Some suggestions for UGC Pay Review Committee (UGC-PRC)

[DR. ANIL SINGH]

Dear Friends,

As UGC has already constituted Pay Review Committee and invited suggestions and feedback from all stakeholders by 30^th September 2016. Placed below are some of the suggestions which may be sent to UGC PRC.

 

Till the 4^th UGC pay commission the post of Documentation Officer (DO) was equivalent to Assistant Librarian (AL)/College Librarians (CL) and all Career Advancement Schemes (CAS) were applicable to all Documentation Officers along with ALs & CLs. But after 5^th UGC pay commission, this post has been excluded from this category. Hence, in most of the universities Documentation Officers are suffering due to lack of CAS. Therefore, it is suggested that the post of Documentation Officer may be added along with AL/CL.

 

The post of Assistant Librarian/College Librarian is of supervisory position, hence at least 5 years of experience as Professional Assistants/Sr Library & Information Assistant or equivalent post should be made compulsory for this post. Many times it have been seen that due to lack of managerial skills and supervisory experience, new incumbent on the post of AL and College Librarian are unable to handle the subordinate staff. NITs have already started this practice while recruiting Assistant Librarians.

 

For direct recruitment to the post of University Librarian, experience of 13 years as Deputy Librarian or 18 years as College Librarian along with requisite API is required, whereas for Deputy Librarian, experience of 5 years as Assistant Librarian is required. Here it is suggested that Professional Assistants having 10-15 years of experience along with requisite API may also be considered for Deputy Librarian post through DIRECT RECRUITMENT.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.....

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Dr. Anil Singh,

Many thanks for your post and presenting with some very wise suggestions.

Your suggestion for recruitment of College Librarians is (5 Years experience as SLIA/Prof. Asst) is quite reasonable.

However, I have just one comment and that is for the UGC's norm for recruitment of University Librarians. Do you think that College Librarians with their nature of jobs are really suitable for the job of University Librarians? I personally think that along with this existing norms, UGC should include librarians from other Academic &/or Research Institutes with requisite years of experience.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray

[shiv]

Dear Mr. Ray,

The nature of job performing by college librarians and university librarian are almost same except range of services, no. of members etc.. College librarian can become University Librarian as per the UGC norms since inception of UGC rules. Hence Don't think that the college librarians can not suit for the post of University Librarian.

Regarding librarians of other Academic &/or Research institutes, if they have experience in the similar scale, they can apply at any time and committee may select the candidate based on their professional experience and performance in the interview. The grade pay is the only difference between college / university libraries and Ministry Libraries. Any one can shift their job from academic to ministry or vice versa. 

Yours

OSS Prasad

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Sri Shiv aka Sri OSS Prasad,

Thanks for your post.

What I expressed about the nature of jobs is my personal opinion.

And it is based upon what I saw the jobs of College Librarians in our state (West Bengal)

I presume the jobs of College Librarians in other states are more or less similar. Of course it varies from College to College and person to person but as I personally feel they are sort of exceptional!!

Coming to the context,let me explain the issues:

(A) Budget & Accounts

University Librarians have a budget which ranges to a few Crores of Rupees at times and they have to arrange for vendor selection, maintain the accounts and rules for ordering. They have to, in many cases, allocate departmental budgets in consultation with Library advisory Committees. While the College Librarians usually have very lean budget and have to work under the discretion of the Teachers' Councils because in all practical sense, this teachers' Councils actually propel the College Library Committees and a lone librarian has very little say and exposure. While Librarians in Research Institutes (like CSIR/ICAR/ICMR/ICSSR/DST/DBT institutes) often have experience of handling budget of similar denominations and even more at times. They know to handle this extremely critical issue far far more efficiently than the College Librarians.

(B) Nature of Resources:

College Libraries mainly consists of books published nationally and even locally as the language of instructions are concerned. A large number of such books are mainly text books as per the course curriculums (mostly UG level). While, the collections of University Libraries includes a significant percentage of foreign books of higher academic levels & Research. Library professionals from Higher Academic/Research Institutes have better exposure of intricacies of foreign book purchase in terms of negotiations, bargaining and online purchase because these are mostly commonplace in research institutions while they are quite exception for College Libraries per say!!

(C) Subscription of Journals:

The quantum of journal titles in universities are quite diversified than those of Higher Academic/Research Institutes. Still, admittedly, the quantum of budget allocated for journal subscriptions in Higher Academic/Research Institutes are often found similar to Universities  especially because of INFLIBNET's support to the Universities. On the other hand. College Libraries generally subscribe to a handful of journals and a significant portion of them are Indian titles. Here Library professionals from Higher Academic/ Research Institutions remains way ahead. Of course they do not have the opportunity to deal with such diverse subject fields like Universities, yet, they have better understanding of Publications on certain subject fields relating to Higher Academia & research.

(D) User Community:

College Librarians generally deal with around 2 to 3 Thousands UG students and 100 teachers at the maximum. Librarians in Higher Academic/Research Institutes often caters to around 500 students, several hundreds of Research Scholars and 100 to 400 Research Scientists along with Two to Three Hundred other users comprising Technical,Project/ contractual staff taken altogether. Naturally, their ability to deal with the scholars and teachers are more intense and pronounced than those of College Librarians.

(E) Rules & Regulations:

College Librarians are certainly ahead of their counterparts in Research Institutes in this respect as they have elapsed a significant period of their service life under UGC rules or statutes of their respective Universities. Librarians working under autonomous bodies, on the other hands, are usually governed by their own set of rules but for Union Govt. organizations, a significant portion of service rules are similar to UGC & vice versa.

(F) Staff handling:  

It is a fact that neither a College Librarian nor a Librarian from Higher Academic or Research Institute have the experience of handling as much staff as in Universities but comparing the first two, it is evident that Usually, higher academic/Research Institute Libraries have more staff than those in College Libraries.

(G) Infrastructure/Modernization/IT application:

It is a bare fact that Higher Academic/Research Institutes under Union Govt. are better equipped than State Universities ( At least in West Bengal) because they require fast communication and better housekeeping systems to keep pace with other institutes, both nationally and internationally. I am not not dragging the College Libraries in this particular aspect because their job do not necessitate such fast and sophisticated  communication.

To conclude, I want to make it clear that personally speaking, I have no hard feelings about the College Libraries or those who work there. I have my class mates and some very close and young friends who work as College Librarians. I honestly believe, that they can be assets for any University or Research Institute. What I expressed is my view  in the context of UGC norms of recruitment and the last sentence of the first paragraph of your post only.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray

 

[DR. ANIL SINGH]

Dear Mr. Ray,

I agree with your views and this has already been implemented in many organisations. For example former University Librarian of GGSIP University Delhi was from C-DOT, present Librarian of IIT Roorkee is from ISB Mohali, present JNU Librarian was in IGNCA New Delhi earlier, present University Librarian of Ambedkar University, Delhi was in TERI. There is a long list of persons who came from private institutions, and other academic and research institutions.

Sincerely yours,

Anil Singh

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Thanks Dr. Singh.

Actually, the advertisements published by universities contain the verbatim account of UGC's guidelines (18 Years Working Experience as College Librarian & all...) As such, many institutes outside the purview of UGC do not forward the applications of incumbents.Never-the-less, many  candidates (mostly comprising internal candidates and College Librarians) put even legal pressure to the University authorities to strictly adhere to UGC rules.As a result many highly competent professionals remain outside the competition and mediocrity takes the reign!! I personally feel that if one or two sentences are added to the UGC recruitment rules  for Librarians to include candidates from Higher Academic & Research Organizations, the competitions become even and fair!!

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray