lectures and workshops. The positives today: - Through our Trust, my colleagues and I have conducted a good no of workshops and have delivered lots of lectures, both - across the country - I personally am included in the list of medical teachers who are recognized faculty for research methodology workshops - I get contacted for assistance by several doctors and health professionals for guidance in online searching and more - With so much reaffirmation, we are now creating E-Learning courses, which we hope to make available by the end of this year The challenges: - Funding - and making concerned authorities sensitive to this! - Prioritizing the importance of searching correctly, and referencing correctly - and so - including such a component of teaching in the curriculum I will state that I have worked at this with taking no salary for the first five years, and then a minimal for some more time, and even today a modest salary from the company. I take the opportunity of giving lectures whenever I travel on a holiday, just to make people aware that they need to know more about correct online searching. I try and give time to youngsters who seek advice - (whatever I can help them with) But - what I am doing is still a drop in the ocean. As I said - we need people coming together to make a change... with the coming generations in mind. The awareness of the importance of libraries and librarianship has to begin in school. Vasumathi Sriganesh QMed Knowledge Foundation (Trust - Reg No: E-24663) A-3, Shubham Centre, Cardinal Gracious Road Chakala, Andheri East, Mumbai 400099 Tel: 91-22-40054474 Mob: +919867292230 Web: www.qmed.org.in <http://www.qmedkf.org.in/> www.indianmedicalsites.in On Sun, May 31, 2015 at 1:01 PM, Ishwar Goudar <goudarishwar@googlemail.com> wrote:

Dear Professionals,

This question in the subject of this posting is haunting me for quite some time. ​.....

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