Newsletter · 2020. 8. 5. · delnet Newsletter 2 Vol. 26, Nos. 1 & 2, December 2019 the role of libraries and their growing relevance in the time of information explosion. He also

delnetNewsletter

Vol. 26 Nos. 1 & 2 December 2019

* Network Manager, DELNET,Organising Secretary, NACLIN 2019 andRapporteur-General, NACLIN 2019

The 22nd National Convention onKnowledge, Library and InformationNetworking – NACLIN 2019 on the theme“Emerging Innovations, Trends andTechnologies for Libraries of the Future”was organised by DELNET at HotelShourya Garh Resort, Udaipur fromSeptember 18-20, 2019. It wasinaugurated on September 18, 2019 bythe Chief Guest Dr. T. D. Tilwani, FormerHead, DLISc, Mohanlal SukhadiaUniversity, Udaipur. The Guest of Honourwas Dr. (Prof.) A. P. Gupta, Principal &Controller, Pacific Medical College &Hospital, Udaipur. Dr. H. K. Kaul,Director, DELNET presided over theInaugural session. The programmebegan with lighting of the lamp. Thewelcome address was jointly deliveredby Dr. Sangeeta Kaul, OrganisingSecretary, NACLIN 2019 & NetworkManager, DELNET and Shri R. S. Deora,Convener, Local Organising Committee,NACLIN 2019 & Chief Librarian, PacificMedical College & Hospital, Udaipur.Prof. A. P. Gupta, Principal & Controller,PMCH, Udaipur delivered the Guest ofHonour address. He applauded theefforts of DELNET to organise theConvention in the city of Udaipur. Healso spoke about the changing paradigmof the users’ information-seekingbehaviour and the role played byDELNET to bring together the scatteredresources. It was followed by the releaseof the conference proceedings

containing the 21 papers contributed tothe Convention and a Souvenir. Themessage received from the Hon’blePrime Minister of India, Shri NarendraModi for the conference and publishedin the Souvenir was read: “Readingbooks must be a passion of everyindividual, particularly the youth. Peopleshould cultivate the habit of giftingbooks rather than bouquets and otherpresents. Parents should encourage thechildren to visit library regularly and alsoaccompany them. The habit of readingalone will help our nation to reclaim thestatus of a ‘Vishwaguru’ – world leader,of thought and action. A library is a richtreasure house of books on varioussubjects and topics. Today, books and

digital versions of libraries are availableonline. Libraries of the future will beinterconnected, placing in the handsof the readers a vast universe ofknowledge and information. Digitaltechnology holds immensepossibilities for libraries to upgradebetter methods of collection, storageand dissemination of information onbooks. The role of DELNET assumesa critical importance in creating anetwork of libraries. I am sure thatthe National Convention will help inidentifying and adopting the latest, aswell as the best international practicesand standards for the expansion andgrowth of a network of libraries. Maythe deliberations at NACLIN 2019 bea resounding success.”

The inaugural address was deliveredby Dr. T. D. Tilwani. He spoke about

NACLIN 2019 : A ReportDr. Sangeeta Kaul*

L to R: Shri R. S. Deora, Dr. Sangeeta Kaul, Dr. H. K. Kaul, Dr. (Prof.) A. P. Guptaand Dr. T. D. Tilwani

delnet Newsletter 2 Vol. 26, Nos. 1 & 2, December 2019

the role of libraries and their growingrelevance in the time of informationexplosion. He also emphasised theneed for manpower training in librariesand appreciated the pivotal role beingplayed by DELNET.

Dr. H. K. Kaul, Director, DELNETin his presidential address saidthat “We were happy too r g a n i s e t h e 2 2 nd N a t i o n a lConvention on Knowledge, Libraryand Information Networking (NACLIN2019) on the main theme: ‘EmergingInnovations, Trends and Technologiesfor Libraries of the Future’ in thebeautiful city of Udaipur.” He said thatinformation is growing at an alarmingrate and to manage informationresources for acquisition, processing,dissemination and archiving, LISprofessionals needed newer tech-nologies for identifying quality contentand for offering better services. In thisregard he felt that training of Librarystaff for using new technologies andfor discovering new knowledge wasessential. He added that the contentevaluation processes of what wasbeing published on the Web had tobegun at the institutional level. This

needed the cooperation of LISprofessionals, ICT experts, subject andlanguage experts among others. Dr. Kaulobserved that the digital discoverywas also being achieved regularly in someselect libraries in the world by usingseveral filtering and related technologiesfor identifying new content. He affirmedthat what we should alsobe concerned about is the safety and

misuse of content. He said that DELNEThas been organising training programmesfor library staff and users in cybersecurity as the misuse of the cyberspace is growing and students ineducational institutions are not familiarwith safeguarding themselves from cyberbullying or other forms of cyber attackswhich are growing every day. Librariansneed to know how to identify and weedout fake content which is beingmanufactured using bots or individualswho work on paid assignments. Hereferred to the use of varioustechnologies in libraries in the worldincluding the drones, robots, etc butaccording to him these technologiesneeded to be tested to be relevant in theIndian environment. He added that weread about the establishment of codingclubs in the West for children and thegeneral public especially because thedigital environment is growing and hasbecome part of our lives. He felt thatcoding clubs should be established forlibrarians and library staff as well. Hefelt that librarians needed to take aproactive role in solving the informationneeds of their users.

The first tutorial on “Library InnovativePractices for User Engagement” was

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Release of NACLIN 2019 Publications

Dr. H. K. Kaul


conducted by Mr. Giridhar M. Kunkur,Librarian, Birla Institute of Technologyand Science, (BITS), Pilani, Rajasthan.Mr. Kunkur noted that owing tosignificant changes in education, theexpectations of present-day usersparticularly in libraries have changedincluding their perception of using thelibraries for learning, accessing,collaborating, interacting, innovating forgaining knowledge and experience. Headded that the aesthetically designedand flexible spaces undoubtedly excitethe modern-day users in libraries. Hespoke at length about BITS Pilani Libraryinitiatives including the sessionsorganised by the library, e.g. “The thingsthat make me happy in the library”,“Creating inspiring spaces in the library”,“Mind mapping of the library”, etc. Hedwelt in detail on the work done inturning the dormant spaces to vibrantspaces, Effective Group DiscussionRoom, Research Zone, InnovationZone-cum-MakerSpace, Creation of E-Zones in the library and Young Learners’Session. He discussed the variousactivities being undertaken by thelibrary for engaging library users through

the online library portal, throughcommunication panels, etc. Also hespoke about the InfoBITS mobile appdeveloped for connecting library users.The session was quite informative andinteractive. The delegates greatlyappreciated it.

The second tutorial on “Mendeley : TheOpen Source Reference ManagementApplication” was conducted by Dr.Manorama Tripathi, University Librarian,Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.She apprised the delegates about theMendeley software which is a mostpopular open source software forreference management and has a greatrelevance for researchers and scholars.She outlined the various features of thesoftware, e.g. creating folders, addingtags, keyword searching, generation ofcitations and bibliographies, importingreferences from online databases, etc.She highlighted the features whereinthe collaborations could be exploredwith other researchers, etc.

A visit was made by the conferencedelegates to the Bharatiya Lok KalaMandal Museum, Udaipur where acultural evening was organised, followedby a visit to the Folklore Museumdisplaying the vast cultural heritage ofRajasthan. The delegates enjoyed theirdinner at Hotel Ram Pratap Palace, thathad a captivating lake view.

On the second day, the TechnicalSession I was devoted to “Digital

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Mr. Giridhar M. Kunkur

Dr. Manorama Tripathi


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Technologies in Libraries”. Thesession was chaired by Dr. A.R.D.Prasad, Former Professor & Head,DRTC, Indian Statistical Institute,Bengaluru. The Rapporteur of thesession was Dr. Saiyed Faheem Ali,Librarian, Singhania Law College,Udaipur. The first keynote paperentitled “Research Data Management(RDM) : Role of Library & InformationScience Professionals” was presentedby Dr. A.R.D. Prasad. He spoke aboutthe importance of RDM as it enhancesindividual and institutional reputationas the data could be cited. He saidthat funding agencies coluld supportmore innovative projects. He spokeabout RDM rules. He further said thatthat all the data generated by thegovernment should be made availableon gov.in portal. He also emphasisedon the need to train LIS professionalson how to handle research data. Hereiterated the need to bring aboutawareness of RDM which includescreating/gathering, using openstandards for data, describingmetadata, classifying metadata. Healso said that digital curation is amajor task for RDM. The stakeholders

in RDM, the role of LIS professionalswere also touched upon by him.Facilitating data reusability and managingdata collection were the other concernsexpressed by him. The workflow of RDMwas covered. The domain specific datacuration strategies including domainspecific file formats, domain specificmetadata and ontologies were alsodiscussed by Dr. Prasad. He said thatthere is no one-size-fits-all solutions, butalignment is ultimately needed. Anotherkeynote paper entitled “Social NetworkAnalytics and Big Scholarly Data” wasdelivered by Dr.Yogendra Singh, ChiefLibrarian, Swami Rama HimalayanUniversity, Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Hesaid that Big Scholarly Data (BSD), refersto millions of scholarly records availabletoday due to tremendous changes in thescholarly communication cycle. BSD mayinclude E-books, articles, reports,standards, abstracting and indexingdatabases. He further said that Academicsocial networks such as Google Scholarhas 350+ million records, Web of Sciencehas 90+ million records and Scopus has75+ million records. Statistical analysis,scholarly text mining, fundamentals ofsocial networking, clustering coefficient

and calculating centrality ways werediscussed by him. The paper entitled“Application of Quick Response (QR)Code and its Usefulness in LibraryServices” was presented by Mr. V.Senthil, Scientist ‘E’, Gas TurbineResearch Establishment (GTRE),DRDO, Bengaluru. It was co-authoredwith Mr. Anupam Kumar Singh,Technical Officer ‘B’, Gas TurbineResearch Establishment (GTRE),DRDO, Bengaluru and Dr. M.Madhusudhan, Associate Professor,Dept. of Library and Information Science,University of Delhi, Delhi. He said thatQR code is a bi-dimensional code andthis technology could be integrated withLibrary services and could be accessedon mobile phones.

The Technical Session II was devotedto the “Innovative Library Services”.The session was chaired by Dr. AlkaSuri, Scientist ‘G’ & Director, DESIDOC,DRDO, New Delhi and co-chaired by Mr.Sanjay K. Bihani, Library & InformationOfficer, Ministry of External Affairs, NewDelhi and Chair, IFLA Regional StandingCommittee for Asia and Oceania(RSCAO). The Rapporteur of theSession was Mrs. Manju Kant, LibraryConsultant, AICTE, New Delhi. Thekeynote paper entitled “Looking atModern LIS Marketing Mantra throughRanganathan’s Lenses” was deliveredby Dr. Dinesh K. Gupta, Professor ofLibrary & Information Science,Vardhman Mahaveer Open University,Kota, Rajasthan. He said that there isa need for marketing thinkers,researchers and LIS staff to comeforward to understand that how did LISmarketing theories evolve, how doesLIS marketing practices and theory fitinto Ranganathan's philosophy and howRanganathan's approach can be usefulfor LIS marketing theories. He alsohighlighted best LIS marketing practices.

It was followed by the presentation ofpaper entitled ‘Expanding the LibraryRole from Responder to Initiator andPartner Through Innovative Library

Dr. A. R. D. Prasad


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Services : A Case Study of ICAT,ARDE, Pune’ by Mr. A.K. Pandey,Scientist ‘D’ & Head, ICAT, ArmamentResearch & DevelopmentEstablishment (ARDE), DRDO, Pune,co-authored with Ms. Seema Tare,Technical Officer ‘D’, ArmamentResearch & DevelopmentEstablishment (ARDE), DRDO, Pune;Mr. P.R. Kamble, Technical Officer ‘C’,Armament Research & DevelopmentEstablishment (ARDE), DRDO, Puneand Dr. B.B. Padhy, Scientist F,Armament Research & DevelopmentEstablishment (ARDE), DRDO, Pune.He said that for being innovative thereis the need for self-evaluation usingbenchmark of the five I’s: Idea;Innovative; Implementation; Impact andImprovement. He added that successparameters would be positive attitude;out-of-the-box thinking; fast decision-making and team work.

The Technical Session III was devotedto the “Libraries of the Future”. Thesession was chaired by Dr. JagtarSingh, Professor, Dept. of Library andInformation Science and ProfessorIncharge, Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha

Library, Punjabi University, Patiala,Punjab. The Rapporteur of the sessionwas Dr. K. Praveen Kumar, AssistantLibrary & Information Officer, InternationalInstitute for Population Sciences,Mumbai. The keynote paper entitled“Functions of Future Libraries :Perspectives and Preparations” was

presented by Dr. Vivek N. Patkar,Independent Researcher, Mumbai. Dr.Patkar in his opening remarkscommented on how libraries in futurewould look like and what role theywould play. He said that it has been amatter of debate ever since ICTappeared on the scene. He said thatthe library functions were expected toevolve with the changing techno-economic environment. This was apartfrom devising strategies to address thenon-conventional service demands ofthe new generation of users. Dr. Patkarfurther opined that technologies likeBig Data, Internet of Things (IoT) andthose clubbed under the label of Library3.0 and 4.0 were expected to drive thelibrary organisation and services designand delivery in the near future. Hediscussed the new functions of a libraryin the changing times includingInformation credibility assessment,integrated information delivery,knowledge creation through interaction,training in technology use, etc. Heobserved that the library had to act asa “Data Observatory” or “InformationObservatory”. He highlighted thegrowing roles of LIS professionals inthe new era including in digital assets

Dr. Alka Suri, chairing the session

Dr. V. N. Patkar

management and digital heritageconservation. He said that “DataLibrarian” is expected to be oneemerging generic profile of the LISprofessionals in future.

In the post-lunch session, TechnicalSession IV devoted to “Plagiarism andCyber Security” was held. The sessionwas chaired by Dr. Debal C. Kar,University Librarian, AmbedkarUniversity Delhi and Past President,SLA-Asian Chapter and SLA Fellow.The Rapporteur of the session was Mr.Rajesh Pandey, Deputy Librarian,Kamala Nehru Institute of Physicaland Social Sciences, Sultanpur, UttarPradesh. The first keynote paper in thesession on “Promoting AcademicIntegrity and Combating Plagiarism :Role of LIS Professionals” wasdelivered by Dr. H. K. Kaul, Director,DELNET, New Delhi. He gave a shorthistorical background of both academicintegrity and plagiarism. He focusedon various types of plagiarism inpractice and the main causes thatgave rise to plagiarised documents.Dr. Kaul discussed the role Library andInformation Science (LIS) professionals

could play in combating plagiarism whichincluded organising programmes on theart of writing, research methodologies,reference management tools, copyright,research and reference support, etc. Thesecond keynote paper on “Cyber Security:Issues and Challenges” was delivered byCapt Vineet Kumar, President, CyberPeace Foundation, Ranchi, Jharkhand.Capt. Vineet Kumar explained the variouschallenges being faced in maintainingCyber Security namely (1) Designingsecure Cyberspace - The adequatesecurity needs to be an integral part ofthe ICT design (2) Needed clarity inownership and responsibility in CyberSecurity – The government has a vitalrole to play in the governance ofCyberspace and should establishappropriate policy and legal structure(3) Building common consensus –Cybersecurity means different things todifferent stakeholders, often with littleuniversal agreement on meaning,implementation and risks. He spoke atlength about securing Cyberspace. Thelast paper of session entitled “AcademicIntegrity and Plagiarism : Awareness,Perceptions and Attitudes of ResearchScholars of Punjab Engineering College

(Deemed to be University), Chandigarh”was presented by Dr. Navjyoti Dhingra,Library Assistant, A. C. Joshi Library,Panjab University, Chandigarh and Dr.Seema Vasishta, Sr. Librarian, CentralLibrary, Punjab Engineering College(Deemed to be University), Chandigarh.She said that about 10% of users werenot aware about which kind of materialwas protected under copyright andalso less then half of the respondentsindulged in academic dishonesty underpressure to meet the deadlines. Shefurther said that workshops abouttime management, plagiarism anddeveloping soft skills should be a partof research curriculum.

The Technical Session V was devotedto “Content Management”. The sessionwas chaired by Dr. (Mrs.) ManoramaTripathi, University Librarian,Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.The Rapporteur of the session was Mr.Deepak Yadav, Senior NetworkAssistant, DELNET, New Delhi. Thekeynote paper entitled “DigitalInstitutional Repsitories: A Technologyfor Sharing the Intellectual Capitalof Institutions” was delivered by Dr.P. S. Rajput, Assistant Professor,Department of Library and InformationScience, Mohanlal Sukhadia University,Udaipur, Rajasthan. He spoke at lengthabout the benefits of IRs, current statusand growth of IRs on OpenDOAR,measures to overcome the problemsencountered during the creation of IRs,etc. Dr. Rajput said that the awarenessabout creating and promoting IR’sneeded to be done. This should bedone by library associations,professional bodies, governmentagencies and departments of CIS. Hesaid that Indian institutions should givetop priority for developing IRs. He alsoproposed that a registry of IndianRepositories be set up. The paperentitled “Digitisation of Unani MedicalResources : Initiative of the CCRUMLibrary, New Delhi” was presented byMr. Syed Shuaib Ahmad, Library &Information Assistant, Central Council

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Capt. Vineet Kumar

for Research in Unani Medicine(CCRUM), Ministry of AYUSH, NewDelhi. It was co-authored with Mr.Mohammed Azhar Khan, AssistantLibrary & Information Officer, CentralCouncil for Research in Unani Medicine(CCRUM), Ministry of AYUSH, NewDelhi; Mr. Masood-uz-Zafar Khan,Library & Information Assistant, CentralCouncil for Research in Unani Medicine(CCRUM), Ministry of AYUSH, NewDelhi; Mr. Mahendra KumarVishwakarma, Library & InformationOfficer, Ministry of Consumer Affairs,Food and Public Distribution,Government of India, New Delhi andMr. Jahangir Khan, Librarian Grade-I,AIIMS, New Delhi. The paperhighlighted the digitisation workundertaken at CCRUM Library forcreating a full-text repository of UnaniMedical Manuscripts, rare books andold journals of Unani medicines.

The paper entitled “Cloud Based DigitalLibrary : A Case Study of DRDO E-Library” was presented by Mr. NishantKumar, Scientist ‘E’, Defence ScientificInformation and Documentation Centre(DESIDOC), DRDO, Delhi, co-authored

with Dr. Faizul Nisha, Technical Officer,Defence Scientific Information andDocumentation Centre (DESIDOC),DRDO, Delhi and Dr. Alka Suri, Scientist‘G’ & Director, Defence ScientificInformation and Documentation Centre(DESIDOC), DRDO, Delhi. The authorsreported that DESIDOC had successfullyimplemented the cloud based online digitallibrary platform which is equipped withlatest features.

The last paper of the technical sessionentitled “Enhancing the KnowledgeManagement Framework of DRDO :DESIDOC Initiatives” was presented byMr. Tapesh Sinha, Scientist ‘E’,DESIDOC, DRDO, Delhi, co-authoredwith Mr. Anil Kumar Singh, TechnicalOfficer ‘C’, DESIDOC, DRDO, Delhi; Mr.Yogesh Modi, Scientist ‘D’, DESIDOC,DRDO, Delhi and Dr. Alka Suri, Scientist‘G’ & Director, DESIDOC, DRDO, Delhi.The role of DESIDOC in knowledgemanagement and creating DRDOknowledge repository was highlighted.

The Technical Session VI was devoted tothe “Users’ Satisfaction andAssessments”. The session was

chaired by Dr. P. R. Goswami, FormerDirector, (Library and Information),IGNCA & CSL, Government of India,New Delhi. The Rapporteur of thesession was Mrs. Sushma Zutshi,Librarian, Centre for Air Power Studies,New Delhi. The first paper of the sessionentitled “User Satisfaction of LibraryResources and Services of thePrisoners in Maharashtra Central Jails”was presented by Dr. Sunanda SharadPhulari, Librarian, JSPM’s RajarshiShahu College of Engineering, Pune,Maharashtra. She said that prisonlibraries should be well stacked andreading material like books, magazines,CDs, newspapers should be kept inlibraries. She further said that annualsurveys should be conducted to knowabout the precise needs of prisons.Further, she opined that professionallibrary staff should be appointed tomanage prison libraries. The paperentitled “Assessment of ServicesRendered by the Central Library, JECRCUniversity, Jaipur” was presented byMs. Kamlesh Maharwal, Librarian,JECRC Foundation, Jaipur co-authoredwith Mrs. Nirmala Saini, AssistantLibrarian, JECRC University, Jaipur;and Dr. Richa Tripathi, UniversityLibrarian & Associate Professor,JECRC University, Jaipur. She saidthat library resources needs to beupgraded with latest editions and newIT based services need to beintroduced. Circulation of new arrivalsamong users also need to be done asit may optimise the use of librarycollections.

