Speaking out for your Library

When you speak out for your library, your library advocacy begins. Any one who tell/speak/write or even imagine for the cause, that is library, is a library advocate.

Library advocacy programmes need proper planning. First there should be a key message or objective for the campaign. We have to carefully create a message for which we are planning to advocate. That may be for an increase in library budget, appointment of an additional staff, developing infrastructure, etc. Finding out the potential and invisible advocates for your library is the second step. That may be students (including the influential alumni), teachers, administrators, community leaders, media persons or anyone who love and ready to speak out for the library and its importance. Networking these advocates is the third step where we have to create a database of these people with fields such as name, organization they are working, field of expertise, influential contacts, and willingness to tell their library success stories to others.

The fourth step is communicating the message to the target audience (decision makers) through proper channel. This may be of printed, audio/video or one to one talk, etc. Newsletters, brochures, coverage on daily newspapers, cable TVs, radio may play the trick. Then the fifth step is the evaluation, to assess whether the campaign was successful or not and what were the missing elements, etc. If it was a failure re launch the advocacy programme with a newly acquired energy, techniques, strategies and wisdom.

The meeting of parents of students those who are going to appear the board examination and their teachers was an exciting opportunity for any librarian to speak out for his library. The meeting held on 12 and 13 April 2010 on the behest of PTA (Parent Teachers Association). I would like to express my gratitude to the PTA Vice Chairman Dr. K G Ajith Kumar  for giving such a rare chance. I could explain the library in brief and inspire the parents to take one step further to make their children the best users of quality information and life lone learners by properly exploiting the library resources.

Welcoming “E-Granthalaya” to KV Libraries

E-Granthalaya (version 3.0), eG-3, was the library management software discussed in detail, in the second phase of In-service course for librarians held at KVS, ZIET Mysore from 22-28 March 2010. Since KV libraries have been demanding for a unified LMS for the last many years in vain and libraries using different software, the interoperability and networking of all KV libraries will remain as a dream. The new version of E-Granthalaya enters in this vacuum.

The eG-3 has been installed and managed in  many KV libraries in Delhi and nearby regions. Since the software is from NIC (National Informatics Centre, Govt. of India), and distributed free of cost to  govt. institutions, there exists no issues of buying and accounting. The installation is easy. The NIC has a dedicated team of people for service and  an user can discuss and solve issues through the  e-granthalaya email forum.

From the feedback received from the participants, the main issues faced by the KV librarians with eG-3 are,

1. eG-3 can’t be installed on Windows Vista/7 home/business editions ( Many libraries run on pre- installed Vista OSs.). If the software can made compatible with the these OS that will be very helpful to many.
2. The eG-3 uses a separate document classification system which is alien to many. KV libraries are directed to follow the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, which is the most popular and widely used Library classification scheme around the world. If the software can incorporate DDC in its accession module (the first three DDC summaries with some local variations are enough for school libraries) along with an auto find, that will make the eG-3 the best software for many academic libraries.
3. Starting eG-3 call centres in every region / cluster of regions. This was a good idea proposed by an NIC resource person. If all the KVs are directed to install the software, then there should be a mechanism to clear the problems and a librarian from each region could be act as an eG-3 resource person.

Let’s hope more and more libraries will move on with eG-3 and the dream for an unified LMS will become a reality.

Vanishing Libraries and reading the “readers”

“Vanishing libraries” is the trend of the decade.                            School libraries wither its sheen where the emerging technologies take over and rule the minds of users. Internet has been considered as the sole and primary source of “everything”. Where should the libraries/librarians reposition themselves?

Recently there was a news from Europe that a school library removed all its printed materials and replaced that with E-readers, where the users can download and read the e-books/databases (through the library’s subscription channel) as per their needs. Imagine a library filled with some gadgets, say kindles and a superfast wifi connectivity( think about internet cafes or computer centres). Now the users can take the E-readers any where in the campus and use it while they eat and chat at coffee joints. The physical library vanishes.

And where goes the Librarian?

Unless the Librarians think about the missing opportunities and find out the existing ones, they should consider the possibility to do a Indian rope trick which will help them to melt down own professional identities.

The report in the daily “The New Indian Express” on the Library blogs was an inspiring one for many professionals to consider the emerging web 2.0 tools as serious alternatives to reach out the users where they are. The library media centre at KV Pattom expresses gratitude to all who has been backing its efforts and enjoys its role in gaining accolades for the institution.

ICCL 2010

International Conference on Children’s Libraries (ICCL) 2010 held at New Delhi from 16 to 18 February 2010 organized by AWIC (Association of Writers and Illustrators for Children) and Indian IBBY. The conference was inaugurated by Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam. His inspiring words on books, reading and libraries gave an ample start to the event. The conference was a platform to showcase mainly NGO libraries and their activities in India and around the world. See the ICCL sessions with photographs here.

The presentations and papers worth mentioning were the Reading Promotion Project by ‘Action with Lao Children’, Japan (Ms. Chanthason), AWIC Play”Children of the Magic Pen’ directed by Feisal Alkazi ,  ‘All of Poland Reads to Kids’ Foundation, Poland (Mrs. Monika Chojnacka), and the papers presented by Indra Nath Chowdhery ,Former Chairperson, Nehru House, London; Secretary, Sahitya Academy, New Delhi “A Book Culture to Build Bridges  (Promotion of universal values)”,  Ellis Vance, Librarian; Treasurer, International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY)”One World One Dream  (Promotion of friendship, tolerance and peace)”, Ingrid Bon, Chairperson, Section IFLA Libraries for Children and Young Adults, Netherlands and activities displayed by Pratham, AWIC Libraries and other initiatives.

 

The event proved that there were serious lapses in collaborative efforts between libraries and children. The crucial role of school libraries in developing book culture should be realized. Considering the huge stock of reading materials available in traditional school libraries (KVs, JNVs and other CBSE and State schools), the collaborative opportunities between NGOs and school libraaries should be explored.

A Ning for every Library

Online social networking is an area where more and more libraries experimenting with. The current flavour is Ning, a platform where you can create your own social network. Many organizations and groups use this as their live and interactive meeting places. Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, etc are also social networks but the control key is not with you. All the personal information you oblige to give when join the network are stored and used by the websites according to their will (may be for financial benefits). But in the case of Ning, the situation is a little different. Thousands for Ning networks are hosted by the mother Ning database. The creators of the Nings are given with some authorities to control the content and data flow. They can manage the members, change the appearance, decide which blog post, forum, image, multimedia to be published, etc. So the Nings became popular. You can visit networks of families, forums, clubs, schools, associations, institutions, etc on the Ningsphere.

Our question is how Nings can be used in Libraries? Many libraries (academic, public, etc) in Europe and USA have already added Nings as their user interactive tools. Based on initial observations, Nings can be used in the libraries as, 

* Networking tool to interact with users: Secured and library administered platform help the library staff to communicate and interact with the active users.

* Library promotional and publicity medium: The Library can promote and publicize its resources and services on the network.

* Library evaluation tool: The discussion forums on the Nings can be designed to collect user feedbacks and analysis.

* Online personal space within the Library: The user designed personal pages  act as personal spaces where they can express themselves through text, images and multimedia with in the wall of the library’s online interface.

* Collaborative sharing and learning  platform: The groups created on the network based on topics can facilitate sharing of ideas and conduct collaborative learning practices (teacher-student/student-student/teacher-teacher, etc).

I have started “Library Junction” as a project to experiment with these ideas. This is a platform to share ideas or views on libraries, books, reading, web, networking and learning. Those who are interested can join the network.