Libraries in the Knowledge Society

P R GoswamiDirector,NASSDOCICSSR,New Delhi

Religion and knowledge

• Libraries owe their origin perhaps to Gutenberg who invented printing

• Gutenberg’s Bible aimed to duplicate the hands of a scribe.

• Prior to the publication of print version of the Bible , writing or knowledge was largely confined to the monasteries.

• It was deemed as an act of meditation,a gesture of prayer in visual form.

Evolution of Libraries

• Historically libraries are known as repositories of knowledge.

• They are a form of social capital.• Libraries are also considered as merit goods in

the society• Invention of printing played a dominant role

in the creation of knowledge repositories like libraries

Theology vs Science

• The print revolution ended the monopoly of church in knowledge creation.

• The spirit of Renaissance was to learn and justify actions on the basis of knowledge.

• The publication of the book by Copernicus marked the emancipation of natural science from theology

Information Society to Knowledge Society

• Knowledge is information combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection.

• Knowledge is created my individual mind drawing on individual experience.

• Advances in ICT provides us greater opportunity to develop and disseminate information and knowledge

Libraries and Knowledge creation

• Libraries promote reading which results in scholarly communication , knowledge creation and enlightenment.

• Libraries provide an economically efficient method of organising information and knowledge that are relevant to our needs.

• Academic libraries keep journal issues. They serve the purpose of an archive or a historical record of knowledge

Role of Librarians

• How do the librarians participate in the scholarly communication that take place between a reader and the library?

• Whether knowledge management practices are followed in our libraries.

• Is there a library where experiences of long serving librarians are documented for future use?

Librarians and their Research

• Too much emphasis on survey based research• They are generally one time snapshot

research and they do not add to the knowledge that the librarians need to have.

• Bibliometrics have found some ground but Bibliographical Research has been grossly neglected.

Knowledge and the National Development

• The National Knowledge Commission(NKC) was set up by the Govt of India in 2005 to guide and advise for the proper utilisation of the vast knowledge base of the country.

• The NKC also decided to examine the present state of library sector in the country.

• A Working Group on Libraries was set up for the purpose . The Group made ten major recommendations.

• As a follow up, a high level committee i e National Mission on Libraries has been set up by the Govt in May 2012

The Future

• Modern day libraries are more concerned with their digital collections

• Librarians are trying to redefine their discipline in order to describe , house and access all manners of computer stored information.

• In future libraries will be judged by their overall relevancy to the people they serve.

• Librarians need to develop domain knowledge to understand their clients