The paper entitled ”Users’ Satisfactionwith Library Resources and Services :A Case Study of Mahatma GandhiInstitute of Medical Sciences,Sevagram, Wardha” was presented byMrs. Vaishali Kamble, AssistantLibrarian, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul KalamLibrary, Mahatma Gandhi Institute ofMedical Sciences, Sevagram, Wardha,Maharashtra, co-authored with Prof.(Dr.) Smita Singh, Officer In-Charge,Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Library,

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Dr. P. S. Rajput speaking at NACLIN 2019

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Mahatma Gandhi Institute of MedicalSciences, Sevagram, Wardha. Shesaid that the study has revealed thatusers are satisfied with library resourcesand more preference is given to onlinedatabases. The authors recommendedthat the library should strengthen theircollections further. Also it was felt thatlibrary should remain open for longhours. She also quoted R. David Lankeswho said that “Bad libraries buildcollections, good libraries buildservices, great libraries buildcommunities.”

The last paper of the technical sessionentitled “Usage of Social Media AmongUsers of Nehru Library, CCS HaryanaAgricultural University, Hisar” waspresented by Dr. Rajinder Kumar,Assistant Librarian, Nehru Library, CCSHaryana Agricultural University,Hisar. He said that the survey revealedthat 97.1% of library users were usingsocial media for sharing information,images and videos, 78.2% users wereusing it for instant messaging. 87.4%users felt privacy is a major issue whileusing social media. He also shared the

DELNET Coordination Unit, Pune. Ms.Sanyukta Arun Borse, Librarian, Boys’Town Public School, Nashik presentedthe poster paper entitled “FutureLibrarians and Restructuring of Libraryand Information Science Education”.Ms. Sangeeta Narang, LibrarianSelection Grade, All India Institute ofMedical Sciences, New Delhipresented her poster paper entitled“Libraries as Solutions for India’s HealthChallenges : Key Strategies”.

The dinner was organised at Hotel LalitLaxmi Vilas Palace where the delegatesenjoyed the evening.

On the last day, Technical Session VIIwas devoted to the ”Public Librariesand Community Engagement”. Thesession was chaired by Dr. ManasRanjan Mahapatra, Editor, NCCL,National Book Trust, New Delhi. TheRapporteur of the session was Mrs.Ranjana, Network Assistant, DELNET,New Delhi. The first keynote paperentitled “Public Libraries in India andtheir Community EngagementProgrammes: A Discussion” wasdelivered by Dr. P. R. Goswami.Dr. Goswami gave a detailed overviewof public libraries in India. He alsodiscussed the possibility of public

findings that 97.1% users were usingYouTube, 94.8% Facebook, 53.1%Twitter and 50.8% ResearchGate.

It was followed by the Poster PresentationSession. The session was chaired by Dr.(Mrs.) Neela J. Deshpande, FormerProfessor & Head, DLISc, SavitribaiPhule Pune University & Consultant,

Dr. Neela J. Deshpande

Dr. P. R. Goswami

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libraries taking part in socio-economicdevelopment programmes of the regionto which they belong. He also pointedout that radical change is needed in thepublic library programmes and policiesby introducing 'outcome based'planning. Dr. Goswami discussedthe role of public libraries as facilitatorsand also to work as skill developmentcentres. He also referred to publiclibraries run by NGOs. He defined therole of RRRLF and said thatconsultation with stakeholders shouldbe undertaken by RRRLF. The secondkeynote paper of the session entitled“Preserving Cultural Traditions atBharatiya Lok Kala Mandal, Udaipur:Some Insights” was delivered by Dr.Laique Hussain, Director, BharatiyaLok Kala Mandal, Udaipur. Dr. Hussaindescribed the programmes organisedby BLKM including manuscriptpresentation, folk literature, traditions,exhibition galleries, lectures, etc. whichwere found very important for promotingfolk in society and apprised thedelegates of the impressive work doneby Bharatiya Loka Kala Mandal. Thepaper entitled “The Role of PublicLibraries in Promoting Reading HabitsAmong Children in India: A Case Studyof NCCL Library-Cum-DocumentationCentre” was presented by Mr. AamirJilani, Library Assistant, NationalCentre for Children’s Literature (NCCL),National Book Trust, New Delhi co-authored with Dr. Manas RanjanMahapatra, Editor (NCCL), NationalBook Trust, New Delhi. Mr. Jilani saidthat the habits of reading should beginat an early age. He gave an overview ofthe National Centre for Children’sLiterature (NCCL) Library-cum-Documentation Centre. The last paperof the session entitled ”Reading Habitsof the Users of the RamakrishnaMission Institute of Culture GeneralLibrary, Golpark (A Public Library inSouth Kolkata) : A Case Study” waspresented by Dr. Lopita Mukherjee,Librarian, St John’s Diocesan Girl’sHigher Secondary School, Kolkata,

West Bengal. She said that as per hersurvey most of the readers in library werein the age group of 30 to 40. They foundthat the library services were excellent.She said that reading print format wasstill popular but training needed to begiven to users on how to use E-resources.

The last Technical Session VIII of theday was devoted to the “Human ResourceManagement and LIS Education”. Thesession was chaired by Dr. (Mrs.) NeelaJ. Deshpande, Former Professor & Head,DLISc, Savitribai Phule Pune University& Consultant, DELNET Coordination Unit,Pune. The Rapporteur of the session wasDr. Prakash Barve, Assistant Librarian,Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra OpenUniversity, Nashik. The keynote paperentitled “Media and Information Literacyfor Transforming LIS Education andManaging Human Resource Development”was delivered by Dr. Jagtar Singh,Professor, Dept. of Library and InformationScience and Professor Incharge, BhaiKahn Singh Nabha Library, PunjabiUniversity, Patiala, Punjab”. Dr. JagtarSingh gave a detailed overview of mediaand information literacy. He said that allis not well with LIS education, researchand training. He felt the need for a radical

transformation. He added that therewas no concept of manpower planningwhile there could be tremendouspotential in this sector. The paperentitled “Do Students UnderstandInformation Literacy in the Digital Era?: Role of Libraries and Librarians toPrepare College Students for the Future”was delivered by Dr. Vinita Jain,Librarian, Maharshi Dayanand Collegeof Arts, Science & Commerce, Mumbai,Maharashtra. She gave a detailedpresentation on Information Literacy (IL)and said that keeping up-to-date was areal challenge for LIS professionals. ILis a life long learning process. She gaverecommendations for users, librariesand HEIs. The last paper entitled “ICTSkills Among LIS Professionals inAssam: A Study” was presented by Mr.Dulumani Sarma, Librarian, HabraghatCollege, Krishnai, Goalpara, Assam co-authored with Mr. Prafulla KumarMahanta, Librarian, Digboi College,Digboi, Tinsukia, Assam. The findingsof authors revealed that there was agreat need for training in ICT applicationsfor LIS professionals in Assam. It wasfelt that the training in new skills andtechnology upgradation will help themin offering better services.

Dr. Jagtar Singh

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It was followed by the presentation on“DELNET – Networking Libraries,Spreading Knowledge” by Dr. SangeetaKaul, Network Manager, DELNET and“DELNET Best Practices in LibrariesAward”. The session was chaired byDr. P. K. Jain, Librarian, Institute ofEconomic Growth, Delhi and PastPresident, SLA, Asian Chapter and co-chaired by Dr. Pavan Sharma, Librarian,Yashaswi Education Society’sInternational Institute of ManagementScience, Pune. The Rapporteur of thesession was Mr. S.A. Muthu Baarathi,Librarian, NIFT-Tea College of KnitwearFashion, Tirupur, Tamil Nadu.

The panel discussion on the theme ofthe Conference “Emerging Innovations,Trends and Technologies for Librariesof the Future” was organised. It waschaired by Dr. H. K. Kaul. The panelistswere Dr. A. R. D. Prasad, Dr. P. R.Goswami, Dr. Jagtar Singh,Dr.Yogendra Singh and Mr. Deep Singh.The panelists deliberated on theconference theme and there was alively participation of the delegates.The various recommendations emergedout of the panel discussion. Dr. Prasadadvocated the use of mobile apps inpromoting library services. Dr. JagtarSingh stressed upon the use of socialmedia and learning of the emergingtechnologies. He referred to theemerging trends like Big Data and useof networked resources by libraries. Hemaintained that users’ studies shouldbe conducted in order to know thepresent and future needs of users. Healso advocated the use of content fromreliable sources and the use of mobilephones for accessing quality content.Dr. Yogendra Singh referred to theinformation overload and said that bettertools needed to be used for informationconsolidation and selection. He feltthat 95 percent content to be usedshould be cited content. Herecommended the use of computingtechnologies and cloud servers, andstressed that the sharing of libraryresources be promoted. Dr. Goswami

felt that the public library legislations inIndia had failed in promoting better publiclibraries. He said that the Ministry ofCulture and RRRLF should liase withstate governments for improving publiclibrary services. He suggested the use ofexpert systems and identifying policyindicators for promoting library services.Mr. Deep Singh affirmed that studentsshould be trained in the use of Webresources and libraries should makeoptimal use of spaces and time availablewith them. Dr. Kaul gave an overview ofthe emerging trends and technologiesand observed that library professionalsshould continue to offer better services tousers. Dr. Alka Suri suggested the use ofoffering library services to general publicthrough a portal. She felt that userengagement was essential and resourcesshould be pooled to offer better services.Dr. Charu Prakash, Additional DirectorNCDC, New Delhi said that publicparticipation in the improvement oflibraries should be encouraged. Mr. A. K.Pandey noted that librarians should addvalue to content and the services whileDr. P.S. Rajput mentioned that LISprofessionals and library users should bemade aware of the emerging technologies.

In the Valedictory Session, a book(memoirs) authored by Mr. S.A. MuthuBaarathi who had participated inNACLIN 2018 at Visakhapatnamentitled “Borra Caves : The Mystery ofVisakhapatnam” was released. Thebook contains the travel experiencesof Mr. Muthu Baarathi in Tamil. It wasfollowed by a feedback session fromthe participants.

The valedictory address was deliveredby Dr. V. N. Patkar. He said that “Atthis juncture it would be worth reiteratingthat in the constantly emerging newtechnology scenario the LISprofessionals will have to monitor thetechnology products that can berewardingly used for upgrading the libraryservices and organising the work flow.In that context technology is to beviewed as an extension of our natural orbiological faculties. For instance, atelescope and microscope extend ourvision to cosmic and nano scale,respectively. Moreover, technologyproducts are often found multi-utilitarianin nature such as computer that canperform numerical crunching, wordprocessing, information visualisationand several other things. It is therefore

Release of Publication of Mr. S.A. Muthu Baarathi

NACLIN 2019


Number of Member-Libraries ason December 31, 2019 - 6834

Andaman and Nicobar Islands 2Andhra Pradesh 491Arunachal Pradesh 6Assam 29Bihar 38Chandigarh 18Chhattisgarh 83Dadra & Nagar Haveli 1Daman & Diu 2Delhi 291Goa 19Gujarat 274Haryana 349Himachal Pradesh 63Jammu & Kashmir 29Jharkhand 28Karnataka 283Kerala 231Madhya Pradesh 466Maharashtra 823Manipur 4Meghalaya 7Mizoram 2Nagaland 3Odisha 119Puducherry 28Punjab 242Rajasthan 327Sikkim 7Tamil Nadu 910Telangana 588Tripura 6Uttar Pradesh 843Uttarakhand 86West Bengal 114Bhutan 1Nepal 3Oman 4Philippines 1Sri Lanka 8United Arab Emirates 3USA 2

Total 6834

extremely important to make the bestuse of such technology before it getsobsolete. Training and upgradingknowledge periodically, therefore,becomes imperative for the library staff.

To choose a technology for the libraryis quite problematic in practice. No doubtone should not get carried away by thesweet sales talks and should consultthe experts who can give unbiasedadvice. What extra thing or feature isoffered by the new product is to bestudied carefully. That would generallygive an idea about the real utility andlikely continuation of that technology.The products that incorporate thebiological principles are more likely tosurvive is one thumb rule. For example,we have eye lids but not the ear lids.That means we have to close our eyesat least for some time, but not the ears.So, radio will not vanish despiteproliferation of television channels.

To attract new patrons to the library andretaining the old ones is a hugechallenge in the new information andcommunication technology driven erato almost all the libraries and especiallyto the public libraries. Redesigning thelibrary space, providing new serviceslike translation facilities, training in speedreading and 3-D printing avenues aresome strategies in this direction. Hownew technology can be used to promotesuch activities should be examined,debated and adopted.

Let me turn to entirely different aspect.And that is to plan for attending aprofessional convention or conferencelike NACLIN. One should set a prioragenda and aim for two or three takeaway things from such a meet. It couldbe like to ask at least one or twoquestions in each session, talking to asmany new persons as possible anddeveloping strong bonding with at leastfive persons from other regions of Indiaor world. Preparing a report even for ownsake about the impressions about theproceeds of each day and how far initialagenda was achieved is worthwhile. In

short expanding the professional networkand absorbing the talks should get priority.That helps in the long run in conductingresearch and sharing the experiences ismy assessment.Last but not the least is the key issue oftime management. All said and done wecannot increase the number of hours in aday. The way out is to squeeze maximumpossible activities in the time available.Mastering the technique of multi-taskingwithout compromising the quality ofperformance is both science and art. TheLIS professionals will have to stretch togain proficiency in this skill so thatnumerous goals such as, offeringpersonalised services to each library user,managing library efficiently to promotethe aims of the parent institution andconducting research and contributing tothe profession gainfully are achieved.I wish you all the best in your career andsincerely hope to meet and listen to yournew ideas and research results at thenext NACLIN”.The Presidential address was deliveredby Dr. H. K. Kaul, Director, DELNET. Hesaid that the National Convention gaveoverview of the new innovations,explained trends in various disciplinesunder LIS and referred to the technologiesthat the participating librarians shouldadopt and aply in the libraries. He saidthat if we were not able to offerpersonalised services to library patronsand use new technologies to cull outquality content for them, they would stopcoming to libraries. He hoped that newideas that emerged in NACLIN would getplanted in the libraries.The certificates were distributed tothe delegates and a small souvenir asa token of rememberance was alsoprovided to them. NACLIN 2019 wassupported by Balani Infotech Pvt. Ltd.,I Group, Cyber Peace Foundation, PacificMedical College & Hospital, Udaipurand Aravali Institute of TechnicalStudies, Udaipur.The entire presentations of NACLIN 2019are available at www.naclin.org


Mr. Raj Nehru, Vice-Chancellor, ShriVishwakarma Skill University, Haryanadelivered the DELNET Annual Lecture2018 on “Transforming HumanResources in Libraries: Strategies forthe Future Learning” on January 7,2019 at DELNET.

Mr. Nehru delved into India’s ancienteducational history and it gave himgreat pride in saying that India was afantastic educational hub and most ofthe world would want to travel to Indiaand have their educational aspirationsfulfilled here. He said that the studentsand scholars came to India to studyfrom China, Korea, Indonesia, Japanand Rome. He added that, we findexcellent excerpts which tell us thatmost of these scholars had travelledthousands of miles through toughterrains. He further said that manypeople claim that the first university inthe world was the Takshila Universityin India. “If we start mapping the

educational institutions of that time, wefind hundreds of institutions like NalandaUniversity, Somapura University, Valabhi,Odantapuri, and many more”. He saidthat many of these institutions were calledGurukuls, many were called Matths andmany were in the form of temples andpaathshalas. “Looking at theseinstitutions, we get deep insights intohow they actually operated. TakshilaUniversity gives us the impression thatmost of the renowned people of that time,including Chanakya, Panini, Charak andKautilya, who had made phenomenalcontributions to the world in the form ofCharaka Samhita or Kautilya’sArthashastra were nurtured in theseinstitutions”. He said that we feel proud,of the way education in the continent wasbeing managed during those days. “Wewere famous for being logical.Mathematics, astrology, astronomy,metallurgy, health sciences and surgerywere of a superb nature”.

Mr. Nehru said that before beingdocumented into manuscripts, one ofthe important ways of transmittinginformation was through memory. “Aswe are aware, in the olden days peopleused to memorise and then thatmemorisation would further move tothe next generation. With the passageof time as writing also evolved, mostof these institutions starteddocumentation in manuscripts. Mostof these institutions had great libraries.We find that while Takshila had a verybig library, one of the biggest librariesof those times was in the NalandaUniversity. We are familiar with the factthat Nalanda University was consideredto be one of the world’s biggestUniversity and it even competed withTakshila University of that time.” Headded that when we dive deep intoNalanda University, we find that historywas documented by many historians ofthat time. “They tell us that more thannine million books or manuscripts wereavailable at that time in NalandaUniversity. Nalanda came intoexistence in the first or second century.Later, it was attacked by BakhtiyarKhilji, in the tenth or eleventh century.Imagine, in the second-third century,nine million and more books andmanuscripts were housed in that library.It is said that the library had more thannine floors at that time. According tohistory, when Bakhtiyar Khilji arrivedand attacked the library and destroyedit, it took six months and more to getthat library being burnt because therewere so many documents which existedat that time in the library. There wereaccounts of some Persian and Indianscholars who had documented it. So,management of books, they may nothave called it a library as we call it now,but management of l iterature,management of manuscripts andmanagement of knowledge had beenan age-old strength of India”.

Mr. Nehru added that certain thingswere destroyed in the last nine hundredyears after the invaders entered and

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Transforming Human Resources in Libraries:Strategies for the Future Learning

Mr. Raj Nehru


then we had the colonial invasion.“Though that is not the subject today,but somewhere, something is missed.It is like when we are moving on amotorbike and suddenly, some robbersappear on the highway. They not onlyloot your motorbike, but also loot you ofall your resources-money, so that youwon’t be able to buy in future. That iswhat happened to India after the twelfthcentury, when they not only robbed usof all our knowledge and not onlydestroyed all the existing resources,capabilities, capacities and potential,they also robbed us of all the resourcesthat could have further createdsomething. The situation today is nothidden from any of us, though in thelast five-six decades, we have madeconcerted efforts so that the countrycould come back on track. There isextensive work that has gone in, butthese five-six decades actually createdan impact on our thinking process. Ithas impacted us terribly-the way wethink, operate, perceive and processinformation today. It has actuallychanged our way of handling knowledgeand how we should be actually thinking-the way we were thinking and the waywe are thinking today. As a result, thereare certain issues that are actually notmaking us highly competitive in theworld of Knowledge Management. Sothat is an area, that we have to deal withand when we look at this, it makes usunderstand the issue today”.

“When we look at the world, we see thebiggest challenge today that we areexperiencing. It is the speed ofinnovation and the disruption that ishappening all around. Technology ischanging so fast and the way we workand deal with certain things is changingso rapidly that it actually becomes verydisruptive. What we have seen a daybefore, we are not sure whether we willsee it in the same way or in the samefashion tomorrow. Things are becominghighly gadgetised and the way it has tobe handled, the skill sets, are frequentlychanging. This speed is actually killing

most of the skills. We may still be livingwith something but the world would havealready moved on to something else.Although we may be fairly happy livingwith that but the world outside is changingvery quickly”.

“The second important change that wefind happening today is that thedemography is changing due to anincrease in the number of millenials inmost parts of the world, especially inIndia. The learning styles of the newdemographies are also different. If wesee our learning style versus our father’slearning style versus our daughter’slearning style-all three have three differentlearning styles. Yet we try to solve a2000s problem with a 1900s tool. Wewant to force it on others but they don’twant to accept it and because of thatmany conflicts are emerging in thesociety. Therefore, the other challenge infront of us is to recognise that there is ademographic change leading to thedevelopment of new styles of learning.”

“The next important thing we find is thatthe age of the learning content is alsoshortening every day. Owing to the kindof innovations that are happening and thecollective outcomes that are emerging inthe market, the content that is availabletoday, which used to be very special inthe past, has lost its relevance. What ispricey today may not be pricey tomorrow.In the past we would store the content,have our hold on it, not let it go and notpass it on to anyone. Those days aregone. If we do not let the content flow outfreely and quickly, we will find that soonsomething new will emerge, renderingthe content completely non-essential.Hence, there is a need to understand thatthe age of content and its price canquickly change with the change in thenew thinking. As the thinking is changingso frequently and so quickly, the price ofthat content will depreciate”.

“Another challenge we find, when we talkto people when we meet them, is thatregulations and compliances are also atthe same time increasing, which many

people may not be familiar with.Youngsters today want everythinghandy and everything easily available.As a result of that and the kind of culturethat has crept in over the last fewdecades in India, people are keen to docut-copy-paste. This has actuallyimpacted the innovation and creativityof youngsters and has also put themonto the risk of becoming non-compliant.So, we find that while creativity has tobe preserved, the youngsters or thepeople have to be taught also aboutcertain regulations and compliances,so that they do not waste or while awaytheir time”.

Mr. Nehru said that we should be able toadd value to the knowledge which comesfrom various sources. “When I meetpeople, especially the people in libraries,or especially where all this knowledgeis stored, I ask them, ‘There is so muchknowledge available. So, what is yourrole?’ Many people say, ‘My role is tomake all this knowledge available.’ Isay, ‘That is available handily to people,so what is the big thing that you do?’Often I do not get an answer. Today’svillagers and farmers sell their produceafter considerable value addition. Forexample, they produce potatoes andsell them at Rs. 5 a kiliogram but by thetime it reaches me through Uncle Chips,it has become Rs. 50 for a hundredgrams. Value addition is happening inbetween. So I ask people in theknowledge domain, ‘What do you do toadd value?’ As a librarian, you mayhave all the knowledge at your fingertipsand you may provide it to the people,but the value you are adding today isnot sufficient. What value can you addto the knowledge?”

