Librarians' "COPIFAST"

Are you a COPIFAST Librarian?
COPIFAST is an acronym devised for some highly effective habits that a librarian must acquire in this fast changing environment to survive.

The Librarians of 21^st century are confronted with multi-dimensional challenges of providing cost-effective efficient services, living up to the expectation of agile and informed users and their complex information needs, upgrading technical skills to cope with the rapidly changing technology and constant threat from aliens (non-library professionals) entering into their regime.

Librarianship has undergone a whole paradigm shift, the concept of librarianship itself has changed, they are more commonly known as Information Specialists, Information Scientists, Information Officers, Information Managers, Knowledge Managers, Knowledge Officers, etc.

In this changing scenario the library professionals are expected to quickly adapt to the environment and provide value-added services to their patrons or else days are not very far when the profession would be extinct.

Let us now EXPAND the acronym "COPIFAST"

C - Communicative
"Skill in the art of communication is crucial to a leader's success. He can accomplish nothing unless he can communicate effectively.”
--Norman Allen

O - Organized
"Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up."
--A. A. Milne

P - Proactive
"Let's form proactive synergy restructuring teams.”
--Scott Adams

I - Innovative
"Vision is perhaps our greatest strength.. it has kept us alive to the power and continuity of thought through the centuries, it makes us peer into the future and lends shape to the unknown."
--Li Ka Shing

F - Flexible
"Men are born soft and supple; dead, they are stiff and hard. Plants are born tender and pliant; dead, they are brittle and dry. Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail."
--Lao-tzu

A - Approachable
"One should have a general attitude of welcoming to everybody" --Kenneth Blackwell

S - Self-motivated
"People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success."
--Norman Vincent Peale

T - Team Player
"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."
--Andrew Carnegie

Librarians' Dilemma

In our last posting we had an opinion poll asking to vote for a desired topic for Librarians' Day 2009. After more than 200 visits to this blog, there are only negligible votes to count. Don't know why? Does anyone know?
There could be many reasons:
-we are not serious about this
-we are very busy
-it does not matter to us
-we don't really care
-fear of getting noticed
-let them (ADINET) decide
-still there is a lot of time for this
-why should I vote
OR it could be anything. So, let us not discuss this anymore now, time will come and thing will be decided and we will have another successful Librarians' Day.

Now, let us rewind our thoughts to Librarians' Day 2008. The following were the recommendations and resolutions:-

-In the current era, Librarians have to reorient themselves. They should think creatively and embrace new technology to generate services and resources where their skills of structuring and organizing resources (especially Open Access Resources) are put to the best use.

-Explore the possibility of even small and new libraries in providing new services and making existing services available in new and interesting ways by using more ICT, since a lot of material is available in the digitized form.

-Use more specialized search engines (scholarly and meta search engines) that help to search even the contents of Deep Web, that are a rich wealth of information and available mostly free of cost.

-With collaborative and cooperative efforts, more sharing of bibliographic records amongst the librarians would reduce the duplication and workload. ‘COPY CATALOGUING’ facility will help to provide standardized Bibliographic Control.

-Information is a source of instant power as it facilitates decision-making, problem solving and action taking. In this world of ICT, Information Literacy (IL) is not only about the training in ICT but it is the ability to make effective use of information.

-Traditional LIS education should be supplemented with e-learning and LIS staff should be provided with short term training programs on ‘Library service marketing strategies’ and ‘development of soft skill’ (better communication and behavioral patterns etc.)

“One who makes a resolution and then makes sincere efforts to realize his dreams, nothing stops him from realizing his goal.” - Rig Veda

How true is this saying, we have made these (above mentioned) resolutions, if we make sincere efforts (collectively) to realize these resolutions, nothing can stop us to achieve our goals.

Librarians' Day 2009

August 2009 is just eleven months away (time flies, isn't it) and we need to start thinking about the "Theme" of seminar. What would be an Ideal Theme?
Quite obviously, the first thing that comes to our mind is, any latest topic or issue(s) in the field of library and information science.

