Library and Information Science : As It Is

[Subeesh A C]

     When Adam Gilchrist tried and perfected the art of batting as an additional attribute, he contributed with his heart and body for the profession of cricket and stretched the dimension of wicket keeping with an additional responsibility for the team’s cause. Later when he retired, players struggled to get into his shoes because of his self-demanding, hardworking and creative attitude towards the profession.

     People or other professionals dared to try that position without suitable training and physical toil. By following that inspirational career others improved their competencies and came the improved versions of our modern day wicket keepers like Kumar Sangakara, MS Dhoni,…etc.

     Like is the profession of Librarianship. As a part of this great profession we should keep its standards so high such that other related professionals should start thinking at least about a crash course to try a hand in it. As is the responsibility of its professional members to add new dimensions to our Librarianship by staying in our strengths and stick to the basics according to the increasing technological developments and user demands.

     Our core areas still persisting are classification, cataloguing, indexing, abstracting, technical writing…etc. Programming is perfect when done by experts, so instead of going deep into that we can keep a parallel track by purely concentrating on our strengths (in Library and Information Science). A valuable study in theoretical information requires heavy reading, if we try to apply creativity we need multi-subject knowledge in varying degrees. All this were exceptionally done by our great S R Ranganathan, but where are we right now in our own field ?

• Are we going behind Computer Application unknowingly knowing Library Science ?
• Even if we do so; what is your opinion of tracking down a theoretical study of Information Science with a multi-subject approach, so that its programming side can be done by experts in IT ? ( Of course there are exceptional persons in LIS with a good knowledge in the programming side of applications.)
• Do we only need user studies/content analysis/ICT surveys ?
• Are we really improving our core areas; be it conceptual, theoretical or practical ? (Canons, theories of bibliography, Lotka’s Law, Osmosis, PMEST, Chain indexing….)

Please explore…more ideas are always welcome. Let the LIS Links flourish with its members and their ideas worth spreading.

We are always really very happy to have more S R Ranganathans in our field.

      The above statements are my personal opinions and not for hurting anyone’s feelings, it’s one and only purpose is to start  a discussion and harness the abundant knowledge of our experienced professionals to guide us into the Great Librarians Dream.

Thank you Badan Sir for your precious platform and the dedicated service.

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Sri Subeesh A.C:

Thank you so much for your post which already attracted notice of 122 of the LIS Link members! I believe that you have ample reasons to be pleased to see that your post attracted attention of your Co-Professionals!!

Before writing in context to your post, I would like to mention that my comments are in no way aimed to criticize anybody and/or group or any system.

At the very onset, I must confess that I am rather fond of practical issues and as such I have not (as I feel personally) nurtured with the complexities of theories from the early period of my life in this profession! Interestingly however, when I took part in discussions and debates in various forums, Often I was accused for being too prone to theories! When I tried to analyze (all by myself) such impositions, and asked several of my esteemed colleagues and friends about reality, I was told in affirmative!! As such I feel myself as a professional who tries to be practice oriented but deep within the gut, the theories taught by my esteemed teachers has somehow stayed fixed!!

Well, jokes apart, as I feel, in our time (late 70's & early 80's) as there was no ITs, our course curriculum was designed mostly on the basis of philosophy of Librarianship when Information Retrieval was one of the most important topics in curriculum. The concept of Documentation with resultant SDI & CAS were regarded as the epitome of service potentiality because, they were indicators of  individual efficiency of a professional. We were fortunate in the sense that all significant parts of library service were dependent to the library professional. No doubt, we had to face the venoms from a visibly angry users and at the same time we used to busk in the warmth of appreciations from satisfied users. And most importantly, in those days we had comparatively more scopes to exhibit our personal efficiencies as users had access to resources THROUGH LIBRARY PROFESSIONALS ONLY!! and we had ample opportunities to exhibit our personal competencies to surpass our peers!!

With the advent of IT, most of the glamour of such services eroded and naturally, the students in the profession started liking the more glamourous issues relating to Computer. As a result, we got a fine generation of professionals who are remakably skilled in computer related activities but in this mele, the academic flavour of Librarianship was left in the backseat!!

I don't think that the students and professionals of this age are entirely responsible for this. The course curriculum and more importantly, the entire educational assessment system is based upon the so called Objective types of questions and the students are not accustomed with descriptive issues and naturally their flair for writing  is getting rusty!! It is rather unconceivable for a student (irrespective of any stream of education) to attend a single question that require 150 to 200 words to answer!! However, it is quite natural that answering such questions requires sort of depth of knowledge which is becoming extinct among students.

Earlier it often so happened that after answering a question of 15 marks, the very best answers which constituted among 15% students brought at the best 12 marks!! while at present for15 objective types questions each of 1 mark,  70% student can easily score 12 and 30% students can score even 15 out of 15!!  While the same students, if put to answer a single question of 15 marks, the average  scoring will be much much lower. It is a bare fact that to assess the quality of knowledge, descriptive types of questions has no alternative. It is bitter yet true that it requires certain amount of substantial knowledge to analyze & explain an issue and never-the-less, it reveals the extent of knowledge of the person concerned.

I must admit that with the advent of IT, the tedious jobs of searching the indexing /abstracting databases has become obscure but if the end user has a good level of knowledge of boolean logic, s/he will be an excellent guide for research students. (The issue has not become extinct; if one goes through the contemporary issues of the front line journal of Medical librarianship; Journal of Medical Library Association one will see several such articles. Besides the latest issues, the journal is accessible full text free!)

I hope this answers  in more than detailed way, your several questions in random; Coming to your comments on user studies, content analysis etc, It is a known fact that majority of the topics for M.Phil & Ph.D dissertations are pathetically poor. How many of us have published just three papers from our dissertations? We select topics for MLISc. dissertation to get the Degree, We do the same for M.Phil and we do the same for Ph.D. and then we boastfully flaunt the Degrees!! and demand befitting Pay. There are certain teachers who prefer to guide with such topics as they are least strained with such topics!      Never-the-less, such teachers are rather popular among the student communities!!

My point is if we do all the activities for the sake of degrees only, when will we acquire knowledge? the answer in most cases, is NEVER!! Unfortunately, a significant number of us belong to this category and the result is obvious!!

Incidentally, I witnessed an extremely limited number of working (non-teaching) professionals who are passionate of reading on regular basis!!  Well, I confess that not all of these people have achieved high positions in service or earned fat salaries but they are regarded with high respect by their peers and interestingly, most of them who retired, are still in service as they are hired by several organizations!! A few among these people are engaged in private tution and are earning quite significant amount of money!! It lead me to believe that knowledge pays.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta