A one-day seminar on role of librarians in the changed global scenario was organised by the Society for Documentation and Information Science (SDIS), Jamshedpur, in association with the Institution of Engineers (India), Jamshedpur, and the Jharkhand Information and library Association, Ranchi, at the conference hall of the Institution of Engineers on Monday.
The SDIS president, NG Goswami said, “Today we have come a long way. A librarian is no more only a custodian of library holdings. He or she becomes a partner of knowledge gathering exercise and a guide to knowledge centre users. They now have to deal not only with the title or the author of a document but with the contents as well as the contexts.”
Rajeev Malhotra, secretary, IEI, Jamshedpur Centre, said, “Information is power and librarians are custodian of knowledge, therefore they can mobilise financial resources to an organisation, given the facilities”.
Shiv Prakash, secretary JIlA Ranchi said, “There is a need for mobilising library professionals of Jharkhand so that their interest could be safeguarded and in this process JIlA Ranchi has been liaisoning with the Jharkhand Government.”
The chief guest of the function, Sunil Varughese, Chief Brand and Sustainability Officer, XlRI, Jamshedpur, said, “In the digital age, when information is increasingly becoming available online, there is a tendency to say that libraries and librarians are unnecessary. This is not the case. Information available online is often of dubious origin and there is still a wealth of information behind pay walls that can only be accessed by those who have paid. librarians have helped many library users who have only been using search engines for their research and come to the library perplexed because they cannot find the information they want. If anything, the internet has added to the range of services libraries provide and in turn this has also increased the variety of roles available to librarians”.