Dear All, It seems that Mr. Saheb (?), the original query poser, requires moral support in exerting himself as a professional librarian in his work place where he might have been sidelined and left to be in defensive without providing the basic support by his institutional managers. So he should be motivated to do whatever he can in choosing books, classifying them properly, providing better services and in demanding more institutional support. He should not be discouraged or dissuaded just because some others in the profession cannot read, understand, select, classify qualitatively the books or information materials on the emerging subjects and leave aside some critical part of their professional work, either to the book suppliers who can even manage faculty recommendation or to the faculty who remain as 'rent-seekers' of the book supply firms. There can be much variant scenario too in many other better libraries. But specialist faculty members alone are not good book selectors for developing a comprehensive collection, in majority of cases. It doesn't mean that the entire faculty should be kept away, like a leprosy patient, from the entire process of book selection. The former is a strenuous route of deeply involving in book selection by utilizing the well read facility and the latter is to leave aside everything to others and get even 'speed money' from the book supplier. This is the practical reality in our library scene which we need not be afraid of to speak. If you choose the former option, you can become a provider of information or knowledge materials to the most learned professor or academic dean in your institution and can become a most respected knowledge manager on par with your professors. Other wise, your can became a 'store keeper librarian' or a bureaucratic librarian and possibly a 'money maker' too. The option is yours. Almost all our libraries (except a very few) and the library profession, which I belong to, doesn't command respect in India like most other professions as per my experience. The most important delimiting factor is our attitude that doesn't motivate us to grow and our tendency to confine ourselves in some earlier learned rudimentary things without knowing much about the knowledge development and technology environment around us. The 'post Google era' provided us so many tools to develop, grow and flourish ourselves as god knowledge managers due to the imaginative work of the information technology professionals, which we are poorly using. I think that we, as librarians, should be able to gather about new ideas, important books and digital information in diverse areas which we deal with so as to feed the users as a knowledgeable professor, as we get professors salary and better facilities. The purpose of this third and last mail is to motivate the query poser to develop a healthy disregard for the status quo in order to him as a good library professional and not to convince others. Best Regards, K Rajasekharan Librarian, Kerala Institute of Local Administration(KILA) Mulagunnathukavu, Thrissur - 680581 , India Email rajankila@gmail.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Dr. M. Koteswara Rao To: Rajan Cc: Dr. M. Koteswara Rao Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 6:29 PM Subject: [?? Probable Spam] Re: Librarians Role in Book Selection Dear Colleagues, I do not mean to hurt the sentiments or demoralise the library profession, but let us be practical in approach. I am aware that librarians are taught about 'book selection' in LIS schools, but it does not mean that they should select books for the library. For a specialised library dealing with a subject or two, the librarian can make the selection. Imagine a University library or a medical library or an engineering library where the subjects are specialised and/or too many, and I am sure that no librarian can really do justice in selecting the books. I think it is foolish to think so, and if someone feels that 'we are experts in all subjects' then we will be called 'jack of all and master of none'. In todays world books are written on very narrow subjects, which our professional colleagues are not able to even classify them. I sincerely feel that we should restrict ourselves to our duties rather than trying to learn all the subjects of the universe of knowledge. I think that Librarians can still command respect and participate in the collection building process in many other ways. Dr. M. Koteswara Rao Librarian, UoH -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.