Fw: New comment on "Does Librarianship qualify itself to be called a 'fullfledged profession'?"

Librarianship is a noble profession. lotus5673@yahoo.co.in 1816gbgv --- On Mon, 1/2/10, Library Society of the World <groups-noreply@linkedin.com> wrote: From: Library Society of the World <groups-noreply@linkedin.com> Subject: New comment on "Does Librarianship qualify itself to be called a 'fullfledged profession'?" To: "RajLibrarian D" <lotus5673@yahoo.co.in> Date: Monday, 1 February, 2010, 12:16 PM LinkedIn Groups Group: Library Society of the World Subject: New comment (13) on "Does Librarianship qualify itself to be called a full fledged profession? qualify itself to be called a 'fullfledged profession'?" Rajashekhar: I am not apprehensive about the profession, I am merely pointing out an irony. I do agree with you fully that the library is a living organism as Ranganathan points out. I would also point out that librarianship requires a graduate degree with a Masters or PhD from an accredited university and that the degree can be transfered to many fields. If this does not place it in a professional column, I am not sure what would satisfy the professiologists and would have to admit I am not concerned with what they call us as long as we know what we are and how to do our job on a multitude of levels in almost all disciplines. I think on some level where a nurse must know everything about nursing and a lawyer everything about their area of law, their profession is based upon cubby holing their tasks. That this is what they do and this is what they do only. They are experts in their chosen filed. "What do you do?" "I am an engineer studying chemistry". "Oh, so you are a chemical engineer?" In the case of a librarian, they may not be a chemical engineer, but should be able to find the information an engineer, lawyer, nurse, needs even if they had not studied the field. Librarians are all over the place on any given day and can not be easily cubby holed into knowing only one area alone. This may throw some people into not knowing what a librarian does because they are not easily cubby holed. Even if one is an art librarian, and a professor is an expert on Modernism, the art librarian must know how to find proper information on all areas of art. Our profession is to utilize and assess information beyond a patron's niche. In the end, the format and delivery may change, but the necessity to organize and retrieve proper information remains the staple of librarianship. So I am optimistic of the future. This is an interesting conversation. Posted by Lloyd Wedes Go to complete discussion » Don't want to get notifications about this discussion? Unsubscribe here » LinkedIn values your privacy. At no time has LinkedIn made your email address available to any other LinkedIn user without your permission. ©2010, LinkedIn Corporation.

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Thanks

Thank you IndiaLibrarian-Intl for inviting me to participate in this blog.

I did vote on the poll on the Status of Librarians and I would like to expand on my vote, viz., that Librarianship is a full-fledged profession. However, in India we still are not able to get the deserved recognition for our work, skills and contributions. This is simple because we have not demonstrated to the managements and our users as to how libraries canand have contributed to their learning and knowledge endeavours. I believe librarians should be more outgoing - interact more with users, both interpersonally and in formal ways and let them know how the library can benefit them. Equally, I believe we need the interactions to better undestand their needs/problems and see how we could meet these. Lastly, we need to use technology innovatively to improve our images and also our capability to serve users more effectively.

I would also like your members to know of an important initiative in making an open source ILS available to Indian and other developing country libraries. Please visit http://www.newgenlib.com for details.

-Prof.Jai Harau : KIIKM : NewGenLib Software

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