Commenting on today’s learning styles,Mr. Nehru said, “Learning styles oftoday’s users are changing and theyhave many expectations. For example,we remember, many years ago we usedto go to the library with the intent ofbeing silent there and taking a book toread. There used to be a board, ‘Keep

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Silence’. We would go through somepages of a book and perhaps sometimesmake notes. That was all that we woulddo and we would feel very privileged tobe inside a library, reading a book andmaking notes. We would feel privilegedtelling someone, ‘I was in the library’.But with the kind of knowledge invasionthat has happened, when we read abook today, we feel the need to havesome references at the same time,handily available to us. We do not wantto repeatedly get up and get anotherbook. So, everything should be justavailable in front of me. Possibly, inaddition to what we are looking at today,we may require something more, formaking more enriched notes as a valueaddition, we may want to do somecopying or something specific likesending an email to someone. But wewant everything at one point, at thesame time, at one place. Can we createsome kind of notes out of it? Can wecreate a document out of it? We do notknow whether this is possible. Certainpublishers are doing that today. Theycall it collaborative learning, that is,one can have a book within which thereare many reference points. We canclick on something and it will take usthere, as desired. But those clickswould be at specific things. However,there may be something that strikesmy mind but which is not in thepublisher’s book. I may be readingsomething, but something else clicksin my mind which I want to see. So, canI have that handily available? I am notsure whether that is possible. Or, forexample, entering the library, I do notwant to go physically to scan all thebooks one by one and spend almosttwo hours only on looking at the racksand the physical books. Is there a waythat everything comes to me handy,now, while I am sitting at my table? Asyou know, we are using augmentedrealities technology today. For example,in our university we are trying to findcertain skill sets where we can useaugmented reality and the student can

scan through and get actually that job roleand understand that job role throughvarious features, the moment he entersinto that tool. Using virtual reality you canget into immersive technologies andactually start experiencing that role. So,can that be possible? My point is thattoday’s libraries cannot be only physicalspaces. They have to be creative spaces.A library should become the space whereknowledge is not only disseminated, it isdiffused and where an opportunity isprovided to knowledge seekers to be ableto diffuse that knowledge to refuse a newidea or a new thought”.

“A library cannot be a place only to‘maintain silence’. A library has to be aplace for disruptive thinking. Becausethe entire knowledge today is not in theform of books in the racks. More than tenmillion, twenty million, thirty million booksare in one place with the click of one’sphone. So, if knowledge is available,what can libraries do to transform thatknowledge? How can they contribute toinnovation? How can they contribute todisruption? How can they contribute todeveloping something new? That shouldbe the role of a library.”

“What should be the role of a librarian?”Mr. Nehru felt that Librarian shouldbecome the epicentre of driving thisentire thing. “Since I am a HumanResource professional I always see itfrom the Human Resource professionalperspective. When interacting withpeople, I find certain issues andchallenges. I have captured them in whatI call Six Is.”

Mr. Nehru said that the first is the “Image”.“There is a problem with the self-image ofa librarian. We do not know how libraryprofessionals see themselves. Unlessthey see themselves in the new world, inthe context of the six things referred to:the speed of innovation, disruption,learning styles, demography changing,technology changing, expectationschanging, unless they immersethemselves into this new world, theirimage can be a big roadblock”. Mr. Nehru

affirmed that many librarians stillcontinue to do the same thing as hesaw them doing in his library severaldecades ago. Discussing the conceptfurther, he said: “I do not see anychange, though I’m not sure, there maybe some librarians who will pardon mefor that because I have not seen that.I was trying to ask a few of you earlier,‘Can you help me understand how theyare operating? I am conceptualisingthe library in my University and do notwant to make it a physical library of theconventional nature, so, I am trying tolearn these days and I am meetingpeople. In fact, I have requested tohave a conference on how the libraryshould be redefined with DELNET. I amvery keen. We may not have an answertoday, we may find an answer tomorrow.But I think somewhere when I meetpeople, especially people in the libraryprofession, I find that there is an issueof self-image and that self-image isactually impacting their behaviour, howthey should be performing and howthey should be adding value. Withoutgetting into the depth of the long subjectof self-image which will require acomplete session only on how re-imaging has to be done, the first thing,any library professional must see ishow they see themselves. Unless yourelook at how you see yourself in thechanging world, you may not be able tochange certain things that are expectedin the changing world”.

“The second is the “Intent”. Havingreappraised our self-image, we nowneed to relook at ‘What’s my intent?What do I want to do?’ As a libraryprofessional, if we want to do the samethings that have been done twenty orthirty years ago, that is a choice wehave. But if we do not relook at ourintent in the changing environment andthe changing scenario, we will not beable to make a big difference as aprofessional in the library science world.So, we need to relook and that intentcan be developed after we understandwhat is going on around, how things are

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changing, people’s changing needs andchanging expectations”.

“The third is “Ideate”. After we haveunderstood where the changes are andhave recognised what our role is andwhat our intent is that we should bedelivering on, there is a need to ideate.We were given a very generic kind of aperspective, but this is what weexperience when we meet people. Weneed to look at new and disruptiveways of doing certain things”.

Mr. Nehru talked about a story “A Kingwas gifted two eagles. He told hisWazir, “I want to know how they aregoing to fly.” The next day the Wazircomes back and reports to His Majesty,“One of the eagles is flying very highbut the other one is not flying at all. Wehave tried our best.” The king wassurprised. He said, “I don’t know. Iwant them both to fly. I want this onealso to fly.” So, they made anannouncement and an old villager camein, a very smart villager, who said, “Iwill help.” He left and the next day itwas reported that the second eaglewas flying very high, even higher thanthe first one. The king was surprisedand said, “I want to know what wasdone with this eagle.” He called thevillager and asked him, “What did youdo?” He replied, “I did nothing. I onlycut the branch on which this eagle wassitting. And, that’s it.”

Mr. Nehru observed, “Sometimes wecling so strongly to certain old patternsand perceptions that we do not want toleave them and because of that we donot want to fly. And because we do notwant to fly, we do not soar higher. Thatis when someone comes and cuts thebranch. If even at that time we do notwant to fly, we will fall and die. The onlychoice we have is to fly. Given thepotential that already exists inside us,the image which we have changed, theintent which we have looked at and theideation which we are trying to bringout, a professional can definitely fly

high rather than fall down and die”.

This ideation, Mr. Nehru said, is somethingwhich is not very new to us. “The padhitisof our entire traditional education systemwere grounded on ideation. According tothe first principle of Veda, ‘agnimeelepurohitam’ and the first shloka, theprinciple on which the Ved acharyas orGurujans of that time would teach was‘Let noble thoughts come from all sides’.This is the Veda principle, the fundamentalprinciple on which education was beingoffered to the students. Ideation is in ourDNA and it is because of this that we wereable to achieve so much. The economy ofIndia in the first century AD was reportedto be around 37-38 per cent of the worldGDP. Now how did it happen? So muchideation by Indians resulted in manyinnovations, which resulted into manyproducts which were actually being soldand purchased by people around theworld. That is how it happened! Ideationis fundamentally in our Indian DNA. Whenwe travel to countries outside, we seethat through the ideation Indians are ableto generate results in business growthand new strategy. Without them, it is notpossible”. Mr. Nehru said that the lastplace he worked was in the Phillipines,where, ninety per cent of professionalsmanaging the Filipino businesses wereIndians. “At the Google office in the USwe found ninety per cent of the productscame from the heads of the Indian softwareengineers. At IBM, in hundred per cent ofsoftware labs, Indians were being importedfrom India to the US and then they wouldhelp them. Look at any company, Indianswere prominent. Indians fundamentallyhad this in their DNA. We have beentrained and taught this way”.

“The fourth I is “Implement”. Once wehave an idea and have come out with athought, what is more important is thatunless we implement it, there is no pointin having the idea. So, execution is verycritical. Many of us have heard thismanagement example.

There was a shoe making comany which

had sent its marketing executive to acountry to examine and assess thepotential of selling their shoes there.So, this gentleman goes there and doesa survey. He finds no one is wearingshoes. He comes back and says, “Thereis no point in establishing our businessin that country because no one is wearingshoes there.” Another marketingexecutive working there says, ‘I wouldwant to go.’ So, he is also sent. Fromthere he sends a telegram to thecompany executive saying, ‘Boss, keepfour truckloads of shoes ready.’ Thecompany executive replies, ‘Are yougoing nuts? Your senior colleaugue toldus that there is no need of shoes andyou are now sending me a telegram.’ Hesays, ‘That is true, no one is wearingshoes here and that is why there is apotential for selling our shoes.’ So, it isthe way we look at it. We may see anopportunity or we may see noopportunity. It depends on how we lookat certain situations. When we haveideas, we may find many people whosay, “Sahab, this is a great idea but it isnot possible, we cannot implement it.There are so many constraints.” Theygive legal constraints, technologicalconstraints, publisher constraints,company constraints, they give so manyconstraints. However every constraintis an opportunity and that there is apossibility to go and execute it”.

“The fifth I is “Institutionalise”. If wehave a vision we should implement it.We should find ways. There would bemany challenges and people would tryto derail, demotivate and not inspire us.We should not let that happen. Alwayssee it from an institutionalisation pointof view. It should not happen that whenyou leave, the idea dies. We have tocreate an ecosystem where this idea isinstitutionalised and where amechanism is in place so that it liveseven when we are not there”.

“And the sixth I is “Inspire”. So, we mustcombine all these things together andthen keep on, as we say, sharpening

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the saw. Whatever we did today,tomorrow may be different, so we haveto act differently towards the next step.So inspire. Create that inspiration”.

Mr. Nehru recommends these six Isto LIS professionals. He feels that,libraries have vast scope to transformthe creative spaces in the country, andIndia needs it. It is because ideation,execution and implementation are majorchallenges today. He feels that the cut-copy-paste tendency has developed inus and originality has somewhere died.Libraries could re-establish the age-oldtradition of originality, imagination,creativity and innovation and couldmake India proud of what we were overa million years ago.

The lecture was followed by questions/answers. While answering questions,Mr. Raj Nehru made the followingobservations:

1. “We open a book, flip the page,then recline, but now that feel isgone today where we have Kindle,a gadget or a tool from which weread the book. We do not need togo to the library. Libraries haveentered the bedrooms, thepalmtops and hand tops ofhumans.”

2. Referring to the sustainability of aproject today, Mr. Nehru’s personalexperience about sustainability isthat the problem with us humanbeings is that we want to doeverything individually. As a result,it dies when we are not there. Butwhen we work in a collaborativemode and bring people in fromdifferent spaces and make themfeel that we are working on aknowledge sharing basis whereeveryone is an equal stakeholder,we will find the possibilities ofsustainability going higher, aseveryone feels that his or hercontribution is equally good as theother person’s.

3. “We may soon see the role of a

librarian completely disappearing. Thetechnology will one day completelyreplace us.

4. There may be more than a hundredthousand libraries in the country andtheir condition is pathetic. This isbecause the mindset towards librariesis very poor. When examples aregiven that some libraries have madesome change, is it not a greatopportunity for library professionalsto go and see what it is they havedone that made them change?However, what is in our control is toput in the best efforts towards change.

5. In thirty years of my career as aprofessional, I have seen this, not ina library but whenever we used topick up a new project. The challengealways was that many of the recipientbeneficiaries, different departmentswould not buy it because they did notfeel that it was going to make achange. However, we realised thattwo things worked very well for us.One was, when I am developingsomething, I have engaged with somestakeholders, directly or indirectly,to understand what exactly is theirmain point, their exact needs andexpectations. After collating that whenwe created a solution, if there was aresistance by the larger audiencewho said, “no, it will not work for ushere”, we would establish a successstory somewhere and when thesuccess story was published, werecognised that other stakeholdersstarted coming.

6. There is a need to do the service ofeducating, training and skilling. Butremember one thing, this issue of theplagiarism that we talked about, wemay be only looking at it from the tipof the iceberg. Today it has becomea problem emerging from our valuesystem. This value is inculcated inour children right from the day theyare born. I recall, students going toschool. From an early age, six, seven,eight and nine, big schools have

projects for the children to do anddo you see what we as parents do?We go to the market where there isa stationery-wala who has threetypes of projects: one is for Agrade, one for B Grade and one forC Grade, depending on yourpayment abilities. Now see wherethe problem starts. The problemstarts when as a parent I go andbuy that depending upon how muchI can spend. I bring it home and infront of my child label the name ofmy child on it. The child happilytakes it to school and gets applauseand recognition by the teachers.The child knows very well that hedid not do it but he is being praisedfor doing nothing. So, he learnsone value: Cut, copy and paste! Itis not the problem of skilling today.It is the problem of values thathave been inculcated. So it is nota librarian who will change it. EveryIndian has to do it today as a parentat home. Stop doing this.”

Dr. H.K. Kaul, in his concluding remarkssaid that we have to wake up asprofessionals and do something. TheSix Is that Mr. Nehru has mentioned,are the great principles we should workon. The profession has to really comeup and he hoped that the libraryprofessionals and library associationswould play a pivotal role as it is theirresponsibility to promote the functioningof libraries. He thanked Mr. Raj Nehrufor delivering an enriching and thoughtprovoking DELNET Annual Lecture for2018.

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The Role of Emotional Intelligence Leadershipin Library Networks in the U.S.: Change,

Collaboration and Team Building

The DELNET Annual Lecture 2019 wasdelivered by Dr. Camila Alire, DeanEmerita, University of New Mexico &Colorado State University and AmericanLibrary Association President (2009-10) on October 7, 2019 at DELNET,New Delhi.

Dr. H. K. Kaul, Director, DELNETchaired the lecture and in his openingremarks welcomed Dr. Camila Alireand members of the U.S. delegationand other distinguished library pro-fessionals. Dr. Kaul mentioned that hehad visited the networks in the U.S.,the UK and elsewhere before DELNETwas started. He added that he hadvisited the OCLC, the WashingtonLibrary Network and other networksand it was a rewarding experience toknow how information was beingcollected, processed and shared bylibrary networks in the U.S. He saidthat the people who established thelibrary networks were emotionallycharged and were committed to dosomething for society.

Dr. Camila Alire observed that Dr. Kaulhad really set the stage for what shewanted to share with the participants.She said that the topic was really tied tothe work that library networks do, nomatter where in the world the networksoperate.

She said, “My talk today is really aboutthis leadership theory that has reallybeen so profound in my success as theDean of three relatively large universitiesin the United States. The Associationof Research Libraries, or what we callthe ARL, is the most prestigiousorganisation. There are about a hundredand twenty research libraries in theUnited States. Having led two ARLlibraries and having been hired as thechange agent for three libraries, has

really validated this theory that I practisedout of, perhaps, common sense”.

“I am tying this theory to what networksare all about. In a network that has beenestablished—and I assume that DELNEThas some related kinds of operations—we have groups of people that are involvedin the development of products andservices. What I am going to present isbasically my perspective on how toimplement the emotional intelligenceleadership theory for achieving successin the works that networks do indeveloping products and services”.

Dr. Alire affirmed that her presentationwould focus on two networks that she ismost familiar with, having served as amember through her institution beinginvolved in both networks. She said:“Now after talking to Dr. Kaul andSangeeta, I have to say that in thescheme of things, these networks aresmall compared to DELNET, which has

more than six thousand members. Butone of the networks that I will be talkingabout, the Colorado Alliance ofResearch Libraries, was one of the firstlibrary networks set up in the UnitedStates”. Dr. Alire added that theColorado Alliance of Research Libraries,which is called The Alliance, constitutesa number of libraries in both Coloradoand Wyoming. There are sixteeninstitutional members. Fifteen of themare academic libraries and one is apublic library. The Denver Public Library,which is considered a research libraryis a public library. There are sixteenmembers within The Alliance. EachDean, Director or Public Library Directorsits on the Member Council. Dr. Alirehas served as the chair of the MemberCouncil and has also chaired variouscommittees and working groups withinthe Member Council. There is also theGWLA (Greater Western LibraryAlliance), a consortium of thirty-fiveresearch libraries located across theUnited States, mostly in the Midwest tothe West. This particular consortium ornetwork is based in Kansas city,Missouri. Dr. Alire has also served asthe Chair of their Board when She was

Dr. Camila Alire


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a member from both the Colorado StateUniversity and the University of NewMexico. She served as the interimExecutive Director of GWLA, for aperiod of about a year.

These are the networks that Dr. Alirealluded to but she concentrated on theAlliance. The Alliance is known for fourproducts or services:

1. The first is the union cataloguecalled the Prospector. Extensivemining is done throughout small townsin Colorado which is, therefore, knownas a sort of mining state. TheProspector is their union catalogue. Itgives the patrons access to over threemillion records: books, magazines, CDsand DVDs that are held by the memberlibraries. It was one of the first unioncatalogues—though not the first—inacademic libraries.

2. The Alliance also offers a servicecalled Gold Rush. It is a resourcemanagement service which providesseamless access to electronic journalsand electronic databases.

3. The third service provided to themember libraries is CooperativePurchasing. This is done not onlyamongst the Alliance members, butnon-members too can enter thesepurchasing agreements. They leveragethe funds from the member libraries tobe able to get discounts in purchasingdatabases, journals, E-books and manymore items.

4. The fourth service provided is aDigital Repository Service. Thisservice helps member institutions topreserve the unique digital content thateach of these institutions holds andmakes this content accessible onlinethrough the repository. Not only does itdigitise the material from each memberlibrary, which is also available notonly to other member libraries, but alsoto the whole world. Any of thosedatabases can be accessed.

The organisational structure of theAlliance comprises of a Board and

each of the sixteen institutions has oneboard member. The board is mostly madeup of non-librarians. The administratorsfrom various universities serve on theboard. Some of the Library Deans also siton this board. The Alliance also has theMember Council, which Dr. Alire referredto earlier.

According to Dr. Alire, the Alliance hasstanding committees and working groups.These are made up of member library staffbased on their expertise. So, to start a newpilot project and to ascertain if it will developinto a new service or product, people fromthe respective libraries, who have expertise,will be appointed. Thus, not every library isrepresented on these committees orworking groups. The reason the Allianceprefers a working group, which is anotherword for a task force, is that it has acharge, a beginning and an end, as opposedto standing committees and othercommittees. The focus is on these standingcommittees and working groups.

So how can a chair of any one of thesegroups be successful in leading the workinggroup or standing committee, perhaps noteven knowing all the members? How canthis chair be successful in getting aparticular working group in being productiveto meet the goals given to it by the MemberCouncil? How can this chair lead this groupto get the work done within the given timeconstraints?

This is where the emotional intelligence(EI) leadership comes in. It is really allabout change and leading change. This isprobably indicative of networks throughoutthe world, and probably also within DELNET:when we lead change, work on a newproduct or a new service within the networkor the consortium, or when we do a majorrevision of a product or service, we changewhat that network offers to its membersand non-members. Therefore, in order tobe able to be effective as a team leader orthe chair of the standing committee orworking group, we have to be able to workas a team and work effectively with thatteam, to be successful. We cannot do italone.

It has been Dr. Alire’s experience inthe libraries that She has led, thatwhen we have a really effectiveworking team, we can effect change inthat organisation or working group.Why is this? It is because when weinvolve the members of the workinggroup in the whole process, we havethe buy-in. These people representtheir institutions and are involved fromthe beginning to the end. They havebought into whatever products orservices they have developed. Theyare going to present them to theMember Council. Not only do theyhave the buy-in at that level, they arethen also able to convince the peoplein their libraries that a particular productor service is the one they need tosupport. So, we have to ensure that wehave an effective working team, to beable to initiate, develop or revise aproduct or service.

Dr. Alire shared a story about theproblems faced when we think we canenter an organisation or a group andeffect change, without having peoplework with us. Commenting on herexperience, Dr. Alire noted” “Acolleague of mine, who I am going tocall John, had his first deanship as arelatively young gentleman. Anothercolleague and I were mentoring him.We thought he understood the idea ofeffective teamwork. Within the firstthree months into his first deanship hedecided what needed to be done tochange our organisation. He did itwithout his management team. He didit without the buying-in from themanagement team and without thebuy-in from the staff. He wasunsuccessful and was asked to leave.So, we worked with him. He got anotherdeanship and the same thinghappened. We told him, ‘You cannotgo in and effect change till you have ateam in that organisation that will helpyou through that process, that willhave the buy-in and that will go back totheir respective departments to say,“This is what we need to do.”


Dr. Alire added “Everybody in this roomwill agree that when you work withchange in your respective library, oreven in your respective institution,people are averse to change. They lovethe comfort of how it has been and theywant to be that way forever. However,you don’t grow as a network, you don’tgrow as a library and you don’t grow asan organisation, being static”.

Throughout her career, Dr. Alire hasbeen hired as a change agent. Theprovosts who hired her, hired herspecifically as a change agent. In fact,of the two libraries that she led as dean,one library was described to her, by theprovost who was in the process ofdeciding who he was going to hire asthe library dean, as a very unhealthyand dysfunctional organisation. Thosewere his words, not hers. The provostat the other library who wanted to hireher as a change agent called that librarya rat’s nest and a snake pit. Those werethe two library organisations that shewas hired to come in and change.

