Preparing LIS Professionals for Leadership

In the Changing scenario of Information industry and tremendous impact of multi-disciplinary disciplines, Library and Information Science has emerged as a multi-disciplinary subject with a fusion of educational technology, psychology, management, and information technology and computer science. The traditional roles of the library and information centres are no longer adequate to support the changed environment. It is seen in an academic and research environment particularly state universities and colleges; library leadership is lacking results an unhealthy environment that becomes an obstacle for development of an institution or library to achieve the desired goals. Hence, a new kind of leadership with new sets of skills and orientations is needed throughout the institution. This is not only applicable to library profession but also to every sector, particularly whether these leaders are chief information officers, Information technology officers, University librarians or college librarians with responsibility for managing an institution’s digital resources and information technology. Hawkins and Marcum (2002) states that the information resource and technology leader today needs to understand that his or her role is no longer that of a specialist but rather that of a generalist, acting and participating as a critical partner in the central administration of the college or the university. To do this, the individuals must have at least rudimentary knowledge of things such as grants and contract administration, endowment spending policies, intercollegiate athletics, financial aid and tuition discounting, and myriad other facets of the institution as a whole. Since all of these issues present problems and challenges, it is imperative that the senior administrative team in the institution be able to look at all of the needs, weigh the tradeoffs, and make informed decisions. This mitigates against the notion of advocating solely for the needs of the “stovepipe” that a given individual may officially represent. The objective must be to find an optimal solution for the institution, not to maximize the advantage for a given unit or set of units. He further reiterates that strategies seem to be increasingly important for effective leadership within the broad scope of managing information resources and technology are articulate a vision, aim to make a difference, share and accept responsibility, understand yourself, focus on multiple constituencies and take risks. Library is a service oriented organization and service to the humanity has been the motto of librarianship to enrich and enlighten the society with nascent information. This is on par with other service sectors like medicine, wherein the treatment of society is done using information as a medicine. Libraries are social agencies and they exist to serve specific needs in our society. Today’s librarians will work in a broad spectrum of libraries and information centers, and must be able to understand and interpret an increasingly complex information environment; they must be able to collaborate effectively with other information professionals; they must be able to articulate the value of the knowledge and skills of librarianship in a rapidly changing information environment; and they must be competent managers capable of innovation, efficiency, and leadership as they meet the demands of their clientele. Krishan Gopal (2006) emphasizes the need for effective leadership and the identification of an important component of such a statement of leadership competencies in the societal, organizational, and competitive changes affecting academic libraries. Leadership should be legitimately exercised at multiple levels and by staff throughout the organization at all levels of library hierarchy. This activity cannot rest solely with one individual. It is desirable that a variety of people in different situations exercise leadership regarding their departmental goals as well as broader mission and goals of the library professionals to demonstrate leadership “regardless of their positions. Although the practice of shared leadership is not new in libraries, it has to occur only informally because there are always individuals who are willing to exert leadership within and beyond their specific position assignment. The leader who can take role of a facilitator blends his or her role of visionary decisive leader with that of listening and empowering leader. As a facilitative leader he or she involves followers as much as possible in creating the group’s vision and purpose, carrying out the vision and purpose, and building a productive and cohesive team. Facilitation can be seen as a leadership approach (Rees, 1998). Distributed leadership also means a departure from staff expecting that all decisions rest with the administrative staff to expectations that they will share in and accept responsibility for the directions and results of specific goals and the over all mission of the library. It might be helpful to consider shared leadership in relation to the concept of participatory management. Participatory management is based on the view that management responsibilities could be shared that is how organization implements what is envisioned for the future through planning, allocation of resources and policy development could and should involve staff than those in library management positions. In contrast shared leadership suggests that multiple people have value to contribute is shaping what the library will become by identifying innovative and imaginative services, building and maintaining sound relationship on campus, and taking personal responsibility for the overall mission and vision of the library

Job Satisfaction of Library Professionals in Maharashtra State, India Vs ASHA Job Satisfaction Scale: An Evaluative Study

ABSTRAC

Towards Quality Culture in the Digital Environ: Management and Optimization of Services in Research Libraries of India

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has been established in India for ensuring quality and excellence in higher education and has developed a set of objective indicators for the library, as it is the fulcrum of support for the community of academic and research pursuits. This resulted in a general consensus for rising demands of evaluation and accountability of academic and research libraries to develop performance evaluation and measure service quality and thereby build a culture of quality. Advancements in information and communication technology, transforming the world into the global village, contributed significant scope for development of electronic information resources and Internet resources in the library for continuous quality improvement. Library and information centers need to map the information needs of the customers into quality information services by making use of various information technology-based information retrieval tools. The quality gurus especially Parasuraman, Barry, and Zeithaml have developed the SERVQUAL to measure the quality dimension in the academic and research environment

Standards : challenges for collection development and organisation

Describes the role of standards affecting all walks of modern life as a basic foundation to ensure uniformity, reliability and excellence of a product, quality or service in order to achieve overall efficiency and economy of the nation. Collection development policy of standards has been discussed at length providing comprehensive list of secondary sources of standards and points out the role of Information Handling Service (IHS) -A solution for meting all types of standards both governmental and non- governmental standards; organisation, maintenance and control of standards to provide timely access to standards

