Library Science Syllabus Needs Updates

[Munesh Kumar]

Dear Sir/Madam,

The contents of Library Science courses in India are not sufficient now, need to be updated by accommodating the management, leadership, negotiation skills, professional communication, team leading, strategic management, followed by adequate size of contents of ICT, S/W testing, data analysis etc. Being a Library Science professional, I have been observing and serving the needs of academicians by proving them information asked by them. I realize that the traditional content of Library Science in India are good as per the requirement of a decade back but it needs updates with above skills. 

Recently, I had attended the meeting of NIT Library Consortium at NIT Kurukshetra. Where we had gone through many product demonstration and presentation by different well known publishers in Science and Technology domain. I found that above skills are highly needed for the coming library professionals and we (existing professional) should do exercise on the above topics to meet the requirement of time and profession. 

What is your opinion please share with us... 

[Chittaranjan Nayak]

Of course, it should be. You are right. You see the syllabus of International School of Information Management (ISIM) providing M.Tech in Information Systems and Management 2 Years, Full Time, Post Graduate Degree. 

SYLLABUS

Semester 1
Statistics & Data Analysis
Information Economics
Theories of Information
Information Organization
Foundation of Software systems
Theoretical Foundation of Computing

Semester 2
Taxonomies, Ontologies and Semantic Web
Content Management and Electronic Publishing
Information Systems Design and Development
Internet Technologies

Semester 3
Data Mining and Data Warehousing
Information Retrieval Systems
Human Computer Interactions
Program Management & Management Strategies

Electives
651 Bio Informatics
652 Geo Informatics
654 Information assurance and security
655 Natural Language processing

656 Multimedia content management

Semester 4
IPR and Cyber laws

Electives
Any two of the following:
657 Information Industry and Entrepreneurship
653 Health Informatics
659 Entreprise Content Management
661 Pattern recognition and image processing
662 Computer Graphics
663 Text Mining
664 Cultural Informatics
668 Multilingual Information Management
665 eGovernance
666 E-Learning
658 Knowledge Management
667 Financial Information System
Major Project

Apart from this, it also provides PGDIM, BTech, and PhD in Information System Management.

[Munesh Kumar]

Thank You Sir

...for sharing the syllabus, it is quite comprehensive and complementary to my forum post. But we would like to know that what is the minimum qualification for M.Tech in Information Systems and Management 2 Years, Full Time, Post Graduate Degree?

Thanking You....

[Chittaranjan Nayak]

M.Tech in Information Systems and Management 2 Years, Full Time, Post Graduate Degree Affiliated to University of Mysore (Indian University)

Eligibility:

• BE Graduates
• Master Degree Holders (any discipline)
• Students with minimum of 4 year under-graduation course

GATE
Admission Procedure:

• Students with national entrance test scores such as CAT/MAT/GATE/PGCET are considered
• Students who do not have any of the above national entrance test scores are required to take up ISiM Entrance Test
• Qualifying students would be called for Group Discussions and Personal Interview

Being it is the MTech Course eligibility is like this, but if it will be the MS course then the 3 years undergraduate program will be sufficient.

[Munesh Kumar]

...it seems that this scheme is applicable only for engineering domain people.  Above syllabus is not accommodating the Library Science, other knowledge and skills needed for the managing a library. It is good for business companies, those are selling the information products. The purpose of asking for the minimum qualification, just to get the connective links where we could connect the our service industry. Library Science is a service oriented filed/sector, professional has be equipped with the knowledge of library science, management and technology.

Thanking you.

[RK SANTHI]

This Discussion i have presented in the MANLIBNET Inter National Conference 2013 at Ahmedabad.
Librarian role should be multi subjects.Hence along with regular main subjects.Editing, Translation, computer applications as on date,
General Information about all the subjects.Latest technologies which need to be utilized by Library.
Library should function as knowledge house.

[Munesh Kumar]

Thank You Ma'am,

for sharing your views and introduction of your work. Ma'am if you could share your work/published at MALIBNET with us, we could also get some useful thought. I have given my email id : [e-mail], I promise to follow the rules of copyright in each manners. 