So when Dr. Alire talks about thistheory, she speaks from personalexperience. There are variousleadership theories that she has enjoyedlearning about and using tips to someextent. The emotional intelligenceleadership theory has been the mosteffective in her success as a changeagent. Those who are administratorsknow that change is not easy toimplement. For her, leadership is allcommon sense.

She said: “I am going to use onedefinition of teamwork so that we are allon the same page. Everyone on theteam has their own jobs andresponsibilities, which they bring to theteam by their leader to achieve thesame goals. That is what teamwork is”.

Elaborating on the difference betweenteamwork and collaboration, Dr. Alireobserved that when the group we areworking with not only has to worktogether but also has to think together,it is called collaboration, which is very

different. She had another story. Whenshe was at the University of New Mexico,they made a strategic plan. One of thestrategic directions was to change theorganisational model which was the librarythe provost described as a rat’s nest anda snake pit in his statement. He wantedthe rats and the snakes out. They workedon this particular strategic initiative tochange the organisational model.Dr. Alire added “We had already designedthe model. We had been working with mymanagement team and had already gotinputs from the members of the library.Everybody had an opportunity to provideinputs. Whether or not they tookadvantage of the opportunity was up tothem. We developed a new organisationalstructure. It started really well. However,in terms of the communication process,we wanted a model to be able to presentit to the entire library. We struggled forprobably six hours a day trying to comeup with one. We had worked well as ateam till then. So I decided to step backand step out. There were just about twohours left and I told team members that Iwanted them to take the rest of theafternoon to just think about it, andhopefully by the end of the day they wouldhave an organisational model. They calledme in and they had literally beensuccessful in coming up with a modelschematic that none of us had ever seenbefore. But they had designed it”.“They were one step past teamwork andwere working as collaborators. Thedynamics changed immediately. Maybeit could have been possible because I leftthe room. But it was an interesting model,where the schematic was circular. In thecore of the model was the customer i.e.the students and faculty of the university.The circles indicated the services thelibrary would be offering, based on thestrategic plan. For me, this is one of thebest stories or examples that I can giveyou of the difference between effectiveteamwork and working effectively ascollaborators.”Dr. Alire maintained that they workedeffectively as collaborators because they

were thinking together, trying to developthat model. When we build acollaborative framework, to be acollaborative leader,we need somequalities. We have to be self-aware andlead up to the whole concept ofemotional intelligence leadership.We have to be aware and you have tobe able to build trust among the teammembers, especially if you are workingon major change. We have to showsome vulnerability. All leaders are notperfect. We also have to recognise thatbecause the team is working togetherand collaborating it makes the wholechange process more successful.Networks like DELNET and all the othersaround the world are all aboutcollaboration. They are all aboutteamwork, where they are trying todevelop a new product or service forthat network. Based on her experience,she mentioned that if you are asuccessful leader, you probably areemotionally intelligent.

Dr. Alire added that “I discussedleadership change and a leadershipmodel that has been very helpful to meas a change agent. In this context, I amtaking you from leadership theory toleadership practice. Those familiar withtransformational leadership know thatit is all about change. It is about usingleadership to change an organization,a committee, a group, or an institutionwe work in”. The basis of emotionalintelligence, Dr. Alire affirmed, is anoffshoot of transformational leadership.It is all about transformation or change.Salovey’s and Mayer’s definition ofemotional intelligence is probably thebest one. Emotional intelligence is theability to monitor one’s own and others’emotions, to discriminate among thoseemotions and to then use thatinformation to guide one’s thinking andactions in order to work as an effectiveteam and to effect change.

Emotional intelligence, thus, has twosets of competencies:

1. The first is what we call personal

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competencies. As an EI leader wehave to be self-aware and also be ableto self-manage. Self-awareness, in theconcept of EI theory, is being able torecognise one’s emotions. As a leader,one has to know what kind of thingstrigger one’s emotions, and then besufficiently aware to be able to managethose emotions. Supervisors oradministrators can probably identifyone person in their organisation who,as we said in the US, can just pushyour button. They walk into a meetingand you think, “Oh my God, so-and-sojust walked in. This is going to be aninteresting meeting,” because they willtry to push your button as theadministrator or as the leader. Youhave to prepare for that person becauseyou are the role model for your team,your working group or whoever it is youare working with, in terms of the teamyou are building. You don’t want toshow your emotions when that personwalks in because that person is goingto try to do anything that he or she cando to get you all worked up. So, youhave to recognise those emotions andthen be able to manage them, so thatyour emotions don’t show when thatperson begins to complain about thisor that.

2. The second set of competencies iswhat we call social competencies. Thepersonal competencies refer to oneselfand social means that there are othersinvolved. Under these social com-petencies are what they call socialawareness and relationshipmanagement. As a leader, whetheryou are chairing a group or a committeeor heading a library, whatever positionyou might be in, you have to be able torecognise the emotions of your team.You have to be able to know whichteam members might be high-strung,which team members are relativelyshy and how you should help them tocontribute to the work of the team. Youhave to be able to not only recognisetheir emotions but also have to help

them to manage their emotions so thatyou have an effective working team.

When Dr. Alire was at the University ofColorado at Denver, the one describedas an unhealthy and dysfunctionallibrary, they would have monthly openforums. The management team andDr. Alire would present what was going onat the library, as change was alwaysgoing on. The meeting was open to theentire library. These meetings were alwaysquite controversial. There was alwayssome issue that some member of thelibrary did not like. “We would let the staffmembers vent their feelings and then Iwould respond and would also asksomeone in the management team toalso respond if they wanted to. After eachone of those contentious meetings, theywould go back to Dr. Alire’s office and theAssistant Dean would come there andask, “Camila, how do you do this? Howdo you keep a poker face when you knowyou are so upset with that person?” Shewould be referring to a particular personwho had tried to push my button. I wouldtell her the goat story, and that I was notgoing to let that person get my goat. I wasnot going to show my emotions in front ofthe entire library and make that personhappy because he or she was able to getsome kind of emotional response fromme. That is what self-awareness is allabout in emotional intelligence. That iswhere I had control. I recognised theemotions I had, relative to certainmembers who brought up issues at everymeeting. I was then ready to managethose emotions, and serve as a rolemodel to the management team and otherpeople in the library”.

“I called these people in the library my“merry malcontents” because they wouldliterally fight any change we needed tomake in that library or other libraries. Onecould go to them and say, ‘I am givingyour department a million dollars to dowhatever you want to do,’ and theirresponse, hypothetically, would be, ‘Whyis it not three million dollars?’ You couldnever make them happy. You have to be

in charge of your emotions, so that withthe rest of the library, you can move thelibrary or the working group along toachieve the goal you have been chargedwith”.

When Dr. Alire mentioned socialawareness, She wanted to share anotherstory. This, again, was at the samedysfunctional library, the unhealthyorganisation. When She came along,after about a year, She reorganised theentire management team. She had ateam member who She called Dan. Hewas one of the most innovative andcreative thinkers She ever worked with.She had a new team and had broughtfour other members into this existingmanagement team that She hadinherited. Dan was one of the new teammembers and was brought on becauseof his expertise. He led one of thecritical departments in the library.However, he was very impatient and hisnegative emotion was impatience or theemotions that are derived fromimpatience. He would always be veryimpatient with Sue, another memberwho was also new on the. During theteam meeting they would have fiercearguments. He would pick on her andshe would be upset.

As a leader, Dr. Alire had her ownpersonal awareness. She knew heremotions and how to regulate them.Nevertheless, She also needed to bemore socially aware to get her team tobe successful. So, she asked Dan tocome to her office after a trying andalmost unsuccessful meeting. She toldhim that she needed him to be morepatient with Sue. Dr. Alire said, ‘Both ofyou are very important to this team.’Sue too was not without fault. I couldunderstand why Dan was impatient withher. However, I could not have thosegroup dynamics as I was trying to getan effective and collaborative teamworking. So I asked Dan to think thingsover. I told him to be patient the nexttime Sue said something he did not like.I said, ‘Sit back, count to ten, whatever,

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and just listen to what she has to say.If you can do that for me, I think wecould go beyond where we are rightnow, because we are not making anyprogress. It has been three teammeetings where we have made noprogress.’ So, he promised to workhard to do that, and he did it. That is theconcept of social awareness. I had togo to him and say, ‘Here is an emotionthat is affecting the team,’realising thatSue had her faults, but Dan needed towork at it and he did. It was a very well-oiled functioning team after I talked tohim about that. So, as an emotionallyintelligent leader you have to work onrelationship management. That is one-on-one, like I did with Dan, and goingfurther to team-building”.

Commenting on the constituents ofemotional intelligence, Dr. Alire notedthat we find five elements:

1. Self-awareness, that is You as aleader, recognising and being aware ofyour emotions and managing them.

2. Self-regulation, that is regulatingthose emotions.

3. Self-motivation, that is taking yourselfas an effective EI leader and thenmotivating yourself to work with yourteam.

4. Empathy, which if you have for everymember of your team or working group/ standing committee, you would putyourself in their shoes, particularly whiledealing with critical issues.

5. Social awareness, that is recognisingthe emotions of your team and thenhelp them to manage them so that youhave a very strong working team.

In a nutshell, you are able to understandand manage yourself. You then start tomanage the emotions and the feelingsof others, which is the empathy part ofyour team. Finally you are able toinfluence them.

In terms of relationship management,EI leaders are the ones who build andguide the team in behaving in ways thatmake them very effective. We can

accurately assess the emotions of allteam members. We can thenconstructively influence them so that weget a strong team that can help one as aleader to effect the change that is neededfor developing a new network product orservice, or for managing a department,supervising a unit or leading a library.

Dr. Alire maintained that “you cannotbe socially aware unless you are self-aware. Think about it. This is all commonsense! When it was first introduced in1996, it was considered a ‘soft’ leadershiptheory. Back then, when you talked aboutemotions, it was a ‘woman thing.’ So asI introduced this concept in talks that Igave, I would tell the people in the roomwhere there were quite a few men, ‘Don’tthink about intuition, a woman’s intuition.Think about your gut feeling. That ismuch more manly.’ That is what emotionalintelligence is all about. You have to beself-aware before you can be sociallyaware and lead your team to become asproductive as you can possibly be.”

Adding to her concept of what emotional

intelligence leadership is, Dr. Alireobserved: “Quite a few of you presenthere are emotionally intelligent. It is notgender-specific. My provosts were allmen. Each one of them was probablyone of the most emotionally intelligentleaders I have ever worked with,although they themselves did not knowit. So this is the whole concept ofemotional intelligence and how it hasworked effectively within the networksI have been involved in, when it comesto leading a working group or leadinga standing committee, trying to achievethe same goals while beingcollaborative.”

Concluding her lecture, Dr. Alire said“I want to thank you so much. I hopethis has been beneficial for those ofyou who may not be familiar withEI, and who can now certainly say,‘Yes, that’s me. I am definitely an EIleader.”

Dr. H. K. Kaul thanked Dr. Camila Alirefor her thought provoking andstimulating presentation.

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Form IVStatement of ownership and other particulars about the periodical

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1. Place of Publication : New Delhi2. Periodicity of Publication : Biannual3. Printer's Name : H. K. Kaul

Nationality IndianAddress : DELNET, JNU Campus, Nelson Mandela Road

Vasant Kunj, New Delhi - 110 0704. Editor's Name : H.K. Kaul

Nationality : IndianAddress : DELNET, JNU Campus, Nelson Mandela Road

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H. K. KaulPublisher


symposium

Symposium on Riding the Wave: DiscoveringNew Competencies for LIS Professionals

DELNET in collaboration with SpecialLibraries Association-Asian Chapterorganised the Symposium on “Ridingthe Wave: Discovering NewCompetencies for LIS Professionals”at DELNET on February 13, 2019.

The panelists included : Mr. Mu-SukOh, President, Korea Special LibraryAssociation and President, AsianChapter, Special Libraries Association(SLA); Dr. Emma Davidson, SpecialCollections Librarian and SLA BoardMember, New York,USA; Mrs. NaliniMahajan, Library Director andWebmaster, Marianjoy RehabilitationHospital,Greater Chicago, USA; Dr. D.V. Singh, University Librarian,University of Delhi and Dr. Nabi Hasan,Librarian, Indian Institute ofTechnology Delhi. Dr. H. K. Kaul,Director, DELNET chaired theSymposium.

Dr. Kaul in his introductory remarksobserved that “You will be wonderingwhy the title is Riding the Wave? Nowis the time when we have to ride thewave where we are flooded with so

much information from all over the world.Information is doubling every few monthsin a year and it is so vast and amorphousthat we want the best information out of it.So, the whole world in the field of Libraryand Information Science has issues atstake”. Dr. Kaul added that we have tofind ways and methods to solve thisproblem. He said that there is someuseful information available with socialmedia as well. But who will collect thatinformation? We need the proper softwareto filter that information and librarianswould have another responsibility offiltering and collecting quality contentfrom social media for readers andresearchers. He referred to the pricingcontrols by publishers and said thatcontent which was scattered all over theworld was sometimes unaffordable forinstitutions, or was available in differentplaces which one could not approach orat times we did not know where theinformation was available. “How to sort itout is again a challenge for libraryprofessionals. There is also the issue ofthe various languages in which the contentis available. Some of it is the best content,

and yet we are not able to access it”. Henoted that PhDs were sometimesawarded on the basis of content finallymade available to researchers. Becauseof the existing barriers we were not sureif we had given the necessary andsufficient content to the researchers.He affirmed that it was a challenge forlibrarians to know whether at a specifictime the information given to a studenton a research topic was the bestavailable on a particular subject in theworld. He added that “we must see howto tackle this challenge so that theresearchers create something new andadd new knowledge to the universe ofknowledge”. According to Dr. Kaul,researchers and readers waste a lot oftime searching for acceptable goodcontent. “We have to see how we cansave the users’ time and give themquality content that they need”.

On the subject of manpower today, Dr.Kaul referred to librarians working indifferent parts of the world. Many ofthem are not trained in ICT. They arebusy doing their routine jobs and didnot know what was happening in theworld. He referred to other challengessuch as the challenge of archiving. Thiswas again something which was nothappening at a greater scale in libraries.There is a challenge from the publishingworld as well which controls information.He said that developing andunderdeveloped countries could notafford information at a higher cost.

The special guest speaker Mr. Mu-SukOh, President, Korea Special LibraryAssociation (KSLA) and President,Asian Chapter, Special LibrariesAssociation (SLA) commented onvarious characteristics of the librariesin Korea. He said that the firstcharacteristic was the rapidly growingnumbers of public libraries in Korea.The second he added is the deploymentof a librarian in the school library. Thethird characteristic, he said, is thecertification of the library educationprogrammes. Mr. Mu-Suk Oh mentioned


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that this year the Korea LibraryAssociation elected their own Presidentdirectly. Sharing some characteristicsof special libraries, Mr. Mu-Suk Ohnoted that in South Korea there wereabout six hundred special libraries. Headded that besides library management,librarians are also given the charge ofother jobs in an institution, such aspublications, public relations, recordmanagement, computer systemmanagement, etc. He said that there isa growing demand for networkinglibraries. Discussing further, Mr. Mu-Suk Oh said that KSLA offers grants forbook publishing, presenting researchpapers at seminars, etc. He said thatmost Koreans use a domestic software,for Korean language and not Microsoft.“So it is very difficult to share KSLA’swork with other librarians. But Googlehelps us to overcome these problems.”

Dr. Emma Davidson, SpecialCollections Librarian and SLA BoardMember, New York, said that “It seemsto me that the profession of librarianshiphas reached a moment of crossroads.As society as a whole is increasing itsreliance on technology, we’ve seen agrowing expectation from library usersthat all kinds of resources should beavailable electronically. But, as we all

know, many libraries still maintainsignificant print collections too, as well asother media.

This means, of course, that at this pointin time the ever-increasing list ofprofessional competencies which theaverage librarian is expected todemonstrate is quite daunting. Or, to lookat it another way, this is opening up arange of exciting possibilities forour field.

I currently work as a museumlibrarian, and the collections Ihandle on a daily basis would berecognisable to library users froma hundred years ago, or more.However, I know people with thevery same qualification who workin legal firms, advertising agencies,hospitals; as knowledge managers,data specialists, competitiveintelligence researchers.

However we choose to feel aboutit, it seems apparent that thisfracturing of our field is only goingto continue, so the question iswhat are we going to do about it?This is why conversations like thisone today are so important.

Even as our users become more

technologically advanced, and ourresources become more electronicallyaccessible, I personally don’t believethat the death of the printed book iscoming any time soon. And that, ofcourse, gives rise to a set of furtherchallenges, since issues ofcataloguing, access, storage andarchiving have to be managed acrossan increasing variety of media andplatforms. I know that many of us aredealing with these matters already, sonone of this should come as a surprise.

In terms of LIS competencies for thefuture, while I was preparing for thispresentation, I thought it would beinteresting to take a look at the courselists for a couple of library schools, tosee what topics are currently beingtaught to new librarians. AdmittedlyI only looked at a few schools inEngland and America, so the resultsare not exactly conclusive, but theyare nevertheless encouraging.

My own MLIS is from University Collegein London. This is the UK’s oldestlibrary school, and I deliberately choseit because they taught some of the

Mr. Mu-Suk Oh

Dr. Emma Davidson


more traditional subjects. Their currentsyllabus still includes some of thesetopics: Cataloguing and Classification,Historical Bibliography and ManuscriptStudies.

But, as you might expect, they havealso embraced the technological sideof LIS competencies, offering units onthings like Database Systems Analysisand Design, Digital Resources in theHumanities, Knowledge Representationand Semantic Technologies.

I was also interested to see that theyhave a few courses on what might bedescribed as the socio-political side ofthe information landscape, such asInformation Literacy, and InformationGovernance, and I think that thesethings are an important addition to ourcollective professional mindset.

On the opposite side of the Atlantic, Ilooked at the course list for the PrattInstitute Library School in New YorkCity. They do still teach a number ofthe traditional subjects too, but theyskew heavily to what might be regardedas the cutting edge of our professionaleducation, offering courses on topicssuch as Introduction to Spatial Thinkingand Geographic Information Systems,Data Librarianship and Management,Information Architecture & InteractionDesign. And again on the societal sideof things, their syllabus includescourses on Instructional Technologies,Community Building & Engagement,Information Policies & Politics.

So if these are in any way representativeof library education in general, as Isuspect they are (and I’m veryinterested to know what gets taught inother parts of the world), it seems thatlibrarians, the immediate future arebeing trained in the sorts of skills whichare likely to be of use.

But what does that mean for the rest ofus, who may have received our degreesmany years ago now? Clearly, attendingconferences, events like this one,

continuing education, reading theprofessional literature - all of these sortsof things are vital to ensure that we keepour knowledge and competencies aliveand current. I’m sure most of us are doingat least some of these already, but howdo we decide where to direct our attentionto have the greatest effect?

I believe that our professionalassociations, and networks such asDELNET, have an important part to playhere. For example SLA is currently offeringcertificate programs in copyright,leadership, competitive and designintelligence, and knowledge management& knowledge services. They have alsocreated webinars of some of the top-ratedsessions from the 2018 conference, whichinclude programs on: Data Management,Data Analysis, and Visualization UsingExcel

The Seven Competencies of HighlyEffective Knowledge Managers

New Approaches to ROI: How to TalkAbout the Value of Info

And looking at the 2019 conferenceprogram, there will be many sessions incutting-edge topics at that event,including:

Competitive Intelligence across Industries

Big Data and Controlled Vocabularies

But, just how quickly are things reallychanging? How much of this is genuinelyimportant to our continuing success inour jobs, and how much is in some way adistraction? Is all of this the new normal?How can we balance the old and the new,the historic and the futuristic, thetraditional and the technological? As wemove forward, as of course we must, Ithink it’s worth stopping to ask thesetypes of questions every once in a while,to help us stay on the right track.

Take SLA for example - how long can wecontinue to be named the Special LibrariesAssociation when our membersincreasingly do not have the word librarian

in their job titles, work in departmentswhich are no longer called libraries,and, in some cases, don’t evenpersonally identify as librarians, basedon their core competencies, but ratheras some other flavour of information orknowledge professional?

Before I finish I want to spend a fewmoments considering some specificcompetencies which I think are ofparticular relevance right now, not onlyin terms of librarians being able to putthem immediately into practice, butalso because members of our usercommunities are becoming increasinglyfamiliar with them, and we need to beable to understand and communicateabout them appropriately:

User Experience

UX, with its strategies for observingand questioning how users interact withthe library, is a good example of thekind of agile, adaptable growth mindsetwhich I think we all need to adopt inorder to navigate these times. Itencompasses techniques which canbe used in the physical library space, inconstructing websites, in makingresources both physically andelectronically available to our usersbased on what they actually want andneed, and it encourages iterative changeas more information is gathered, and/oras user requirements evolve.

