SHAMBHU BORO
TEZPUR, Oct 26 – Libraries all over the world are facing three major problems– information explosion, constant increase of price of library resources and increasing cost of library services. Hence, to find a solution to these problems, library networks have been established for cooperation and resource sharing so that individual libraries may not feel the burden of handling a vast amount of information and price escalation of library documents and services. The library network is a multi-type library cooperative, comprising members from the public, academic, special, government and corporate libraries located in the locality or region or country or anywhere in the globe.

Dr Mukesh Saikia, Librarian, Tezpur University and a leading library and information science professional of North East India has emphasised on establishment of a North East Library Network. In an interview, Dr Saikia opined that the information revolution, library budget, inflated prices of publications, increasing specialisations, new emerging subjects, high expectations of library users have forced librarians to accept the concept of library network. In India, the process of modernisation of libraries and establishment of library networks arrived on the scene quite late. “The period of 1990 is said to be the golden period of library networking in India as a number of seminars were held and many publications were published on library networks during this period. Today, besides INFLIBNET Centre, there are various State and Local Library Networks in India such as KELNET, KSULN, RAJLIBNET, ADINET, BONET, BALNET, CALIBNET, DELNET, MALIBNET etc,” Mukesh Saikia said adding there is a growing need to have a North East Library Network (NEILIBNET) with a host of large number of academic and research libraries, public libraries, libraries of the Central government as well as the State government offices and corporate organisations for better resource sharing. The idea of building a North East India Library Network (NEILIBNET) has come up on the lines of other active international, national, state and local library networks. Stressing development of the library networking in the northeastern region, he also said that the approval of the library network policy at the governmental or the ministerial level is essential for the success of the proposed North East India Library Network (NEILIBNET).

The project to establish the library network of North East India needs to become an agreed objective of all State Governments of the north- eastern India and accepted by the Ministry of Development of North East Region (DoNER) for inclusion in a revision of the North East India’s development plan. The project also needs to be accepted by all academic, research, governmental, special and public libraries.

“Furthermore, the objectives of the network need to be incorporated into an overall LIS policy for North East India,” Dr Saikia summarised the feasibility of a regional library network for NE region and described the opportunities and challenges of the proposed North East India Library Network and proposed Online Union catalogue of book which will provide information of books available in the libraries of NE India, online union catalogue of journals, online database of Statistical Data Directory of North East India, online database of regional literature of North East India, online database of knowledge repository of all organisations, database of e-books, database of theses and dissertations, online database of newspapers from North East India which contains information about the newspapers on North East India and from North East India. The database will include detailed information about news items including title, name of the editor, place of publication, e-mail address and also the web address if available.”

He also said that recently in connection with the issue, a seminar was organised in Kolkata by the Central Reference library, Government of India, Kolkata, in collaboration with the Department of Library and Information Science, Gauhati University where all concerned including all LIS professionals of North East India were urged to come forward to join hands and support this network at the earliest.

Source: The Assam Tribune, Oct. 26: http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=oct2713/state07