Libraries in the Knowledge Society P R Goswami Director,NASSDOC ICSSR,New Delhi.
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Transcript of Libraries in the Knowledge Society P R Goswami Director,NASSDOC ICSSR,New Delhi.
Libraries in the Knowledge Society
P R GoswamiDirector,NASSDOCICSSR,New Delhi
Religion and knowledge
• Libraries owe their origin perhaps to Gutenberg who invented printing
• Gutenberg’s Bible aimed to duplicate the hands of a scribe.
• Prior to the publication of print version of the Bible , writing or knowledge was largely confined to the monasteries.
• It was deemed as an act of meditation,a gesture of prayer in visual form.
Evolution of Libraries
• Historically libraries are known as repositories of knowledge.
• They are a form of social capital.• Libraries are also considered as merit goods in
the society• Invention of printing played a dominant role
in the creation of knowledge repositories like libraries
Theology vs Science
• The print revolution ended the monopoly of church in knowledge creation.
• The spirit of Renaissance was to learn and justify actions on the basis of knowledge.
• The publication of the book by Copernicus marked the emancipation of natural science from theology
Information Society to Knowledge Society
• Knowledge is information combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection.
• Knowledge is created my individual mind drawing on individual experience.
• Advances in ICT provides us greater opportunity to develop and disseminate information and knowledge
Libraries and Knowledge creation
• Libraries promote reading which results in scholarly communication , knowledge creation and enlightenment.
• Libraries provide an economically efficient method of organising information and knowledge that are relevant to our needs.
• Academic libraries keep journal issues. They serve the purpose of an archive or a historical record of knowledge
Role of Librarians
• How do the librarians participate in the scholarly communication that take place between a reader and the library?
• Whether knowledge management practices are followed in our libraries.
• Is there a library where experiences of long serving librarians are documented for future use?
Librarians and their Research
• Too much emphasis on survey based research• They are generally one time snapshot
research and they do not add to the knowledge that the librarians need to have.
• Bibliometrics have found some ground but Bibliographical Research has been grossly neglected.
Knowledge and the National Development
• The National Knowledge Commission(NKC) was set up by the Govt of India in 2005 to guide and advise for the proper utilisation of the vast knowledge base of the country.
• The NKC also decided to examine the present state of library sector in the country.
• A Working Group on Libraries was set up for the purpose . The Group made ten major recommendations.
• As a follow up, a high level committee i e National Mission on Libraries has been set up by the Govt in May 2012
The Future
• Modern day libraries are more concerned with their digital collections
• Librarians are trying to redefine their discipline in order to describe , house and access all manners of computer stored information.
• In future libraries will be judged by their overall relevancy to the people they serve.
• Librarians need to develop domain knowledge to understand their clients