Competitive Intelligence

CI is not new to many practitioners inour field, particularly those working inlegal firms and other businessenvironments. Increasingly, however,I see a real need for the kinds of skillsinvolved: techniques of research andanalysis, market positioning, beingaware of what competitors do(regardless of your library sector) andlearning from them, all of these thingscan add value to your existing services.

Emotional Intelligence

Matters of EI, particularly in terms of

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overcoming unconscious bias andincreasing diversity within theprofession, are big news in Americaand the UK right now. This isn’t justspecific to the library sector, of course,but it will only become more importantto cultivate the kind of self awarenessnecessary to practice good behavioursaround hiring, staff management, andeven just our day-to-day treatment ofour colleagues. This is absolutely anarea in which we all have things tolearn.

But, finally, I’d like to suggest thatArtificial Intelligence is going to be thenext big disruptor in our field.Sophisticated machine-drivenclassification and provision ofinformation could be a competitor tothe human librarian, but equally it couldbe of huge benefit to us in our work. Forexample, I know some legal librariansare already applying AI techniques totheir firms’ collections of cases, andusing the results to produce actionabledata for their lawyers. In this type ofway, AI becomes a powerful tool to helpus do our jobs better rather than posinga danger to our professional future.Consequently, developing somespecific competencies in this field, orat the very least an awareness of the

principles and practical applications,seems to be a smart strategy for LISprofessionals today. I know that I need tolearn a lot more about AI myself, so that’smy challenge for this year, and I inviteyou to consider which competency youmost need to work on for yourself.”

Mrs. Nalini Mahajan, Library Directorand Webmaster, Marianjoy Re-habilitationHospital, Greater Chicago, USA affirmedthat “All these aspects that we are talkingabout have not come up recently, theyhave been here for generations. It is onlythe tools that have changed. When wetalk about technology they are basicallythe tools with which we deliver theinformation. The core competenciesremain the same”.

Mrs. Mahajan defined InformationServices, Information Management,Instruction and Instructional Design,Leadership and Management, EvidenceBased Practice & Research and HealthInformation Professionalism andmentioned that LIS professionals werebecoming leaders in institutional setupsand serving on management teammeetings. She said that SLA haddeveloped two groups: One group isdevoted to core competencies intrinsic tothe information profession and the other

is meant for enabling the competencies.“Enabling competencies are similar tothe new models of technicalcompetencies that all associationshave used. It is surprising to seeinterpersonal skills identified as one ofthe top skills needed today, in a surveyof librarians. Others are critical thinkingincluding qualitative and quantitativereasoning, initiative, adaptability,flexibility, creativity, innovation andproblem solving. So critical thinkingand problem solving are two veryimportant aspects. And then of course,along with oral and writtencommunication, we need to haveinfluencing skills. In other words, weinfluence people and make them agreewith us when it comes to the value oflibrary services or any other issues.Also included are relationship building,networking, collaboration, including theability to foster respect, inclusion andcommunication. Marketing is anotherarea which is very important becausepeople need to know that we have alibrary in the organisation. Leadership,management and project management,competencies for lifelong learning,instructional design, teaching anddevelopment and business ethics arethe others”.

Mrs. Mahajan added: “Tom Rink whowas the SLA president in 2016 said thatthere is virtually no area of work todaythat does not use information and data,and people who are skilled in finding,analysing, managing, organisng andsharing information and data, canmake a critical difference betweenorganisational success and failure. Sothat is what our role is and it shows howimportant we could be to anyorganisation or institution”. She saidthat medical institutions would focusmore on health science librarians.“Right now we are going throughtremendous changes. There aretechnological advancements and theyare actually transforming the healthcareenvironment totally. It is very volatileand one does not know from one day to

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Mrs. Nalini Mahajan


the next what will happen. Informationand communication technologiescontinue to evolve at a rapid speed. Inorder to successfully meet thesechallenges, there is an urgent need tocreate synergy between technologyand information professionals”.

She referred to mobile technology andsaid that in the US a lot of mobiletechnology was used in the hospitalsat the bedside. A doctor could be at thebedside seeing a patient and he wouldbe using mobile technology. When thephysicians at Marianjoy RehabilitationHospital were evaluating patients, theywould call the library if they wanted tohave information delivered while theywere actually seeing the patient. Sothe role of the library was to provide theinformation when and where it wasneeded, without having the luxury ofspending two to three days to retrieveit.

She further added, “Virtual caremanagement is a major issue becausenow we can actually talk to the doctorover the phone or over a videoconference without going to the office.Most of us know about telemedicinewhere a doctor who is somewhere faraway from a surgery being performed,can see it being done and take itforward”.

“Robotic surgery is another major trendwhich saves money and time. A personwho has got a robotic surgery done isable to return to work very quickly, soit is an efficient way of doing it. It is notbeing done all over and there are veryfew physicians who are doing it, but itis on the rise”.

“Patient centred care is one of thebiggest things as we talk aboutconsumerism, and it is one of thehotest trends in health sciences. Thatis because the consumer has becomethe king. They have access toinformation through the Internet, throughthe Web and they are using socialmedia to share information with their

colleagues before they actually see thedoctors, who have to be very carefulbecause they already come very wellprepared. Patients are now dictatingthe cost of medical care too becausethey are looking at the cost and comparingit. They claim that it is their moneybeing used and where it is going to beused. Without going into the detailsbecause that is a very big discussion, inthe United States medical expensesare very high and could ruin those whodo not have insurance. The insuranceis very expensive, so it is really verydifficult”.

“The big data and electronic health recordsare a major cosideration in the healthcarefield. When a physician looks at a patient,instead of writing notes, a software isused to enter the documentation in acontent management system. At thattime if any questions arise, the librariansprovide help using the IS into whichdatabases are embedded. They checkthe information from it and for that theyare also given the continuing educationcredits”.

Mrs. Nalini Mahajan said that AugmentedReality, Internet and Social Media arealso the latest trends which show us whatcan be expected in the next decade. Thelast decade was more focused on productinformation. The current decade is on themedical platforms, as mentioned earlier,mobile platforms, big data and analysingthe health information. The next decadeis robotics, artificial intelligence,augmented reality, so the focus is goingto be on solutions.

She said that Digital libraries have becomethe heart of knowledge societies. Theyenable people to access, share and applyknowledge. She added that hospitallibrarians could play an important role byintegrating the hospital library with patientcare, teaching and research. In herconcluding remarks, she said that “Deliverinformation, when and where needed, theway your consumer, the client, yourcustomer wants” should be the mantra

for LIS professionals.

Dr. D.V. Singh, University Librarian,University of Delhi said that discoveringnew competencies for LIS professionalswas a very challenging task. He addedthat we have to be dynamic in ourapproach and simultaneously have amultidirectional access to theknowledge. Another point he stressedwas that knowledge should be providedto the end user expeditiously,exclusively, exhaustively andspecifically. He said that there is amarked difference between knowledgeand information. Among the newcompetencies he said that there aremany areas, such as knowledgemanagement, ICT application, subjectexpertise, collection management,information technology use, userinformation, planning and evaluation ofservices, etc. He said that these werevery important aspect of competenciesand of leadership. He said that BernardM. Bass in his book Introduction toLeadership, 3rd edition, had cited theexample of Napoleon saying that anarmy of lions led by a rabbit will be the

symposium

Dr. D.V. Singh


loser if it fights with an army of rabbitsled by a lion. It is because there is aleader. Dr. Singh observed that therewere two types of leadership:transformational leadership andtransactional leadership. Competenttransformational leaders transforms usfrom a child to a mature intelligentperson. Dr. Singh emphasised that thereshould be courses on multimedialiteracy, leadership, digitisation,marketing and financial literacy in ourLIS curriculum.

Dr. Nabi Hasan, Librarian, IndianInstitute of Technology Delhi observedthat if a smart librarian wanted to providesmart services, there is ample scopefor professionals. He added that ICT isa tool which cannot replace us even ifthere was Artificial Intelligence. “TheCentre for Artificial Intelligence at IIT isalso trying to explore AI for libraryservices but these things are beingconsidered as tools.” He said that intoday’s scenario where there is a changein the library services from traditional tomodern for most of us, the best toolsand technologies are being used toprovide services to the clientele. “Manymay not know that the IIT Delhi Libraryremains open round the clock. It is notclosed for even a single moment andthe circulation is also open round theclock with the use of smart check-in,check-out and book drop boxes. At alltimes you can find students sitting andstudying and, in fact, the library hasbecome a happening place in thecampus.” He added that “India’slargest cloud computing infrastructurethat is known as Baadal is in the buildingof the Central Library, IIT Delhi.”

Dr. Hasan noted that if libraryprofessionals associate themselveswith different types of services of theinstitution, obviously, they will get a lotof importance and there was nobodywho could stop them from gettingspecial awards or recognition. He addedthat, “IIT Delhi has a different culture

where work is done silently, there is afocused approach, there is not muchdiscussion about what is being done andthe clientele are being provided servicessilently. The focus is also on user servicesorientation or information literacy”.

He said that with the use of Web 2.0 andWeb 3.0 access, information has nowbecome collaborative. There is a transitionfrom print to digital and a pressure is builtabout how to develop and maintaintechnological infrastructure.

Dr. Hasan said that in order to providesmart services, the help of Whatsappand Facebook could be taken. But onehad to use these facilities in an appropriatemanner so that there was an awarenessthat unnecessary content was notreaching people. Some professionalcompetencies needed to be developedlike managerial skills, communicationskills, presentation skills, customerservices skills or commitment to lifelonglearning. He added that soft skills werealso important.

He observed that information literacyprogrammes were very important. “Agallery has recently been created on IITDelhi Central Library website and eventsare held regularly. In fact, there was anAuthors’ Workshop and we tried to showthe faculty and research scholars how

the library can help the institution ingetting better ranks in a very short orrecord time”.

He said that IITD Library has developedthe Library App which is available onAndroid. Also, others had developed afaculty profiling system which is like acustomised Scopus. The profile of onlythe IIT Delhi faculty members wereavailable on it. The H-Index ofDepartments could be seen as well. Itis dynamic and the collaborations couldbe seen. He added that some of thefeatures may not be available on evenScopus. It was not paid and was a freeutility being developed with the help ofa library intern.

He added that there was a greater needof libraries and librarians with thechanging environment. He said thatLibrarians are often posed with aquestion that ‘If everything isavailable on the desktop of studentsand faculty, what is the need of librariesnow?” He said that one could visit theIIT Delhi Library which is fully occupiedalways although everything is availableon the desktop of students along witheven remote logging. All the studentscannot come to the library because tenthousand students cannot beaccommodated at the same time. Anattempt is being made to provide themservices in a convenient and the easiestway possible. Apart from implementingand using emerging library servicesand products, marketing is alsoimportant. Dr. Hasan concluded thatsmart librarians were going to surviveby offering smart services. Librarianswould not be replaced at all bytechnology.

Dr. H. K. Kaul, Chair thanked thepanelists for their exhaustivedeliberations.

symposium

Dr. Nabi Hasan


panel discussion

Indo-U.S. Dialogue on Emerging Challenges inLibrary Services

DELNET organised a programmeentitled "Indo-U.S. Dialogue onEmerging Challenges in LibraryServices: A Panel Discussion onOctober 7, 2019 at DELNET, NewDelhi.

The panelists included Dr. Camila Alire,Dean Emerita, University of NewMexico & Colorado State University,President, American LibraryAssociation (2009-10); Dr. AnnHamilton, Associate Dean of the Libraryand Professor Emerita, GeorgiaSouthern University, GA, USA;Dr. P. R. Goswami, Former Director(Library and Information), IGNCA andCSL, Government of India, New Delhi;Dr. Shantanu Ganguly, Fellow,Knowledge Management Division,The Energy and Research Institute(TERI), New Delhi and Dr. RajeshSingh, Deputy Librarian, CentralReference Library, University of Delhi,Delhi. Dr. H. K. Kaul, Director, DELNETchaired the panel discussion.

Dr. Sangeeta Kaul, Network Manager,DELNET welcomed and introduced thepanel and invited the chair Dr. Kaul tostart the proceedings. Dr. H.K. Kaulthanked the panelists to be a part ofthe important discussion on ‘EmergingChallenges in Library Services.’ Hesaid that it is the library services whichactually bridge the gap betweenknowledge and the users. Otherwise,he said that knowledge lives in onecompartment and the users live inanother. He reiterated that it is basicallythe services that the libraryprofessionals offer that bridge thesetwo together. He further added that theservices provided in most publiclibraries in India are not very good oracceptable. Some public libraries weregood as they offer good services to thepublic. But in many others that was notso. As far as academic libraries are

concerned, he added that someuniversities libraries were doingcommendable work, but most of thecollege libraries need to improvesignificantly.

While focusing on the problems in offeringbetter services, Dr. Kaul said that the firstproblem was that of quality content. Manyinstitutions were unable to subscribe togood quality journals. They did not haveadequate funds and so could not subscribeto them. Also they were unable to addvalue to the content. He felt how couldthey offer better services to the users ifthey cannot add value to the content?Further, the services are getting divided.There is no cooperation among institutionsfor similar types of issues. Since manylibraries were not adequately funded,efforts were being duplicated. The staffdid not get the necessary training. Headded that in public libraries most of themdid not have qualified staff. He said thatwe also had a situation where resourcesharing needed to be used by every

library in the country. For instance, atDELNET he added, we have millions ofresources. You could borrow books,you could get articles and could haveaccess to other kinds of informationand services. He noted that DELNETtarget was to have forty thousandlibraries in the network by 2020.However, the pace at which the librarieswere being modernised or gettingnetworked was very slow.

Coming to the panel discussion, hesaid that we had a distinguished panelof experts and requested each one ofthe panelists to highlight the fivepressing issues in library services.

Dr. Ann Hamilton said that herexperience was about being a part of anetwork in the State of Georgia, whichwas very similar to that of DELNET.She said that “In 1994, we had the ideawithin the university system of Georgia,which is thirty-four institutions run bythe State of Georgia, that we needed toshare information. This took off onSeptember 22, 1995, when we wereable to have a shared database amongthe thirty-four institutions. Till thennobody in our university could afford to


subscribe to major databases. Theydid not have the money. Everybody’sbudget was so tight that we could notdo it. Thanks to GALILEO (GeorgiaLibrary Learning Online), we wereable to get the software within theuniversity system.”

She added that she was a member of aworking group, working on this networkas a librarian. “I am a perfect librarian atheart and one of the most excitingthings for me was to connect a userwith information resources. Therefore,this was a superb opportunity. Withinsix months we had private academicinstitutions and public library institutionswanting to join. Now we have twothousand members within the smallstate of Georgia that has access to allthis information. Everybody, fromkindergarten to the academicinstitutions, has access to wonderfuldatabases so that basically any person,from a child to an adult, in the State ofGeorgia can get these resources.”

She said that “GALILEO was the firstphase. The second phase was thestate-wide interconnected catalogue of

the GALILEO Interconnected Libraries(GIL). It meant that wherever one was inthe state, one could find who had thematerial one needed. We had the sharedresources for delivering that information,whether it was a book or something online.”

“The third phase was the Georgia DigitalConsortium. It was the digital library ofGeorgia where we started putting in localresources, special collections and suchthings, so that we were able to have whatwe never had before. We had resourcesthat had never travelled out of the stateand which were now part of the database.Anybody in the state of Georgia, whetherliving in a poor rural area or in Atlanta,could have equal access to resources.And so it has been for the last twenty-fiveyears. September 21, 2020 will be thetwenty-fifth anniversary of GALILEO. Dr.Kaul and us are doing the same thing atthe same time which is exciting for us.”

She said that the state of Georgia benefitedfrom the fact that the heads of the librariesin the university system of Georgia wereemotionally intelligent leaders. They hadthe forethought to go ahead andcollaborate. As soon as somebody said

that the state had money, they wouldcome up with the plan and noweverybody has access to it. When shewas a librarian, they had paper booksand that took several hours to getanything. She added that now anyonecould walk into a library and get whatthey need. For example, in the GeorgiaSouthern University, the people in thecommunity who were not students,could come in on Saturdays and getaccess to as much of the campusresources that were not available attheir public libraries by becoming a partof the community. She said that, therewere all kinds of licences and rules butthey all worked through it.

Dr. Camila Alire affirmed that we donot have the number of millennials whoare being prepared to move up intosome of the pivotal or key leadershippositions. However, she said that themillenials thought that they wereprepared to walk right into positionstwo or three levels above where theywere at present, without the adequatetraining or education they needed. Sheadded that these were the people whowould be managing the libraries, bothin terms of public services, accessservices and technical services.

According to her, the second aspectwhich is necessary to keep up with isinformation technology. She added thatthe moment you think that you arestate-of-the-art in technology, the artchanges, or the state changes. “Youobtain the finances for the libraries toattain a certain level. There you are,operating programmes and servicesfor your users. It takes considerabletime, effort and cost to continually be instate-of-the-art and remain updated inall that is going on in libraries, whetherpublic or academic.”

The third thing she added was relatedto collection development. “There is amovement taking place on ourcampuses, and also in public libraries.I call it the EDI Movement. EDI standsfor Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. It is

panel discussion

Dr. Ann Hamilton


an ambitious movement. Many of us,for years, have been preaching aboutdiversity in staffing, trying to meet theneeds of diversity in faculty, or thediverse users of public libraries. Now ithas moved into collection development.How should you do collectiondevelopment in the context ofsupporting equity, diversity andinclusiveness? One would say thatEDI is the latest phrase in ourprofession, but this is something wehave been preaching and promotingfor several years. It is now at theforefront. I know that in Colorado theyare conducting a series of seminarsand workshops on collectiondevelopment for EDI in academiclibraries.”

Dr. Alire added that one of the booksshe co-authored was about libraryservices to Latino communities. “Whenwe worked on that book, which wasdesigned for public libraries, we did awhole long chapter on how librariescould connect in collectiondevelopment. That was written wayback in 1997 or 1998, and we are stillnot there. So this whole concept ofpreparing librarians to do collectiondevelopment in the area of EDI is, I

think, a pressing issue.”

The fourth aspect Dr. Alire mentionedwas that most of the academic institutionswere really pushing online education. Youcould get your BA or a Masters degreeonline, in whatever discipline. “I am notsure if there is a totally online PhDprogramme; there probably is. You literallydon’t have to even appear on campus forthe most part. Now how does that reflecton and affect libraries? Well, you have allthese new users who are taking coursesonline from the comfort of their offices orhomes. There are hundreds of thousandsof new users and they still have libraryinformation needs. They still need toaccess E-resources, i.e. journals, DVDs,CDs, books and whatever is availableonline. The issue is that academic librariesare not funded to provide adequateservices to all the thousands of onlineusers. They are also not funded to havethe librarians available as navigators ofonline information for the online students.This service is essential for any onlineuser to have access to anything that thelibrary, the consortium or the networkholds. There has to be staff available24 x 7, because the students are on24 x 7. The staff has to be there to help

them navigate the challenges of accessto information resources online.”

The last issue she mentioned wasabout funding for libraries. She did donot know if it was ever going to change,but she added that funding continued tobe an issue in both academic andpublic libraries. She thought that theheads of these libraries were continuingto be very innovative and creative interms of how they could meet theneeds of their users with the samefunds, even though there was anincrease in the services or an increasein the pressure to have servicesavailable to all the users.

Dr. P. R. Goswami observed thatgenerally most of the funds in academiclibraries and science and technologylibraries were spent on acquiring digitalcollections. He felt that the librariansshould develop academic skills andsubject expertise to select mostrelevant e-content for their users.

Another issue Dr. Goswami raisedwas the lack of leadership. He said thatwe have many associations, but therewas no coordination among them. Hesaid that we need a voice from thelibrary fraternity which can articulateand present key points to thegovernment. He further opined that thelibrarians and libraries are perceived ina very limited way.

The third point he added was thatnowadays there is great stress onexpert systems. “I refer to the NACLINconference I attended some time ago,where we got a glimpse of it. The BITSPilani library has developed manysystems based on the interaction withusers, with the help of the users whoare engineering students. The presentset of manpower in the libraries of Indiais not geared to set up such systemsindependently. There is a need to haveclose coordination with a statistician,the data analytics professionals andcomputer software engineers. Howshould the library schools find their

panel discussion

Dr. Camila Alire


way? How can they get the bestavailable talent which have some skillsin these three subjects, to join thelibraries? All these changes will betaking place in the future. I haverecently read in the Library TechnologyReport that the University of RhodesIsland Library has an AI laboratory.They have tried to rope in the studentsfrom different fields and developedexpert systems so that their libraryruns properly and satisfactorily.”

The fourth point Dr. Goswami madewas about the changing environment.He said, “Now there is emphasis onrobots, although India has not beenaffected so far. In India we still think oflabour intensive-work and feel that weshould not automate things. However,automation will be introduced herewithin ten or fifteen years. Many robotswill be applied in the service sector.Libraries may not be able to escape thetrend. Now, the question is regardingone of the papers written in the US. Itsays that forty-seven per cent ofAmerican jobs will be lost because ofautomation and artificial intelligence.It has been stated that the middle level

or low paid workers doing repetitive jobsin manufacturing will become jobless.However, perhaps after fifteen or twentyyears, one may find that the routine jobswhich are being done by librarians will betaken over by the AI systems. Thechallenge is how to make the libraryrelevant to society in this changingscenario of automation and artificialintelligence.”

