Presidential AddressDr. H Anil Kumar

Librarian, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

MANLIBNET 2013International Conference on Entrepreneurial Approaches to Librarianship

December 26-28, 2013

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

Neil Gaiman

Learning and education

• Formal methods– Classroom training– Laboratory training– On the job or apprenticeship

• Non-formal methods– Self-study and Reading– Watching, seeing and trying

• Sources– Institutes / schools / industries / employers– Libraries and laboratories– Internet

Hole in the wall

Self-Organized Learning Environments (SOLEs)

Technology Advantages

• Learn at your own pace and interest• Supplement learning in the classroom• Less dependency on formal support• Variety and wide range of choices• Explore new ways of learning

Why go beyond formal methods?• The 95 Percent Solution: School is not where most Americans learn most

of their science by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking

• Recent findings challenge the longstanding belief that the place for science knowledge acquisition is the classroom.

• International comparisons of trends in science knowledge over lifetimes suggests that much if not most science knowledge is acquired outside of school.

American Scientist: v. 98 (Nov-Dec), 2010

Trends to keep in mind…• Space is of prime importance.• Open movement is here!

– Content – Data – Technology – Education – Talent

• Technology trend - cloud and mobile would affect the interface.• Library Services – collection owning / building to collection access.• Library talent will move from so called traditional work to actually Traditional

WORK – ‘Help Discover’.• Focus on domain expertise.• Queries would be multidisciplinary.• Entrepreneurship will become extremely important in all domains of education,

especially in bschools.• Research in the context India is becoming very important and therefore IR will

become extremely useful.• In this context need for data that is India specific would increase.• Move from support to partnering roles!

THANKS

anilkumar@iimahd.ernet.in