Thanking You... 

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Sri Munesh Kumar,

Thank you for addressing an extremely important issue through your post.

It is a fact that with the demand of the age, syllabus of LIS needs to be suitably updated because it is after all a professional course involving practical works in real life situation.

I have been working on it for last couple of months and felt that since the students passing out with professional qualifications are mainly go either to teaching profession or to work in Libraries (majority of qualified professionals) course should be designed in a way which are suitable for both of the two groups. Accordingly, it should have two parts consisting of: (A) some compulsory subjects and (B) some optional subjects. Never-the-less, since the professionals (majority group)  work in diverse areas (Public Libraries, Research Institutes, Schools, Colleges, Archives, Higher Academic Institutions etc, Industries, where the demands of expertise are quite varied, courses are supposed to accommodate all such issues. In our days, we had 4 types of special papers in Master's course (Academic Libraries, Archive & Manuscript Libraries, Public Libraries & Research Libraries). Needless to say that in those days there were no such applications of IT & cyber technologies, the diversity of technology applications were sort of quite limited.

I have gone through the post of Dr. Naik and realized  that my thoughts were not unfounded. The course should be a blend of modules  consisting of "Librarianship"  "Information Science" & "IT"as I personally feel.

Since my education is limited, I can not (& should not) suggest/recommend the modules and pedagogic activities but as I personally feel that the teachers should have some exposures in professional services so that they can have sort of better ideas about the real life situations in the workplace. That's all!

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

[Munesh Kumar]

Thank you very much Sir.

Your points are professionally and morally supporting to mine. Your experiences are cite-able for us. Sir, the points which you have mentioned in last paragraph are quite reasonable. We need to communicate with UGC for updating the syllabus according to the the current need. Sir, your works, views and efforts of mine (whatever, in any size) towards up-gradation of syllabus may bring some changes in education of LIS. On behalf of LIS Links Community you may proceed for the same (its my request). 

Thanking You... 

[Munesh Kumar]

Thank you very Ma'am for your motivating remark for me as well as a key policy input for the forum.

We are facing lots of problem due to the lack of comprehensive syllabus. Our respected teachers have taught us and have given us a sound understanding on subjects, which is helping us in each section of work. But due to the changes in requirements, we need to read more and more. I have included extra-reading in my routine to meet the requirements. If the syllabus will accomplish the updates, then coming batch will not face the difficulties like we face.

Thanking You...

[Chittaranjan Nayak]

You can also refer the syllabus of other universities lik BIT Mesra, BITS Pilani, WBUT. All are providing MSc in Information Science.

Please See the BIT Mesra Syllabus 

M.Sc. Information Science
(Course structure and Syllabus – 2011 onwards)
Course Code Course Credit (L-T- P)

Semester – I
SIS 1201 Foundation of Information Science 
SIS 1203 Fuzzy Logic & Neural Networks Applications 
SIS 1205 C Programming and Data Structure 
SIS 1207 Knowledge Organization, Information Processing & Retrieval 
MSH 1119 Industrial Psychology 
SIS 1204 Lab on MATLAB 
SIS 1206 Lab on C 

Semester – II
SIS 2201 Internet and Web Technology 
SIS 2203 Data Base Management System 
SIS 2205 Data Communication and Networks 
MSH 1153 Cyber Laws 

Elective – I 
SIS 2202 Lab on Internet and Web Technology
SIS 2204 Lab on DBMS 


Semester – III
SIS 3201 Digital Library and Multimedia 
SIS 3203 Management Information System
SIS 3205 Research Methods & Quantitative Techniques 

Elective – II 
Advance Science paper 
SIS 3202 Lab on Digital Library 
SIS 3204 Lab on Multimedia 

Semester – IV
SIS 4201 Project 

List of Electives

Elective – I

SIS 2207 Information Psychology & Architecture 
SIS 2209 Information Representation and Repackaging 

Elective – II
SIS 3207 Scientometrics 
SIS 3209 Economics of Information Products and Marketing 

[Munesh Kumar]

Thank You Sir for giving your valuable time for discussion and sharing useful information.