Referring to public libraries, Dr. Goswamisaid that we do not have enough dataabout public libraries. He stressed thefact that public libraries are needed in thenewly established towns. He added, “It iswhere there is a minimum population offive thousand and at least seventy-fiveper cent of the population is engaged innon-agricultural work. Their education levelis very high and so they need a library.This can be suggested by the Ministry ofCulture to the Ministry of UrbanDevelopment that sets up a plan for thedevelopment of a town, which includes amunicipality, a school, etc. The libraryfactor should be included and there shouldbe some initiative from the libraryassociations”.

The last point made by him was theneed of trained manpower for libraries.He affirmed that there was too muchemphasis on technology. The corecompetence of the librarian who isworking in a particular organisationshould be to understand, interpret andproject his collection in a proper waywhich the user can understand. As anexample he said that for interpreting thecore-most esoteric sources in the fieldof economics, the budget papers,industrial statistical system and nationalaccounts information system arerequired. There is a need for makingleaflets for beginners. Dr. Goswami feltthat these leaflets should be made in allthe other subjects where the librarianneeds some sort of expertise. Aspecialised organisation like DELNET,in close coordination with experts, maydevelop such leaflets to enhance thecapabilities of librarians to a certainextent.

Dr. Shantanu Ganguly said that whatis needed in today’s context is thatwe have to be infopreneurs:entrepreneurship with business acumenin information services. He added thatthose days had gone when we providedselective services of information andcontent analysis. At present, valueaddition of services is necessary.

Dr. Ganguly further said that GaneshNatarajan in his book on knowledgemanagement, has broken the word‘knowledge’ into three majorcomponents: Know, L and Edge. ‘Know’refers to knowing something. ‘L’ standsfor lifelong learning. When you haveboth, you have an ‘Edge’ over others.

He also asked, “How should youapproach your emotional intelligence?How should you handle your socialintelligence? How should you look intoconnectional intelligence? The entireorganisation, with all the individuals,everybody, is getting connected.Friends, please read the bookConnectional Intelligence by Erica

panel discussion

Dr. P. R. Goswami


Dhawan, who has done a Ph.D. on thesubject from MIT. She discussescomprehensively how one getsconnected to another and how bothcan benefit from it. Very famous authorsChan Kim and Ranee Mauborgne, hastalked about the Blue Ocean Strategyin their most iconic and impactfulstrategy book “Blue Ocean Strategy”.Those competitive days have gonewhere people used to talk about theRed Ocean Strategy. They no longerexist. It is now the Blue OceanStrategy. You have to create yourbenchmark at that level where youcreate your own USP in the market.That is how you can do it throughconnectional intelligence.”

He said that “artificial intelligence isrevolutionary, and we need to look atartificial intelligence. It is dependenton three major components. They aredenoted as CCT: Content, Context andTechnology. The third, the last part, isa facilitator. Who can provide thecontent? Who can provide the context?It is us. We are the leaders. However,we have to accept the challenges weface.”

He referred to data visualisation anddata storytelling and stressed that they

were very important components in LIS.He added that the last but not the least,was competitive intelligence and librariansshould be competitive in their attitudeand performance.

Dr. Rajesh Singh said that there isplenty of information, particularly in thedigital age. Google could provide you witha wide range of subjects on anything.The first issue was to assist the user inidentifying and articulating his own

information needs. “Believe me friends,even the stalwarts of their subject areaare not trained like we are. We areinformation professionals. We havebeen trained for years altogether to findout what exactly a person is lookingfor”.

He added that we need to help thepatrons to identify what exactly theyare looking for, the ways and meansby which they can talk to the searchengines available on the digitalplatform, and identify their requiredinformation.

Dr. Rajesh Singh noted that the secondchallenge was information access whichis a major challenge. He added thataccording to the study carried out bythem among research scholars of fouruniversities in Delhi, more than forty-six per cent of social scienceresearchers were unable to access theinformation they were looking for. “It isan immense challenge and an alarmingsituation, not for students, but forinformation professionals. We, asinformation professionals, need toaddress this challenge about how allour users, not just the researchscholars, can access the proper,reliable and authentic information.”

panel discussion

Dr. Shantanu Ganguly

Dr. Rajesh Singh


panel discussion

He said that the third importantchallenge related to the end users wasinformation evaluation as we neededto decipher and distinguish betweenwhat was authentic and reliable andwhat was not. He said that LISprofessionals should train the users tofind out and identify only reliable andacademic sources of information.

He added that the fourth challenge wasrelated to information use. “Simplycopying material, borrowing informationfrom different sources and citing themproperly or improperly while puttingthings together was not research asthere was nothing new in it. He felt thatunderstanding the information whichone had retrieved from reliable sourcesand then reusing that information in aparticular context on which researchwas being done, was the real use ofinformation. LIS professionals couldassist the end user understand theinformation in the relevant context inwhich the Scholar was researching”.

The fifth challenge according toDr. Singh was regarding the ethical useof information and the challengesassociated with it. He said that “Weneeded to help users in usinginformation ethically.” He added thatas we were regularly in contact with theusers from different segments, whetherthey were students, the general public,researchers or faculty members, wecould tell them how to paraphrase,how to borrow materials, how tosummarise and enumerate the stylesfor quoting and citing content.

It was followed by a question/answersession. On the relevance of MOOCS,Dr. Camila Alire observed that onlineeducation was important to the studentswho could not afford to study full time.She added that as a professor, shewant to know each student, which isvery typical for an EI person. “I want tobe able to see the students’ bodylanguage. If I see them shaking theirheads or if they are in a daze and not

understanding what I am saying, then Ineed to act and ask the class if they haveany questions, or if I need to expand ona specific issue. You cannot get thatwhen you are online.” Therefore, sheexpressed some real concern about onlineeducation. “You cannot convince me thata course online is better than face-to-faceor a hybrid, that is something face-to-face to get the content and then online todo the work on the papers and things likethat. I would not mind the hybridprogramme because I always had face-to-face time with the doctoral or Masters’students.”

Dr. P. R. Goswami recommended forspecific efforts to be made for increasingthe use of library resources since thereis very little interaction between theacademics and the library staff.

Dr. Rajesh Singh noted that the conceptof service had changed. “We, as libraryprofessionals, also need to change theconcept. We need to reach to the usersourselves, instead of waiting for theusers to enter the library.”

In his concluding remarks, Dr. H. K.Kaul thanked the panel and participantsfor an informative panel discussion.


lecture

Use of Data Mining and Big Data Managementin Libraries : New Challenging Approaches

DELNET organised a lecture entitled“Use of Data Mining and Big DataManagement in Libraries: NewChallenging Approaches” by Dr. HabilJean-Charles Lamirel, Senior Lecturer,University of Strasbourg, France onFebruary 18, 2019. Dr. Usha MujooMunshi, Chief Librarian, IndiaInternational Centre, New Delhi chairedthe lecture.

Dr. H.K. Kaul in his welcome addressobserved that data science wasemerging as an important subject duringthe last decade. He said that there is anextensive research going on in theworld on this subject. He lamented thatlibrary professionals in India were notgetting associated much with it.Librarians, he said, will have to moveout of their secure shells and look atareas where the information was beingcreated, and not only handle theinformation and knowledge but also thedata, which is also very important forIndia and the countries around. Dr.Kaul added that librarians had toconsider new issues, new methods andnew technologies.They now had to playdecisive and seminal roles in the

world.He added that in fact it was certainthat without librarians as knowledgeexperts, libraries could not functioneffectively.He added that quality contenthad to be selected which could be betterdone by library professionals.

Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi, the Chair,commenting on new challengingapproaches and affirmed “Dr. Kaul hasset the ball rolling by saying that we haveto venture into the new areas and if we donot, we are not going to actually reap thebenefits of technological advancementsthat we need to introduce into our domain.Now, we as librarians have beenassociated with resource management,information management and knowledgemanagement for ages. Libraries havebeen the oldest institutions in the historyof human survival. This was the oldestinstitution and therefore, it was naturalthat whatever resources were coming tothe library, were being managed so thatpeople could make use of them. However,with the advent of technologies and newinfrastructure, we have migrated orgraduated from simpler mechanisms tosomewhat complex systems.” Dr. Munshiadded that “We have now come to a

stage where we are handling complexsystems. The earliest knowledgeresource management tool that enabledus to locate information was thecatalogue. However, with the advent ofthe printing press, what had happenedwas that we had the reproduction ofknowledge and so it was difficult tomanage with a simple catalogue. Thencame automation which helped inlocating and identifying information.With the proliferation of the knowledgeor information resources, we need tohave the full text. A researcher cannotwork on limited resources. Therefore,they updated it to the full text databases.There was a plethora of full-textdatabases coming into the picture.People then began looking at aninterpretability of this and so federatedsearch engines were created.” Soonafter, even this was not sufficient andwe ventured into discovery tools, whichwere actually relevant when we talkedabout the print world. Now came theperiod of the last two decades. This isthe second decade that we are actuallyrolling and doling data, which ismultiplying at an unprecedented rate.How many of us have heard aboutSquare Kilometre Array (SKA)? Whenthis Square Kilometre Array matures in2022, it will create eleven petabytes ofdata in one day. We had 4.2 zettabytesof data generated right through history.The Large Hadron Collider has createdtwenty-five petabytes of data in theyear 2013. In 2014 and 2015, it wasdormant because there was repair workgoing on. Now again colossal data isbeing created. It is difficult to assimilateand organise such data. This datarevolution is not hyperbolic, it is reality.We are actually, part of this datarevolution. As we speak, if it is streamed,we can pick up some connects andconnect to some level data and createsomething else, which is possible.Therefore, this revolution is as profoundand more pervasive than Gutenberg’sprinting press. When we look at theseinstances, it is only natural that we as

Dr. Habil Jean-Charles Lamirel

librarians have to see how data isbeing managed and more appropriatelyhow we should strive towards creatingdata management plans. What goesbehind these data management plans,unless we are actually a part of themovement, somebody else is going tocolonise our branch and we will behistory. Therefore, it is an appropriatetime to have such an illustriousspeaker amongst us who has doneextensive work in data management”.Dr. Munshi referred to Dr. Habil Jean-Charles Lamirel as an outstandingresearcher in the area of datamanagement. She welcomed Dr.Lamirel who is a Senior Lecturer at theUniversity of Strasbourg in France toshare his expertise with fellowprofessionals.

Dr. Lamirel began his presentationsaying:” I will be talking about Big Dataand Data Mining techniques and whatwe will be faced with in the next fewyears. We will see how we can use thiswork in a new kind of library sciencecalled open access library science inwhich we will have to deal with mostlynew tools we are not familiar with. I willtry to help you to understand thechallenge that you have to deal withand the type of tool you will have to usein the future of your work.”

“So firstly, what we are faced with isthe increased quantity of data that wehave to deal with. For a librarian thismeans having to handle many kinds ofopen collections of data coming fromdifferent sources. These have to beaggregated. It is important here for usto understand the ‘collection content’in order to be able to explain it to users.Explanation of the collection contentis a tricky problem. The collection willchange. We have to aggregate thecollection data, which can come fromdifferent sources, and so this kind ofsituation can lead to many problems.As the collection is constantly growing,one cannot make a fixed term to decidea fixed domain that it can be classifiedin. The collection will evolve over time,

so we must be able to track the changesin order to be able to identify the newcontent and extract a new topic. We mustbe able to answer a complex user queryknowing that the collection is not stable”.

Dr. Lamirel mentioned that this is a majorproblem but, it is similar to a problem weusually deal with in Machine Learning.Machine Learning helps to understandthe content of a large collection of data.He added that there are upcoming machinelearning techniques that were able totackle this problem more or lessefficiently. “That means in some way ifwe want to give an answer to the user asa librarian, we must understand somehints and clues of Machine Learningtechniques in order to be able in the futureto deal with our collection and alsorespond correctly to the user. Therefore,it is very important for us to understandthat we will have to be a Data Miningexpert in some way if we want to progressin the new library world. These techniqueswill be a vast change compared to theones we are familiar with”.

Therefore, Dr. Lamirel added, “What wehave in Machine Learning is Big Data andmany problems. First, we must be able toevaluate the system we work with. Wemust be able to say that the responsefrom the system is good enough. Forexample, when it has to extract knowledgefrom data then we can say the system isgood enough if it is possible for it to do so.It is a very tricky problem. Suppose wehave an expert who has to solve a problem.The expert has some reference data. Ifthe expert has some reference data, it isnot so difficult. The problem is that,because the data is evolving over time,we cannot have any more, and cannotrely anymore on the reference data. Thereference will be missing most of the timebecause the data is changing, evolvingand growing. If we expect a mathematicianto say whether the data analysis resultwas acceptable or unacceptable, it is notpossible any more. So, that is a hugechallenge. We must deal with our resultand generate it without having anyreference data. In Machine Learning, we

call it the Model Evaluation Problem”.

“The second problem is that when werepresent data for the learningmachinery, most of the time we usesome data description, which could bevery complex. If we take textdocuments, for example, the usual wayof dealing with them in Machine Learningis splitting a document into words. Thewords that represent the set of alldocuments will form, in some way,what we call the description space. Thedescription space is as large as thewords which describe all the documentsin the data set. If we have manydocuments globally, the resultingdescription space will contain manywords. This is also an immense problemin Machine Learning because althoughthe space is big, but individually eachdata has a limited number of words inthis space. A Sparse Representation isone in which the amount or dimensionsof this space is limited for each data.When we deal with a SparseRepresentation in a big space, it isextremely difficult to compare the datatogether. If we cannot compare thedata, we obviously cannot do MachineLearning”.

He said that “The two major problemsare Model Evaluation and DataComparison. There is also another one.Suppose we are working with patents.In a patent, we do not have only onesingle description. A patent has acertain domain of use, which has acertain advantage. It talks about thepatentee who proposed the solutionand it is also supposed to speak abouta certain kind of solution. All these giveus some kind of view of the patent.There is a view of the domain of use, aview of the advantage, a view of thepatentee and a view of the solution. Ifwe do Machine Learning on patents, wewill have to consider that not onerepresentation will be used, but many.Let us say we do some analysis of thepatents regarding their advantage, ananalysis regarding the domain of use,the content or the patentees. Then we

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have to merge these things together inorder to get a representation of theknowledge we get from MachineLearning. This is the View orRepresentation Problem, which is alsoa very tricky problem in MachineLearning”.

In addition, Dr. Lamirel said, “anotherpoint is that when we are in big space,the Machine Learning results obtainedfrom it are also represented in bigspace. How can we understandsomething that is represented in a fiftythousand dimensional space? Thatmeans we have to visualise the result.We expect that the visualisationprocess will be able to reduce theoriginal dimensionality to one wherethe user can interpret it. This is verytricky, as we want to reduce thedimensions of the representation wehave, but we also do not want to losethe most important information”.

“Now, there is another problem thatarises with the changing time. With thetime change, the data is evolving andit is changing. It is a problem to doMachine Learning in order to be able tosay at a given point that analysis hasbeen done on the data, which is nomore similar to the one in the past. Asa librarian, if we project this problem toour collection and transpose this in thefuture, in addition to Machine Learning,you will also have to deal with all thechallenges that are not solved properlyby Machine Learning. We have tounderstand that this is important too.Of course, there are many MachineLearning applications and there is somuch to know about, especially fortext, which is in our domain”. Dr. Lamirelgave some examples from the MachineLearning technological survey in theresearch programme in which there aremany attributes for comparison andanalysis. “It is very useful forunderstanding the behaviours ofassociating or using big data like inopinion tracking and sentiment analysisin social networks”.

Dr. Lamirel explained how we could obtainresults using some generic techniquesthat should be able to tackle all thesechallenges at the same time. He referredto some of the main principles of MachineLearning techniques. He definedClustering and Classification. He saidthat distinction between these two tasksmust be made. Classification is asupervised method. “There are someclassification laws and we put the data inits class as defined by the laws. Clusteringis different because it is unsupervised.We expect actual information from thedata without any reference data.Therefore, that is more difficult.Nevertheless, it is more valuable becausein the future we will not have any morereference data. Therefore, there will be nochance of future use of Classification”.

Dr. Lamirel said that if data is separatedinto groups the characteristics of data ineach group need to be defined. He alsoexplained terms such as Feature Recall,Feature Precision, used in datamanagement.

At the end Dr. Lamiral said that in analysisof data we had to take care of using thegood tools, otherwise; we would not getgood results. We needed to provide theusers with good information. In addition,

we needed to increase the efficiency ofthe collection in a certain directionthrough adding some sets ofdocuments.

Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi observed thatwhat Dr. Lamirel had talked about wasthe evolution and how we should dealwith the decisions and shifts in this bigdata landscape through contentanalysis. She said that in relation to bigdata the LIS professionals had a greatresponsibility.She said that each set ofpeople needed a different kind of datascience skill to suit their domain.Therefore, librarians should know adifferent set of data scienceperspectives so that they could sustainin serving their users.

Dr. Munshi said LIS professionals hadto own the responsibility of how toaddress the data management plans forthe researchers in the libraries. Shesaid that Dr. Lamirel mentionedsentiment analysis. “It is about how wemeasure the aspirations of users basedon their Tweets, Facebook messages,what they submit on Instagram andeven what they read on Goodreads.How do we do that? That is the job of thelibrarian and all this is based on BigData”. She added:

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Dr. Usha Mujoo Munshi

1. “If we know how to analyse the datafrom the library perspective, powerwill come to us. We will be at thefulcrum of the entire activity goingon in our institution.”

2. “When questions are being askedby readers in a library, there is a biasbecause they are being posed witha limited know-how. Answers arebeing sought. Judgments are beingmade. When we reply to a query, forexample, at a Reference Desk, theseanswers become data pointsbecause the user or the researcherpicks up things from there.”

3. “The quality of the data we serve willhave a huge impact on the judgmentsthat the people will make. So, if theymake bad judgments, who is theculprit? All of us. If they make goodjudgments, who is the winner? Weare the winner.”

4. “These data points move to datasets through collation. These datasets allow for algorithms, which Dr.Lamirel talked about, to createoutputs which allow for impactfuldecisions. Today we are talkingabout evidence-based matrix formaking decisions, data diplomacyand upstream of data for downstreamof innovations. Who is providing thisdata? We as informationprofessionals, are providing all this.Therefore, if you are not well versedor groomed in managing, storing,collecting and collating this dataand then its diffusion, we cannotsustain ourselves in thisenvironment. It is not just books,journals, articles and databases thatwe provide access to, or providevalue-added services orpersonalised information servicesfrom. We have to also put acrossthe data for the researchers.”

5. “Dr. Lamirel talked aboutmisinterpretation and mis-representation of the data.Individuals in communities areomitted, excluded, misrepresented,

misreported and misinterpreted, whichis a mistake. There is no room formistakes. If we make a mistake, it isgoing to result in a policy that willimpact all. It will back fire on us, if anypolicy that is based on the data thatwe supply does not work. Hence Dr.Lamirel talked about validated datalearning techniques. We may not knowor learn all these techniques, but weshould know about what is happening.What is clustering and feature-basedtechniques that were discussed? It isabout recognising the patterns, whichwe do now and then. We do word countwhich includes frequency of words.We do that on the low-end side of thetechnology. Clustering is high-endtechnology and more precise than theword count that we are used to. Are wenot every now and then creating aword cloud? The thicker, broader andbolder things are the core items of thedocument.”

6. “Through info-graphics Dr. Lamireltalked about data summarisation.What is that? We take the crux of it.But before that about the visualisationfactor, as he talked about clustering”.Dr. Munshi gave an example of anInformation Science project they weresupposed to do. “As we mayremember, two years ago theHonourable High Court of India, for theNational Mission for Clean Ganga,asked for data of all the seven hundredand forty-two industries in the five starstates. As we were working on theproject, they asked us to supply thedata. We identified one thousand fivehundred and forty-two industries. Theyhad asked for the water consumptionand waste water generation per dayfor these industries. We could thinkabout what the contours were whichwould be pulled out from this. Whatwas important when we were talkingabout cleaning of the Ganga? As alibrarian,we should think about whatthe end product should be. It is not theconsumption of water and thedischarge of waste water. Where that

waste water goes is more importantthan these two things. We used atechnique: C-mapping. What shouldwe librarians do when the policymakers are not going to read throughhundreds of pages of our report?They need to be given a crisp outputbecause they are not interested inthe rest, otherwise they may readsomething and make a decisionwhich is unsuitable for the society.So we should create something thatis visually appealing and which isagreed to a greater extent.”

7. “Dr. Lamirel talked aboutidentification through visualisation.How is that important for our kind ofjob? These techniques come inhandy when, for instance, aresearcher venturing to do a Ph.D.comes to us and says, ‘My area isclimate and environmentalsciences. My guide has told me topick up a field which is new, but atthe same time I should get somebasic material so that I can write thesynopsis.’ Now if we go to thedocuments and read through thebibliography, we will not get to thecrux and our hypothesis will not betotally identified. However, thistechnique will help us by indicatingthe subject shift. We may not knowthe actual clustering techniques,but we are groomed to do this, wemay have a system analyst in thelibrary in the very near future withwhom we can work on it. Ourexpertise of identifying a subject’score topics and his expertise ofmachine learning will provideexcellent results and will help theresearcher, not in months or weeks,but maybe in a few days to identifythe requisite problem that he shouldwork on and the data available, sothat he can frame the topic of thesynopsis”.