Metamorphosis of the scientific journal: past, present and future

Describes how the scientific journal has undergone changes over a period of time from print medium to electronic form, as an innovative medium for communicating scientific literature. With the advance of science and technology, information grew and related technology emerged from long letters containing primary literature in 16th century to electronic database, online hosts etc. The electronic journal offers a faster method of disseminating information with effective retrieval efficiency and its capability to hold large amount of information in compact form. Further explores the importance of electronic journal, its growth and the key issues regarding its progress. The paper concludes with a remark on the part of librarian and information officers in handling the electronic journals weighing all the possible alternatives while keeping in view the changing user needs

Digital libraries : an overview

During the past recent years, there has been tremendous development reaming the concept of digital libraries-a knowledge base that can be stored and retrieved through on-line networks. Digital libraries are the most complex form of information systems that support digital document preservation, distributed database management, hypertext, filtering, information retrieval and selective dissemination of information. This has really overcome geographical barrier offering wide range of academic, research and cultural resources with multimedia effects which can be accessed around the world over the distributed networks. The paper examines the concept of Digital library, the technology that has enabled its emergence & architecture of digital library system. It also highlights the digital library projects undertaken in USA, UK and India. Here the authors explored the unique feature of digital library and possible challenges ahead for library and information professionals in the digital environment

Electronic publishing : an analytical study

The ultimate objective of any information system is utilisation and exploitation of information that raise levels of education, strengthen community links and stimulate participation in decision-making for development of mankind. The information produced is disseminated by different model of publishing information. New technologies have transformed the process of publishing and distribution of information. In view of growth information, electronic publishing has become a foundation for the new information society to get the right information to the right person at the right time. The paper attempts to discuss the impact of electronic publishing on Library Information Management and radical changes in the publishing industry especially with impact of electronic media and Internet. The authors highlightened different models for electronic publishing and possible changes and complexities involved in it

Nobel Laureate Anthony J Leggett: A scientometric portrait

This paper attempts to analyse the publication productivity of Anthony J. Leggett, the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in physics. His contributions peaked in 1987, 1994, and 1998 with 10 papers each. He had 194 publications during 1964 - 2004 in domains like Superfluid 3He (65), Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (36), Dissipative Quantum Systems (24), Atomic Alkali Gases (18), and Miscellaneous (51)which were analysed for authorship pattern with his 70 collaborators. Most active collaborators with Anthony J Leggett were: A. Garg with six papers and A. O. MCaldeira, D. M. Ginsberg, D. J. Vanharlingen , F. Sols, S.Takagi and D. A. Wollman with five papers each. His productivity coefficient was 0.60 which clearly indicates that his productivity increased after 50 percentile age. The highest degree of collaboration (1) for Anthony J. Leggett was found during 1964, 1971 and 1983. Journals have been the most preferred channel of communication, where as many as 139 papers out of 194 have been published. The core journals publishing his papers were: Phys. Rev. Leu. (42), Phys. Rev. B (9), J. Low Temp. Phys. (8),Phys. Rev. A (7), Ann. Phys. (6), Foundations of physics (6), J. Phys.(5), Prog. Theor: Phys. (5), and Rev. Mod. Phys. (5).Publication density was 3.02 and publication concentration was 3.59

Physics Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle : a scientometric portrait

Wolfgang Ketterle was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics (2001) at 44 years of biological age and at 20 years of research publishing career. He had 115 publications during 1982 – 2002 in domains: Bose-Einstein Condensation (68), Laser Spectroscopy (30), and Atomic Physics (17) which were analysed for authorship pattern with his 68 collaborators. Most active researchers having number of publications with Wolfgang Ketterle were : S. Inouye (26), A. P. Chikkatur (20), M. R. Andrews (19), D. M. Stampur-Kurn (18), D. S. Durfee (17), H. J. Miesner (17), D. E. Pritchard (17), H. Walther (12), M. O. Mewes (12), D. M. Kurn (12), C. Raman (12), J. Stenger (12), J. Wolfrum (11), A. Arnold (10), N. J. van Druten (10), A. Gorlitz (10), and S. Gupta (10). His productivity coefficient was 0.78 which clearly indicates that his productivity increased after 50 percentile age. Highest collaboration coefficient (1) for Wolfgang Ketterle was found in 1983-1985, 1988, 1991-1995, and 2001. The publication concentration was 5.21% and publication density was 2.01. The core journals publishing his papers were: Phys. Rev. Lett. (30), Applied Physics-B (7), Journal of Chemical Physics (5), Nature (5), Physics Review-A (5), and Science (5). Most prolific keywords in titles were: Bose-Einstein condensate (38), Bose-Einstein condensation (15), Observation (9), Helium hydride (8), Emission spectrum, (6) Suppression (4). The ‘biobibliometrics’ term is used for a method of retrieving and visualizing biological information that uses co-occurrence of gene naming terms in Medical Sciences to generate semantic links between genes. Therefore it is suggested that ‘Scientometric Portrait’ is the appropriate phrase for the studies on scientists and ‘Informetric Portrait’ for the studies pertaining to researchers in other disciplines such as arts, humanities, and social sciences

Influence of Internet on library and information centres of National Institutes of Technology in India

184-197The Internet has been described as the gateway to a world of seemingly inexhaustible information resources and a valuable information tool to the library and information centres that supplements existing library resources. The paper attempts to understand and evaluate the use of the Internet as an information source by libraries of National Institutes of Technology in India and aims to determine the utilization of Internet in library activities and services, search methods employed, problems encountered and associated factors