Things are changing so fast that catching them is becoming really tough, for example, we have just started learning about Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 is knocking the door (Thanks, Ms. Shweta for sharing the information). The library professionals working in Special/Research libraries having good IT infrastructure and facilities are privileged to take maximum benefits of the changing scenarios. But is the case same for other libraries? What about the professionals working in colleges, schools or even universities? Are they equally aware of the technological changes and their implications? OR is there a Librarian Divide that exists. Remember, those who were present during Librarians' Day 2008, Ms. Renuka Dave in her concluding remarks said, "In a family if someone is having Pizza, he/she should also prepare Khichdi-Kadi (traditional Gujarati food) for those who, for some reason or other can not have Pizzas" (this is transliterated from Gujarati). Hope the sense is transmitted to all of us.

So, what do we do, that is a BIG question. If we have a Topic which is of interest to the "privileged" professionals, may not be even understood by the "not so privileged" professionals, and a Topic which is understood and of concern to the "not so privileged" professionals, would be insipid for the "privileged" professionals.

We must strike a balance to see that both groups of the professionals are equally interested and contribute to the seminar and the audience seats are full to capacity till the end of the day, a big challenge.

Another big challenge is to reduce the gap between two groups in the profession.

All library professionals are requested to put their thoughts/views and suggest some topics for Librarians' Day 2009.

Together we will Grow, and Change the way World look at us

Librarians' Day 2008

ADINET Celebrated Librarians' Day 2008 and Seminar on August 9, 2008 to mark the birth anniversary of Dr. S. R. Ranganathan, father of Library Science in India, the Topic of this year Seminar was "Current Trends in Libraries in the Digital Era". It was huge gathering of library professionals from across the State of Gujarat.

The days program started with beautiful invocation by Ms. D. Patel followed by Introduction by Ms. R. R. Bharucha, Director ADINET and lamp lighting by eminent dignitaries which included, Prof. J . N. Goswami, Director PRL, Shri. K. Sarabhai, Chairman ADINET, Shri. S. Shah, Vice President AMA and Dr. J. Arora, Director INFLIBNET.

Inaugural address by Prof. J. N. Goswami was lively but sounded warning bells for the profession, he expressed his view from the point of view of a scientist, what he thinks of a librarian, emphasized on understanding the difference between Information and Knowledge. Can librarians provide knowledge? That's a big Question, attention professional friends, time for re-thinking...

Guest of Honor Mr. Sunil Shah gave his thoughts from the point of view of an entrepreneur.

Presidential address by Shri. Kartikeya Sarabhai was as usually enlightening, he too emphasized on embracing technological advancements in our libraries to meet the changing demands.

In his keynote address Dr. Jagdish Arora give an overall picture of the current trends in libraries and beautifully explained Library 2.0 and its applications.

Inaugural session ended with vote of thanks by Shri. K. Manoj Kumar, Scientist D (CS) INFLIBNET.

There were seven technical papers in total divided in two sessions, technical session-1 was chaired by Shri. Satish Deshpande, Ex-Head British Library Ahmedabad and it had following technical papers:
1. Information Literacy: A Critical Skill of Knowledge Society - Dr. C. R. Karisiddappa
It was gem of a lecture, a class apart.
2. Emerging Trends in Librarianship - Mr. H. Anilkumar
3. Virtual Reference Service - Dr. T. S. Kumbar

This session also included three commercial presentations by Elsevier, Sage and Springer respectively.

Technical Session-2 was chaired by Mr. Prem Chand, Scientist-D (LS) INFLIBNET and it had following technical papers
4. E-learning: Trends & Opportunities for LIS - Ms. Shweta Shroff
5. Bibliographic Control: Electronic Media - Mr. Shailesh Yagnik
6. Impact of ICT on Changing Scenario of LICs - Dr. (Ms.) P. Lalitha
7. Scholarly Search Engines - Mr. Saroj Das

This session also included four commercial presentations by Beegees Computers Pvt. Ltd., IET, Emerald and INFLIBNET respectively.

The event was successful though there are some areas to be looked upon in future as there is always scope of improvement in any aspect.

Those who participated may share their views/opinion/suggestions so that we can conduct such events in a better way.

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Librarians' Day 2008