Dr. H.K. Kaul in his concluding remarksthanked Dr. Lamirel for his presentationand Dr. Munshi for chairing thelecture.

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Digital Literacy and Online SafetyDigital Shakti

A Step Towards Digital Empowerment of Women

DELNET in collaboration with CyberPeace Foundation, NationalCommission for Women, India, andFacebook organised the “DigitalLiteracy and Online Safety Programme-Digital Shakti: A Step Towards DigitalEmpowerment of Women: ANationalwide Campaign to DigitallyEmpower Young Girls and Women” onthe occasion of the InternationalWomen’s Day on March 8, 2019. Thespeakers included Capt. Vineet Kumar,President, Cyber Peace Foundation;Ms. Janice Verghese, Trainer, CyberPeace Foundation and Mr. PurnenduSingh, Director, Strategy andOperations, Cyber Peace Foundation.

Dr. Rita Malhotra, former Principal,Kamala Nehru College, University ofDelhi presided over the programme. Inher introductory remarks during theInaugural Session, she observed that“Why do girls and women not opt forcareers in technology, compared toboys and men? In the first G20 meetingheld at Düsseldorf in April 2017, adeclaration was released which said:‘Two hundred and fifty million fewerwomen than men are online today.” Dr.Malhotra stated that all of us understandthat it is gender inequality that preventswomen from exploiting the opportunitiesoffered by digitalisation today. Perhapsthere are social restrictions and theyare victims of this gender gap. Dr.Malhotra urged that it is necessary toclose, or perhaps, at least reduce thedigital gender divide which exists.Governments, it appears, are workingtowards it. They have to absolutelyinvalidate the gender barriers. Also,they should be able to tackle the gendernorms ingrained in women fromchildhood.

Dr. Malhotra affirmed that women have

a role to play. “What is our role? It is to notblindly to accept the norms of society. Ifwe do so, we do not get academic freedomor any other kind of freedom. Manystrengths that we have, like social skills,also become questionable. Therefore, wewomen need to give ourselves thatfreedom. We have to voice our choices interms of education, and in today’sscenario, to digital education and digitalaccess. It is not going to be handedto us on a platter. As mentionedearlier, there have been several efforts.Nobody can deny that equality ofeducation is essential. Also, we cannotdeny that automation or digitalisation, aswe call it today, has many avenues andopenings for women’s empowerment. Itis up to us to exploit or explore suchavenues”.

Dr. Malhotra shared a brief quote by thefamous physicist, Albert Einstein whosaid: 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules

the world.' “Even though many of ushave rocked cradles or will rock cradlesin the future, we have to face thechallenges within that. Sometimes it isat the cost of alienation from our familyor our kin, where it is not alwaysaccepted. But we have perhaps to putEinstein in our heads and move forward.Mobile and digital technologies offerwomen the potential to bypass culturaland mobility barriers”.

Talking about E-learning, Dr. Malhotramentioned that she has been teachingFrench. She said: “Currently, there is aSchool student who has come to me.Her book was very different and I had toliterally study extensively to teach her.When I asked for a spare copy of thebook, I came to know that it is notpossible to buy one. Books are issuedto just the students. As soon as theycomplete the course, the books aretaken back. There is an online copyavailable but it is such that we cannotcopy it since it cannot be downloaded.So, every time I actually access theInternet to read the book, I cannot makeany notes other than those I make on anonline notebook. It has come to this


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Dr. Rita Malhotra

stage and she is only a tenth classstudent. E-learning and E-books areactually infiltrating and we have noother option. The available apps mayalso be used.”

Narrating an interesting anecdote, Dr.Malhotra said “The Computer ScienceDepartment at Georgia Institute ofTechnology, Atlanta enrols manystudents as teaching assistants. Theyhelp the professors in making thetutorials and handling the difficulties oftheir students. Information is sharedon an online portal. Sometimes there isa one-to-one interaction between theteaching assistants and the students.However, the online portal is usuallyused to answer the students’ questionsand solving their difficulties. One ofthe professors in the Department -Institute for People and Technology,Prof. Ashok Goel, had five teachingassistants. At the end of the semester,it was revealed that out of the fiveassistants, four were part of theuniversity and the fifth was a robot.The robot was given the name JillWatson. Till the end of the academicyear the students did not realise thatone of the teaching assistants theyhad been interacting with was only arobot. This year, Dr. Goel hasnominated Jill Watson as the bestoutstanding teaching assistant. Theway things are going is very impressive.A TED talk by Dr. Ashok Goel canbe viewed on Youtube, where hedescribes how they went about makingJill Watson. Currently, they are workingon Jill Watson 2.0 which will be afurther improved version. Jill Watsonwas able to answer all the ComputerScience-related queries of the studentsand help them with their difficulttutorials”.

Talking about India, she added: “Thereare apps available for rural womenentrepreneurs who have beenequipped with digital devices. Takingpreventive healthcare as their maintask, all village women are contacted

and all healthcare related data is collected.This data is taken to the doctorsworking in several locations. Thedoctors analyse the data and the outputsgiven by them are used to improvehealthcare for women. Anotherimpressive app is the W2E2-WirelessWomen for Entrepreneurship andEmpowerment (W2E2). It helps womenwith Internet connections, E-learning andensuring access to digital devices. Itwas launched in 2014. The InternetSociety and Digital EmpowermentFoundation are associated with it. Theyhelp rural women to ensure sustainabilityof their ventures. The Prime Minister’sDigital India, Internet Saathi(www.internetsaathiindia.org) withwhich Ratan Tata is associated andArogya Sakhi are the other digitalinitiatives.”

Dr. Malhotra added: “Everybody knowsabout Alexa which is associated withAmazon and Siri which is associated withApple. One question posed to Siri was:‘Siri, do you want to talk to Alexa?’ Thereply was: ‘Of course not. I am betterequipped than Alexa. I have all theknowledge that Alexa has. Why would Iwant to talk to her?’ It is really amazing tosee where technology is going”.

She added that the digital revolution wasbringing in rapid technological changesthrough Artificial Intelligence using BigData and Cloud Computing, along withMobile Robotics. Even jobs in fields thatwere previously considered as non-attainable by computers were being doneby automation, with increasingly newerphases of technology coming up.

She added: “Our domestic helps do notknow how to use a phone beyond thebasic function of making a call. Womenhave excellent social skills which shouldbe complemented with digital literacy.Women have good communication skills,they are empathetic and maintain cordialrelations within the family. They are moreadaptable than men to changingcircumstances and should attain digital

literacy or competencies in cognitiveskills. By using robots to help studentswith the tutorials, the professors getmore time to do creative work. A robotused in the US for domestic work doesnot function like a mere vacuumcleaner. Once it is turned on, it cleansthe house from corner to corner. It doesnot need any instruction or commandslike left, right, etc. Such robots willsoon be used in India and it will resultin our domestic helps being out of jobs,in the absence of digital literacy. Thegender gap will increase because oftheir social and economic exclusion.Even as we celebrate or honourwomanhood, we have to take apledge to reach as many women aspossible to spread the word about digitalliteracy.”

Capt. Vineet Kumar, Founder &President, Cyber Peace Foundationsaid “Digital Shakti is a nationwidecampaign on digital literacy and onlinesafety. It was jointly undertaken by theCyber Peace Foundation incollaboration with the NationalCommission for Women and Facebook.The programme was launched by theHon'ble Governor of Haryana on June18, 2018. Since the launch, till todayfifty thousand women have beentrained”. He highlighted the rolebeing played by the Cyber PeaceFoundation in empowering women incyber space.

Capt. Vineet Kumar said, “One yeardown the line, everything is going to bedigital. Lighting, refrigerators, airconditioners, washing machines or anyappliance one can think of, will beconnected through the internet.Everything will be accessed throughsmartphones. We will be able to unlockdoors automatically through a smartphone application. Even cars will bedriven through smart phones. Driverlesscabs are being explored by Uber. Aperson will have to enter only his currentlocation and destination on the app, fora cab to automatically arrive and drop


digital literacy

him to the desired location. These aresome appliances and gadgets that arecoming up.”

Capt. Vineet added that by 2020, therewould be thirty billion devices connectedto the Internet. “The number is almostfour times the world population of eightbillion. Everywhere, even in the ArabianSea and the Indian Ocean, we will findthese connected IOT devices. A reportreleased by The Internet & MobileAssociation of India (IAMAI), revealsthat by 2020 one billion Indians will beconnected to the Internet. That is goingto be a big number. Many innovationsare appearing and people are joiningthe revolution.” He said that “Cybercrime damages estimated to rise to sixtrillion dollars annually by 2021. Crimesare already increasing. Gone are thedays when we used to talk about crimein the traditional sense. Now, everycrime committed has a digitalcomponent to it. Smart phones arebeing used everywhere.”

He said that the idea of digitallyempowering women was to empowerthem to make use of the Internet for

good, to stay safe online, become aresponsible netizen and know what to doand where to go when something wrong oruntoward happens. “People panic andmove away from technology whenanything wrong or negative happens. Theyfeel as if it is the end of the world.However, there are Ways out and helpcan be sought at not just the lawenforcement agencies but also theplatforms of the service providers.”

He added that re-skilling is an importantpoint that should be emphasised. “As wemove forward in the digital era, manypeople need re-skilling. We need to createa pool of skilled ambassadors.”

Dr. H.K. Kaul thanked Dr. Rita Malhotraand Capt. Vineet Kumar for theirpresentations. He said: “Digital Shaktiis a very important programme. Abouttwenty years ago, we had submitted aproposal to the Government of India todevelop knowledge centres because wehave several unemployed and unskilledwomen in the country. For example, thereare many working as fisherwomen in thecoastlines, as craftswomen or doing jobsin the field of marketing. They do not have

any knowledge content about how to goabout their livelihood. They do not getwhat they fairly deserve. I personallyfeel that the knowledge content is theone missing link. Proper content andinformation about marketing, healthcare,small-scale industries, crafts andcommunication should reach women indifferent parts of the country, be itvillages, towns, coastal areas or foreststo enable them to get empowered. Thisempowerment is really going totransform our country. Therefore, Ipersonally feel that this is an exellentprogramme that the Cyber PeaceFoundation have started. I congratulateCapt. Vineet Kumar for this initiativeand hope the Government of India issupporting it.”

Ms. Janice Verghese, Trainer, CyberPeace Foundation began herpresentation by focusing on howDigital Shakti was launched to empowerwomen in India. “Women are at thecentre of everything. They emanatepower. The Internet is a very usefulresource to empower Women. At thesame time it is putting Women atconsiderable risk and threat. Womencan make a difference by being onlineand at the same time be safe.”

Digital Literacy

Ms. Janice Verghese said that digitalliteracy meant knowing how to use theInternet, knowing how to use technologyto make the most of it and knowing howto safeguard oneself while using theseresources. She said that we forget abouthow tools like Whatsapp can bedangerous. “We should know thatsharing fake messages is a crime. Oftenwe receive messages which claim thatsomething bad will happen to us if we donot forward them to fifteen people.Messages like: ‘Forward this to fifteenpeople otherwise something bad willhappen to your mother’ can affect ourfeelings. Unless we really believe inthese things, not forwarding suchmessages does not actually harmanybody. However, there are certain


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Capt. Vineet Kumar

messages like fake news items whichhave actually caused riots in thecountry.”

She added that during the recent floodsin the states of Nagaland, Odisha andKerala, one extremely heart-warmingand touching video showing a mansaving a dog was being widelycirculated. This video had floated since2011. “Every time there is a flood, thesame video showing the same mansaving the same dog was beingforwarded to everyone. Technically, itwas not fake. However, the date andthe time stamp associated with itwere fake. Although, this message toodid not cause any harm, others may.”

Safety and Privacy ToolsSpeaking on safety and privacy tools,Ms. Janice Verghese said that therewere many tools available online likethe feature on Facebook called a ProfilePicture Guard. “A small shield appearson the profile picture once the ProfilePicture Guard is activated. The benefitof activating it is to prevent anybody,even a friend, from taking a screenshotor saving one’s profile photo. The only

way around it would be to take a photo ofthe screen from a secondary device.Online platforms try to keep users safeonline and it is just a matter of howeffectively these features are used andmade the most of, for ensuring safety.”

On responsible online behavior, shecommented that we must know what isallowed and what is not, so as to know ifsomething wrong was happening. “Often,we do not know that a certain thing is acrime. In such cases, when somethingnegative happens to people they areunable to address it as a crime. Womenoften get used to being victims of suchactions. They get used to being catcalledor to being subject to bad-touches thencasually dismiss, presuming they areunintentional. We have normalisedunacceptable or improper behaviour andcrime to an extent that we do not even callit a crime anymore. We should therefore,focus on what is our responsibility andwhat is responsible behaviour towardsus.”

Cyber Crime Protection MeasuresOn cyber crime and protection measures,she stated that we need to focus on what

constitutes a cyber crime and what arethe kinds of crimes that we may becommitting. “Everybody believes theyare essentially decent people. We thinkthat we have never committed a crime.However, there is a possibility that anactual crime has been committed byus. For example, downloading a songis essentially a crime because it isdone without the artist’s permission,thereby making it a copyright violation.Therefore, we should be aware of howwe may commit a crime unknowingly.Lastly, and most importantly, we shouldknow how to keep ourselves safe andhow to report crime. Often, womenhesitate to appeal to the authorities.Even friends might end up questioningher character. The woman feels trappedhaving no one to talk to when somethingbad has happened. How to report crimewill be a part of the agenda.”

Ms. Verghese said that people couldnot make any sense of the Internetwhen it first came into existence.“Today, the Internet is no longer anamusing concept. It is an importantpart of our lives. We are working theentire time using our phones and arealways online. Even while travelling,we are busy typing mails and gettingapprovals. Therefore, just l ikeelectricity, the Internet has also comea long way. From being scary andstrange, it has become our best friend.In this friendly relationship, wesometimes forget the risks associatedwith it. It can get scary when we are putthrough immense trouble from whichwe may not recover. We need toaddress the pros and cons and how wecan make the best of it.”

Since Janice Verghese’s presentationwas about digital literacy and onlinesafety, she talked in more detail abouthow digitisation affects our lives. Alexa,Echo and Siri, based on artificialintelligence were the examples. Wecould conduct full conversations withthese tools. Another example she gavewas the Fitbit, which is the modern


digital literacy

Ms. Janice Verghese

version of a simple wristwatch.Conventional watches only told time.A Fitbit can tell us how many steps wehave climbed, how much water wehave consumed and how many calorieswe have burnt.

She added that “the modern defibrillatoris another device which digitalisationhas helped to develop. The moderndefibrillator is fast and very effective insaving people’s lives. It consists oftwo components. The first is a wirelesspatch which is similar to a blackheadremoving patch. It is stuck on to thepatient’s chest. The second componentis a handheld device used by a nurse,doctor or a caretaker. The moment apatient starts losing his heartbeat, anotification comes up in the device andthe caretaker is able to identify whichpatient needs revival. With a press ofa button on the remote handheld device,shocks are administered to the patientimmediately and his life can be saved.This is better than the conventionaldefibrillator as it is faster and moreeffective.”

However, she added that there is atwist in the situation. “This device usesthe Internet for the remote activationfunction. It is highly possible for acriminal to walk in, hack into the wirelesscomputer network and remotely accessthese devices. This has alreadyhappened in a few cases in the US andpeople have been killed using thesedevices. It is called cyber murder. Weneed to be very cautious and safe andshould evaluate the pros and cons ofdigitalisation.”

Usage of Internet

On the percentage of the people usingthe Internet, Ms. Janice Verghese saidthat the percentage of people in acountry using the Internet is calledInternet Penetration Rate. “It is overninety per cent in the UK, eighty-sevenper cent in the US and around seventyper cent in China. If every country inthe world is ranked on the basis of the

Internet-using population, from highest tolowest, India stands at number two, withan Internet Penetration Rate of thirty-fourper cent. The second rank with onlythirty-four per cent Internet users: thesetwo numbers seem illogical andcontradictory. However, it does makesense because of India’s population. Outof the total world population of 7.5 billion,a huge chunk constituting 1.3 billion is inIndia.

“Ninety per cent of Indians live in ruralareas. The major chunk of the Internetusers live in urban areas.If we select asample of a hundred Internet users inIndia, seventy per cent will be males andonly thirty per cent females. This is againa huge problem. Forget about equality, ashuman beings surviving in the 21stcentury,women do need the Internet. Because ofthe skewed sex ratio, it is impossible toattain a fifty-fifty ratio in the numbers ofInternet users. However, it can be betterthan thirty-seventy.”

“The first is that women are not empoweredenough as they are not given equalopportunities or any privileged treatment.”

Social Media

“There is extensive information that socialmedia platforms pick up from users. Thefirst is the user’s name as one’s realname is usually shared. Secondly, sharingphotographs is an important part of socialmedia interactions. For many, getting‘Likes’ seems to be the whole point of anonline presence. Social media platformsalso have photos from the past. Thememories from this day, that year maystir many emotions and feelings. Thirdly,the interests of the users are being studied.The pages that we like are actually beingtaken into consideration. Further,information about employment,education, hometown, current city andrelationship status is also provided.

“The problem is that all this informationbeing made public can and will be usedagainst us. When something is searchedfor on Google, thousands of pages aremade available in the form of search

results. All that data obtained throughGoogle is only five per cent of theavailable information on the Internet.The remaining ninety-five per cent isbeyond access. It is the deep Web orthe dark Web where all the illegalactivities of the world are rampant. Drugscan be bought and sold. All kinds oftrafficking takes place as nobody canbe traced. There are no records ofwhatever is happening. It is like theBermuda Triangle of the Internet.Everything happens there and no oneknows how. We can do anything wewish to do on social media. However,we should also be aware of the risksand take measures accordingly.”

“Another thing shared online is the dateof birth. We like to tell the world whenour birthday is. People wish us a happybirthday and send us photos of cakes.We receive many calls. However, theproblem here is that sharing this date ofbirth can make it very easy for anotherperson to obtain our PAN card details.Till very recently, on the website of theIncome Tax department, the onlyinformation that was required to be inputis a surname and a date of birth, toobtain the PAN card details of a person.We already have this information aboutanybody we befriend on Facebook.Recently, a few changes have beenmade on the website and factors likethe father’s name, mobile number, etc.are also needed as inputs. It is possibleto use a person’s PAN card to obtain aduplicate of his SIM card. This hasalready happened to somebody and itdoes not take more than two hours. Anexpert can do it in less than an hour.This can happen to anybody and allsensitive information may get stolen.Therefore, we should be very carefulwhile sharing information online. Often,adolescents share too much informationonline.”

“Sharing one’s location can also proveto be very risky. There was a case of ajudge who, while going to Singapore,had put up a post saying: ‘Going toSingapore. Missing my beautiful wife’,


digital literacy

along with an attractive photograph,which was appreciated by many. Whenhe came back, he found that his wifehad been killed and the house had beenburgled. Somewhere, the judge was atfault. Although there is nothing wrong insharing such details but it is importantto consider what information is beingshared with whom. There was no needfor him to tell the entire world that hewas going to Singapore. In anothercase, a girl left for Goa, leaving hergrandparents at home. Her online postread: ‘Missing my grandparents. Wishthey were here with me to enjoy thebeach sand.’ The old couple was killedand the house was looted.”

She added that social media looks veryinnocent. “Everything that seemsinnocent may not be so. The peopleone deals with can be potential criminals.We should not be deceived just becausesomeone has a pretty face. Youngerchildren have a habit of adding on as afriend, anybody who is good looking.They get fooled by people who usephotos of celebrities and impersonatethem. They do not realise that thecelebrity is not going to be sitting idlejust for his fans and that it is notpossible for him to directly send afriend a request. Such accounts areoften used to trap children and manynegative things can happen as a result.It is only our actions that can put us indanger or keep us safe. Therefore, weshould be very mindful of what we doonline.”

Smart PhonesMs. Verghese said that on the subjectof our phones, which are now calledsmart phones, it is generally agreedthat the phone is very smart as it knowsa lot about its owner and actually evenmore than the owner knows himself.She added that if two Instagramaccounts are opened on two differentphones, the advertisements displayedon each are different, as they arespecifically targeted. “A person fond ofshoes is shown ads from shoe sellers,

and another who takes an interest inplants, receives ads for plants. That ishow smart these devices and platformsare. They learn the user’s preferencesand interests and give them targeted adsand posts so that his experience getsbetter.”

She said that the problem here is that inthe process of learning the user’sbehaviour, the phone gathers considerableinformation about the user. Thisinformation should not be misused.”Weconsider the example of Google Maps,which are tools used frequently by mostof us. There are three dashes displayedon the left side of the Google Maps page,which are clicked on to open the settings.The setting called Your Timeline has arecord of every single place we havebeen to, from the time our phone wasbought. Google Maps have all theinformation about the places we visited,how we reached there and for how long westayed in each place. It is very preciseand is able to pinpoint to an exact location,even inside a room. This feature isbeneficial. A person leaving home forwork may go to a café instead and ifsomething goes wrong and he is missing,the timeline can be used to find hislocation, assuming that his phone is withhim. However, not all aspects of thisfeature are beneficial. If a stranger getshold of our phone, he can use the timelineinformation to figure out the placesfrequently visited by us, the location ofour office, the persons we frequentlymeet and for how long. All this informationis sensitive and keeping it safe is up tous. If anybody is interested in turning itoff, merely turning the location button offfrom the drop down menu at the top is notgoing to help. To turn it off, the locationhistory has to be turned off in the settingstab, to stop the phone from recording allmovements.”

