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Permalink Reply by Siddhartha Shankar Ray on April 1, 2013 at 20:38

Dear Sri Siddu;

Thanks for the important insertion. With the advent of newer and newer technicalities and their permeated theoretical abundance in our country, one might think that your post of April 01 is a latest form of jester to celebrate the 1st. April & to make most of LIS Link members the proverbial APRIL FOOL!!

Well, jokes apart, it is really a matter of concern and as I personally feel, there are just two reasons

(a) People (in our country) are gradually becoming lesser and lesser interested in serious reading as it is perceived as quite tedious.job. The consensus is something like " since we have the new avenues of getting the information, why should one bother for the tedious donkey work any longer??'  and the result is obvious, people are not interested to consult books journals, reports in the libraries and

(b) The attitude of library professionals are not congenial to render service. It is worth mentioning that the readers' trend is more recent while the attitude of library personnel are comparatively older and many of us, who are senior in the profession, opted such attitude some 20-30 years. Admittedly, the phenomenal "KAAM CHOR"s are in existence since quite a long period & in every profession, If one read the MRICHHAKATTIKAMA by Shudraka, an ancient Sanskrit novel, one will see that such peoples existed in those days as well but the numbers have grown exponentially since last couple of decades and the seeds of the poison trees which were sowed by many of us has become a forest now. I can not gather enough ethical strength to accuse the new gen people as the foundation was laid down by many of us.I have personal experience of working with a senior co professional who never done a single professional or official job during my tenure of 16 years in a Central Govt. funded research institute!! s/he had a very strong political connection as I was told and two full fledged Directors and two officiating Directors were unable to compel that person to work!! Such instances encourage others to deny duties  Moreover, in government services unfortunately there is no provision to patronize a good worker AND to reproach a bad worker. As a result, good workers are being de-motivated and services are being affected.The National Library of Calcutta is no exception. I personally know a few persons who are extremely helpful and their helps are highly acknowledged by several Indian and Foreign researchers alike but the management never attempted to reward them except routine assessments presumably for the fear of Staff Unions and for absence of rules to this effect. Naturally, good workers are not being encouraged to render better service.Earlier, the library service used to be an academic endeavour. But unfortunately, this seems to be obscure at present. I am sorry to write ( and I am certain that my following comment will be extremely bitter to some of my co-professionals!) that we are more interested to get AGPs in service but least interested to do reading.and as such, many of us are incapable to guide readers. Personally speaking, I first read Foskett's subject approach to information & Fillip's book on Classification (where all the Classification schemes were discussed in a nutshell) from one of my senior professional Late Dipak Gupta who worked as a Librarian in a College in Rural Bengal and the books were his personal books. I am extremely doubtful about how many of our LIS Link members have purchased these books personally and read them all through. In those days (late 70s) the salary of College Librarians were too meager and buying those foreign books were extremely difficult but the genuine quest for knowledge prompted the person to buy those books ( and Ranganathan's Prolegomena to Librarianship) personally and read them all through!!

Regarding Public Libraries, in west Bengal as I personally know, many Public Libraries were run by donations from the members and patronization by wealthy and resourceful persons. In 1979, the Public Library bill was passed and all those privately run libraries were funded by State Govt. and a new era started. But in course of time, extreme politicalization engulfed the entire strata of government service in the state and public libraries too were no exception. The governing body members and the staff of the libraries all were among the ruling parties and naturally, the essence of service took the backseat. Even selection of books for libraries were not exempted from political grasp. The result was obvious. during my college days, I was a member of a library in a sub-divisional town in West Bengal and I was chosen & was asked to do certain jobs as a volunteer member. At that time I was closely associated with the Public Library System in suburban Bengal which is more or less applicable to India as such. Later when I studied the subject in University, I already had a background prepared within myself. I have no hesitation to confess that my experience of those days helped me lot in my professional life especially, the readers' approaches in particular. The Librarian had passed the certificate course in Library Science and was an MA but his range of knowledge about the contents of holding and contemporary issues was enviable. I presume he had actually read all the 12 thousand + books of the library irrespective of its subject!! This I am sure, is simply unimaginable for a new gen professional!!

The (pompous) proposals as reported above might have been conceived by high level intellectuals after proper deliberation; so I should not comment upon them but as a person associated with the profession for last three decades, all I can say that if the Library persons are well versed with their job and if they are earnest, imaginative, dynamic and committed, users will automatically throng to the libraries and there will be no need to reinvent them as public spaces and hoist art fares and all.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

P.S. I apologise for the inordinately lengthy reply.

 

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Permalink Reply by Siddu on April 2, 2013 at 16:27

Dear Sir,

Thank you for in-depth and threadbare analysis of the above editorial.

KAM CHORI is one aspect that definitely needs to be looked into, the other aspect is NEGLIGENCE. How otherwise will one explain  "In the past 10 years, the library has digitised only about 9000 books and, worse, damaged many of them in the process."!! The lackadaisical approach has to change for the immediate make-over/overhaul of the bad image of the library profession.

The other aspect what you raised "recognition of good work" is a very important one. At the same time what I feel will be relevant is "punishment for bad work". Unfortunately we in India have a system where, as you rightly said, unworthy or undeserving candidates get promoted dashing hopes of the deserving and sending wrong message across different cadres of staff.

I dont see even a glimmer of hope of all this changing in a very near future. God save us all!

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