PasswordsMs. Verghese said that “Most of thisinformation is sensitive, for example,passwords, which can compromise ouronline presence or accounts. We should

never use the same password formultiple accounts. Everybody hasaround ten to fifteen online accounts, ifwe take into consideration all platformslike Gmail, Facebook, Instagram,Twitter, Uber, Ola, IRCTC, Roadways,Zomato, online shopping websites, etc.As it is not easy to remember, thesame password is generally used bymost people for all their accounts. Thisis a major problem because if thepassword of even one account isguessed by somebody, he gets accessto all the accounts.”

She added that a criminal can easilyguess a password if any name or anyword that has a meaning is used. “Acriminal uses two concepts. The first issocial engineering, which is aboutcollecting all the data that has beenmade public. Applying socialengineering to a social media websitecan enable a person to obtain all theinformation about the account holder-the name, mother’s name, father’sname, birthday, anniversary, pet’sname, vehicle number, etc. The secondis dictionary attack. The criminal makesall possible combinations using keywords obtained through socialengineering.”

The third tip she said was thatpasswords should not be shared.“Nobody, be it one’s mother, brother orspouse, should know one’s password.The password is the soul of one’saccount. If it is shared, the account iscompromised. Even at the epitome oflove or friendship, passwords shouldnot be shared. This should be suggestedto everybody we know. Also, we shouldkeep changing the passwords to ensurethat even if a person gets access, he isnot able to misuse the account.”

Selling of Used Mobile Phones

Before selling a used mobile phone, allthe data should be deleted, cautionedMs. Janice Verghese. “Factory Resetis one feature that is commonly used.However Factory Reset is nothing but


digital literacy

an eyewash. It is utter nonsense anddoes not delete anything from thephone. The memory in a device isdivided into sectors. A pointer indicatestowards free space. It acts as a guideto the phone and points to the locationwhere any new incoming data may besaved. Pressing the Factory Resetbutton merely makes the pointer go toa location where nothing is saved,giving the illusion that the phone doesnot have any data. The phone is notempty, it is only the pointer pointing atan empty sector. The data remainssaved on the phone, as before. Thedata contained can be misused.Factory Reset cannot be relied on. Biterasing is a process that can be usedto clear devices. A bit is the smallestunit of memory. Implementing biterasing makes an application start fillinggarbage values into the memory of thedevice, thereby overwriting the storeddata. Overwriting is the only waydevices can be cleared. Eraser is onecompany we trust. They make biterasing applications for Android andiOS devices and software for PCs andlaptops. We should not download theEraser app from Playstore as multiplepirated copies are available there. Theoriginal copies of all apps should bedownloaded from the official websitesonly.”

Photos and Videos

Ms. Janice Verghese about photosand videos said “If a photo is sent tosomeone via gmail or any other email,how many copies do we think havebeen generated? Although only onecopy has been sent, but overall, in theentire transaction, there is one at thesender’s end, one at the server, onewith the receiver, and counting thebackups generated at the sender’send, at the cloud and at the receiver’send, along with the copy in the Sentfolder, gives seven copies at least.The issue is that even if the senderdeletes his copy and convinces thereceiver to delete his, there will always

be a trace somewhere, using which thephotograph can be recovered. Anotherproblem arises when it is something whichshould be seen by nobody but the receiver.Four copies remain untouched. How canwe delete from the server? Is it possibleto call Gmail and say: ‘Please deletesome photos I have sent’ ? Therefore, weshould be very careful about what we aresending. Although we can send whateverwe want to, as it is our right, we should becareful about all the places where copiesare being generated. This is because wecannot ever completely remove anythingfrom the Internet. Even if one copyremains, it will be traced and recovered.It can and might be misused against us.Therefore, while deleting photos/videosfrom the phone, in addition to the gallery,the sent and received folders in Whatsappshould also be cleared if the photo/videohas been sent to someone or receivedfrom somewhere. They should be deletedfrom wherever a copy has beengenerated.”

The Settings

Moving forward, very quickly, Ms. JaniceVerghese talked briefly about a fewsettings which some of us may be awareof. The first is Login Alert. It is a featureavailable on most social media and otheronline platforms. “The minute a newdevice or a new browser accesses aperson’s account, a notification is sent tohim in the form of an alert message. Thefirst benefit of such a notification is thatif a hacker is illegally accessing anaccount, we get to know about it. Secondly,the notification contains an IP address.This IP address is used to trace thelocation of the device which is used tohack into a user’s account. Say, aperson’s account is accessed with amobile phone, he gets an IP address inhis Login Alert. The minute the IP addressis tracked, the location of the mobilephone will be known, indicating that thecriminal perpetrator is somewhere nearby.Therefore, if we get a Login Alert from adevice or a person or a source which isunknown, we should save that message

by taking a screenshot or a photo. Ifsomething goes wrong, it will act as aproof that a particular IP address hasbeen accessed on an account at aparticular time. You will know where topinpoint the possible perpetrator. Wewill also know the correct directionto guide the law enforcement agenciestowards. This is a very good featurewhich is turned on in all platforms,by default. If it is not, it should beactivated.”

“The second is Two FactorAuthentication. Everybody uses it whilegoing through any financial transaction.The first factor is the unique combinationof the card number and PIN or CVV, ora combination of the user name andpassword. The second factor is theOTP received on the phone. This is toensure that the person doing thetransaction is the actual authorisedperson. However, an OTP can be easilycracked by duplicating the SIM card.Tokenisation is an upcoming conceptwhich will be launched very soon. Onewill be able to go through financialtransactions only by using the numberson the physical tokens issued by abank. If the token is lost, it will stopworking. Therefore, the threat of misuseof an OTP due to misplacement of aphone or a SIM being cloned, is going tobe beaten by banks. Whatsapp has asetting called Two Step Verification. Inorder to activate this feature a six digitPIN has to be created. We should notuse birthdates as they can be easilyguessed. The irony is that even thougha person is an expert, he could still actfoolishly. We should use a good PIN,one that is not easily guessed, so thateven if our SIM is cloned, at leastnobody can access our Whatsapp. Thatis something we can do to try keepingourselves safe. Twitter and other majorplatforms also have a Two FactorAuthentication settings available.”

Responsible Online Behaviour

According to Ms. Janice Verghese, there


digital literacy

are five elements that constituteresponsible online behaviour. “The firstis reasoned thinking which should beused before doing something or sharinginformation online. The second isempathy which should be used towardsother online users. We should behumane to each other. Hiding behind ascreen does not allow anybody tobehave in any way they please. Actionwill be taken against objectionablebehaviour and a person can be sent tojail for it. If somebody behavesinappropriately, the necessary actionshould be taken. The third is resilience.We need to stand up for ourselves andbuild up courage. The more fearful weare, the more power others get over us.We need to build resilience amongourselves and also among other womenwe know. Only if we are resilient wecan stop crime from happening. Nextis being respectful of the law andabiding by it.”

Ms. Janice Verghese stated that a fewimportant facts should be kept in mind.“Firstly, the URL of a source should bechecked. Links are of two types, thosewhere the URL starts with http andthose where it starts with https. Theletter ‘s’ in https is encased in a greenrectangle. It indicates that the websiteis secure. Such websites are verifiedand what is posted on them can by andlarge, believed to be a fact. However,nowadays, it has become very easy toobtain a secure website. Therefore,even if the URL of a link starts withhttps, one may not be able to completelytrust it. One should also check thespellings in the URL. Several fraudulentwebsites have something amiss in thespelling. For example, a fraudulentwebsite of HDFC Bank will besomething like hdfcc.com. Suchspurious websites send emails tocustomers asking them for their carddetails under some lame pretext.Spelling mistakes in the URL aredifficult to spot. A fraudulent websitelooks exactly like the original. It has

the same logo displayed and has thesame options and features available. Inmany cases, the spelling in the URL isthe only difference. There was a fraudulentFacebook website, Faceboook.com.Phishing attacks are used by fraudulentwebsites to obtain information of anaccount holder. As the website resemblesthe original one, many people end upentering their PAN card details, useridentities and passwords on them. Theusers do not have any presence of mindand therefore, a hacker does not need tomake a special effort. If a fraudulentwebsite is created, all details are willinglyshared by the user conveniently.”

“Secondly, the source should beinvestigated. Web portals of newspaperslike The Hindu can be trusted as they arewell established and have been operatingfor many years. A portal should not betrusted just because it calls itself a newsportal. The source should be checked forlegitimacy. We should check if regularposts are being made and if it is beingfollowed by a sizeable number of people.Only if it appears legitimate after research,should it be followed.

Online Stalking

“There is no law, per se, in the IT Act foronline stalking. There is a section in theIPC, however, which talks about stalkingin a general sense. Stalking is defined asany male approaching a female morethan thrice. Approaching can meanphysically approaching her, sending hera friend request online, calling her on thephone, or even using Facebook which isdone to initiate a conversation. A stalkercan be sent to jail for three years. This lawis gender-specific. It implies that a femalecannot stalk a male. Therefore, if a femalesends a man ten thousand friend requests,he cannot do anything about it. It seemsunfair because men are also harassed.We are trying to make it gender neutral.However, it is gender-specific only foradults. It is illegal to stalk a person, maleor female, who is less than eighteenyears of age.

“Online harassment is not definedanywhere. The law applicable tooutraging a woman’s modesty can beused. From lewd comments or remarks,which are not necessarily sexual canbe considered as harassment. Trollingor using objectionable nicknames canbe considered harassment. Manyfemales face this problem, not justyoung girls, but older women, as well.There is no need for anybody to toleratesuch behaviour. Action should be taken.At least once, we should all try to get aperpetrator behind bars. Sendingobjectionable images is alsoharassment. A person can be sent tojail for sending obscene, pornographicor any other objectionable images.Spamming somebody is also a form ofharassment. Therefore, even nagginga person online by sending repeatedemails should be avoided as it can beconsidered as spamming.”

It is further clarified says Ms. JaniceVerghese that one is not allowed topublish, transmit or cause transmittingsomething obscene. Publishing is theact of posting something. Transmittingis the act of clicking on the sharebutton or forwarding something. Causingto transmit is the act of getting tagged.That is the reason review tags werediscussed earlier. A punishment of fiveyears is applicable if one is tagged inany obscene or objectionable material.

Fake Profiles

“If an account of a cat or a dog iscreated, it is a fake profile. An accountof anything that is not a real person isa fake account. Creating an account ofa real person other than the self isimpersonation. It is illegal and isabsolutely not permitted. It can landone in jail. Facebook is only for humans.If a fake account is reported onFacebook, it will be removed.”

Financial Frauds

Talking about financial frauds,Mr.Purnendu Singh, Director, Strategy andOperations, Cyber Peace Foundation


digital literacy

observed that everyone uses debit andcredit cards. Essentially, cards areused in maximum three or four places.They are used online, where we addthe details of our card to buy somethingor book tickets. Physically, cards areused in primarily two or three placeslike petrol pumps, ATMs and shoppingmalls.

Mr. Singh cited an example of whathappened during the very hot summerin Delhi. A car stops at a petrol pump.The window glass is slightly loweredand the request for the petrol tank to befilled is made. Based on the fuel thecar runs on, it is filled up with petrol ordiesel. The petrol pump employeecomes to the window and says: ‘Sir,payment.’ From within that smallwindow opening, the card is thenpassed on to the man holding themachine. Nobody wants to get out ofthe car with the card in the hot summer.

“Consider a situation in which whiletaking the card the person deliberatelylets it slip from his hand. The card falls.While he is picking it up, we would notbe able to see from the seat, what hehas been doing down below. Therecould be a small device called askimmer tucked in his socks. While hebends down to pick up the card, heswipes it on the skimmer. As far as thecard owner knows, the card wasdropped, picked up from the groundand put in the machine. To enter thePIN in the machine, the window glassis lowered slightly. In ninety-ninepercent cases in India, this is the waythe PIN is entered. If the machine isheld at a certain angle, it is possible forthe petrol pump employee to see thePIN while it is being entered. The cardhas already been copied through theskimmer and now the PIN is alsoknown. This is exactly the same casewhich we read about in newspapers orhear about in news bulletins, that is, ofa person sitting in Delhi while the moneyis being withdrawn in some other statein India. Cyber thugs are the culprits.

Some time ago, a Director General ofPolice’s account was siphoned off for Rs.1.2 lakhs. There are many such cases.”

According to Mr. Singh, asking how manyof us know how to withdraw money froman ATM, seems like an idiotic question.“We think we know how to withdraw cashfrom an ATM, but in fact, we do not. Well,how do we withdraw cash from an ATM?We stop by an ATM, open the door, getinside, take out our card, put it inside themachine and pull it out. The machinegives us various options. We enter ourPIN to withdraw cash, take out a ministatement or do whatever we want. Afterthe transaction is over, we even press thered ‘Cancel’ button and exit. If this is theway everyone does it, none of us knowshow to withdraw money. That is becausethe small device called a skimmer can beput on an ATM, as well. It has the sameshape and colour and looks exactly thesame as the swiping part of an ATMmachine. It is fixed on top of the cardswiping component of the ATM machine.The mechanism inside a skimmer enablesit to copy all the information from thecard. If such a skimmer is fixed on theATM, every time a card is used, there will

be two transactions. The first is at theskimmer, where information is copied.The second is the normal transaction atthe ATM. The PIN entered is alsocaptured by the camera installed there.Lately, criminals have even startedinstalling a camera on the guard whichis fixed on top of the keypad.”

“Therefore, we have to be careful abouttwo threats. Firstly, one should standclose and watch a person to whom acard has been handed over, at a petrolpump or a retail store. It will be verydifficult to swipe the card on a hiddenskimmer if this is done. The card shouldnot be out of our sight for even amoment, especially in shopping malls.The golden rule of always covering thekey pad while entering the PIN shouldbe followed at both retail outlets andATMs. Secondly, while withdrawingmoney form an ATM, one more step isnecessary. Before swiping the card,hold the swiping part with both handsand try to pull it out. Although it soundsodd, that is what is required to bedone. Normally, the skimmer is fixedwith a double-sided adhesive tape orsome kind of glue, as the perpetrator


digital literacy

Mr. Purnendu Singh

needs to detach it later. An originalcomponent of the machine is fittedfrom inside and it will not be possible toremove it. It is only the duplicate onewhich is stuck at the top. If it comesout, one must report it to the police andthe bank and then swipe the card. Nowwe know how to properly swipe our cardat an ATM.”

Mr. Singh further said that “We mayreceive many emails or calls sayingthat the card is about to expire or thatit is not linked to the Aadhaar card. Theresponse to such calls should be: ‘I willgo to the bank and get it done myself.’Secondly, such emails should never bereplied to. The attachments in suchemails may be spyware, ransom wareor a virus. Many fake notifications fromthe fake accounts of the Income TaxDepartment are received.”

“Most people have stayed at a hotelsomewhere some time. Nowadays,ninety per cent of the hotels give thekey in the form of a card. We eitherhave to place the card in front of theknob or pass it through a slot to openthe door. There is a magnetic stripcontaining all the information. It isessential on every such card, be it acard key, ATM card or credit card. Thatinformation unlocks the door or enablesus to do transactions on a debit orcredit card. The magnetic strip is thekey and is the only thing which iscopied during skimming. The skimmercopies the information in just one swipe.It can store the information of at leasttwo hundred cards which can beconnected to a computer via a USBcable. Once connected, it can provideall the details of that particular card. Alldetails like name and date of birth canbe obtained. Using blank cards and acard writer which is easily availableonline to anyone nowadays, theinformation is transferred from thecomputer to create a new card. Criminalsmake multiple copies of the new cardand send them to multiple places. Inaddition, they are definitely smart

people. In most cases it is seen thatmessages are received on the phone forall financial transactions using a card.These messages sent by the bank informthe account holder that the account hasbeen debited with a certain amount andthe available balance is a certain amount.These messages are checked regularly.Suppose a message is received at four o’clock in the afternoon by a person, hewill wonder how it is possible that themoney has been withdrawn if he has notused his card. The matter will be reportedto the bank. A daily withdrawal limit isfixed on the card. Normally the modusoperandi of criminals is to make twotransactions, one a few minutes beforemidnight and the other a few minutesafter midnight. This enables them towithdraw twice the maximum permitteddaily amount. There is a high probabilitythat it being so late at night, the messagesreceived for these transactions will not bechecked by the account holder and noimmediate action is taken.”

The programme ended with a vote ofthanks to the speakers by Dr. SangeetaKaul, Network Manager, DELNET.


digital literacy

Some tips to alwaysremember

1. Do not open mails or click onattachments from unknown/suspicious senders.

2. Make use of different securityfeatures that are made availableby different platforms.

3. Your passwords must be unique,different for different accounts andnon-guessable. The more senselessyour password, the harder it is tocrack it.

4. Use only trusted sources todownload games/apps/music/software. Untrusted sources maycompromise your devices.

5. Keep track of the devices you useto log into your accounts. Do notforget to log off from unknownsystems.

6. Update your devices and anti-virussoftware regularly.

7. Be cautious when you add unknownpeople as friends on socialnetworking platforms. People arenot always who they claim to be.

8. Avoid sharing confidential andpersonal information over mail.

9. Whenever you wish to downloadany content online, use only trustedsources.

10. Always verify the source and thecontents of a post before sharing it.Do not fall for catchy headlines andpictures.

programmes

DELNET ProgrammesDELNET organised a number of workshops, lectures, etc. during the year 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi and in different parts of the country.

Participants at the DELNET Annual Lecture on “Transforming Human Resources in Libraries:Strategies for the Future Learning” held on January 7, 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi.


DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with K. K. Wagh Institute of EngineeringEducation & Research, Nashik on January 29, 2019. Dr. Prakash S. Bodke, Librarian,

KKWIEER, Nashik was the Local Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with Yashaswi Education Society’sInternational Institute of Management Science, Pune on February 2, 2019 at HMCT, Pune.

Dr. Pavan Sharma, Librarian, YESIIMS, Pune was the Local Coordinator.


Participants at the Symposium on “Riding the Wave: Discovering New Competenciesfor LIS Professionals” held on February 13, 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi.

Participants at the DELNET Lecture on “Use of Data Mining and Big DataManagement in Library Science: New Challenging Approaches” held on

February 18, 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi.

Participants at the Seminar on “Digital Literacy and Online Safety Programme”held on March 8, 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi.

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DELNET Workshop on “Building Management Competencies for LIS Professionals”organised in collaboration with INMANTEC, Ghaziabad held at DELNET, New Delhi

on April 13, 2019. Dr. Rajesh Kumar, Librarian, INMANTEC, Ghaziabad was theLocal Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with Medi-Caps University,Indore on July 27, 2019. Mr. Anurag Khare, Librarian, Medi-Caps University, Indore

was the Local Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop on “Developing Capacities for Reference and Research” held atMedi-Caps University, Indore on July 29, 2019. Mr. Anurag Khare, Librarian,

Medi-Caps University, Indore was the Local Coordinator.

programmes

Participants at the DELNET Annual Lecture on “The Role of Emotional Intelligence Leadershipin Library Networks in the U.S.: Change, Collaboration & Team Building” held on

October 7, 2019 at DELNET, New Delhi.

DELNET Workshop on “Developing Capacities for Reference and Research” was organised incollaboration with International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai on October 11,

2019. Dr. D. D. Mestri, LIO, IIPS, Mumbai was the Local Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with Deviprasad Goenka ManagementCollege of Media Studies, Mumbai, on October 12, 2019. Ms. Geetanjali Wani, Librarian,

DGMCMS, Mumbai was the Local Coordinator.


programmes

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with National College(Autonomous), Tiruchirappalli on November 20, 2019. Dr. T. Sureshkumar,

Librarian, NCA, Tiruchirappalli was the Local Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with Institute of ManagementStudies, Career Development and Research, Ahmednagar, on October 14, 2019.Dr. Swati Barnabas, Librarian, IMSCDR, Ahmednagar was the Local Coordinator.

DELNET Workshop was organised in collaboration with Sona College ofTechnology, Salem on November 18, 2019. Mr. N. Sreedharan, Librarian, SCT, Salem

was the Local Coordinator.

Edited and published by Dr. H. K. Kaul, for DELNET - Developing Library Network, JNU Campus, Nelson Mandela Road, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi -110070.Printed by Dr. H. K. Kaul at Kaveri Printers, Darya Ganj, Delhi-110002. Assistant Editor : Dr. Sangeeta Kaul

R. No. 59477/94 ISSN 0972-0790

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Documents

Newsletter · 2020. 8. 5. · delnet Newsletter 2 Vol. 26, Nos. 1 & 2, December 2019 the role of libraries and their growing relevance in the time of information explosion. He also