[Dspace-general] INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ACADEMIC LIBRARIES

Thu Jan 22 01:17:27 EST 2009

Delhi University Library System (DULS) has announced the International Conference on Academic Libraries (ICAL-2009) from October 5-8, 2009 and launched its websites at a special function, organised at University of Delhi, on 21-01-2009.

Hon’ble Prof. B.L. Mungekar, Member Planning Commission and Patron, ICAL-2009; Hon’ble Prof. Deepak Pental, Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi, holding the Conference Chair ICAL-2009; Hon’ble Prof. S.K. Tandon, Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Delhi and Chairman, Organising Committee, ICAL-2009; and about 200 library professionals, members of the faculty attended the function to launch the International Conference on Academic Libraries scheduled to be held from October 5 to 8, 2009 by the Delhi University Library System (DULS), University of Delhi.

Generally the conferences are announced through various means and then conducted. Launching of a conference is a rare event. But that is what the difference we would like to create between other conferences and this one. Such difference in approach provides credibility, authenticity, publicity, and way to show the hard work in developing various facets on which we desired to conduct a serious business.  

This conference is being organized in the backdrop of the perception with which the Government wanted to strengthen the higher education system in India and with excellence. The Ministry of Human Resource Development has been striving for excellence in higher education. Such expressions have been noticed in the much talked about, The Moily Committee Report which stated that, ‘ A society which excludes its significant section of its population from access to higher education, cannot be said to be providing equality of opportunity. Equally, if academic excellence gets compromised in the process of expansion, it would loose its competitive edge in the emerging knowledge society – an edge which can propel India into a position of global leadership.’ The statement in all sense is most significant in terms of equality of opportunity as well as achieving excellence in the emerging knowledge society. 

The Terms of Reference for the Knowledge Commission has also recognized this fact and stated that ‘Build excellence in the educational system to meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century and increase India’s competitive advantage in fields of knowledge’. Out of the many facets, which are in the domain of the Knowledge Commission, Library has been considered to be the key to access the knowledge. 

The two similar statements of different Commissions have a common ethos, i.e. excellence in academics. Though, we do not undermine that during the teaching and learning process the source of excellence are those who impart instructions to students i.e. teachers. But equally the source of excellence is also those who make the students understand through well organized storehouse of knowledge, i.e. libraries and their staff who put in long hours at their workplaces to build and maintain and service these knowledge storehouses. We are very sure that, to clap we need both the hands. In this context, while one hand is the esteemed teaching fraternity and other hand are the libraries. 

Government has already given the wish list to open up new universities and conduct the higher education with excellence. While, every stream of work in the establishment of the universities will be performed by various segments of people who matters, the library professionals also have to play an important role in providing the input to such universities of how best the libraries can be established in the 21st Century.

It is in this backdrop that the library fraternity, decided to have a serious deliberations involving national and international experts. The conceptual framework on which the entire conference has been built up is based on the famous report of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) in 2007 which has world over a deep impact on the future of academic libraries. I may not go into the details on the assumptions that were made by ACRL as they are part of the conception on which this conference is being organized. 
The Conference is being organized to come up with a vision for next generation academic libraries in order to meet the challenge of knowledge society, in giving the country a competitive edge in knowledge economy. The conference will provide an international platform to all stakeholders to address all issues of importance to academic libraries, discuss and debate roles that academic libraries can play in the higher education system in developed and developing countries with particular reference to India by 2020.

We are happy to inform you that keeping in view the importance of the issue that we intend to deal seriously through this conference, the Hon’ble Vice Chancellors of Jawaharlal Nehru University, Jamia Milia Islamia, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Indraprastha University also have agreed to associate themselves with this conference and be part of Vice-Chancellor’s Advisory Committee which will have the visionary role. They have also blessed the launching..  
The scope of the conference will be: knowledge sharing, ICT management, digital repository management, e-teaching, e-tutorials, stronger library-faculty relationships, stronger library-corporate relationships and user centric services.

It will be first time that the members of the corporate sector will have an opportunity to deliberate with library professionals on user-centric issues leaving aside the commercial issues and I will be contacting number of CEOs to be part of the deliberation. We intend to devote one day to discuss very difficult issues of user-vender-library relationships. We also intend to involve some of the management gurus having expertise with the concept of Change Management and tailor the same with modern library management. 

The conference will provide an opportunity to identify the strengths and gaps in the academic library system, suggest new management models, best practices, techniques and mechanisms, policies, and national and international programmes for reshaping academic libraries into next generation libraries for the higher education.
The Conference is being organized with Objectives to:
·        Identify strategies for improving library performance in the context of local factors, constraints and circumstances; 
·        Evolve new frameworks, new programmes for national and international collaboration and cooperation for pooling and sharing resources to improve information access to support education, research, and learning;
·        Evolve policies, programmes, and strategies for governmental approval and eventually their implementation for holistic development of academic  libraries in terms of tools, techniques, procedures, practices and systems for the management of library operations, services, and facilities with efficiency and effectiveness; and 
·        Identifying university library vision for 2020 and the roles they should perform in realizing this vision.
The Outcome Planned is to: 
1.      Develop a Road Map to reposition academic libraries to the centre stage of the education system in developed and developing countries with particular reference to India;
2.      Come up with a draft policy framework for consideration of the policy makers as a means to implement the proposed road map; 
3.      Identify best practices in all the spheres of academic library management, in particular digital repository management; 
4.      Prepare mid-career in-service professionals for digital library management to enable them to take on increasingly demanding leadership roles in academic libraries;
5.      Identify  new roles in the knowledge economy that academic libraries and librarians would need to play in teaching and learning process; and 
6.      Outlining programmes for academic library advocacy.
The Major Sub-Themes of the Conference are:
1.      Vision & Roles of the Future Academic Libraries
2.      Technology, Policy and Innovation 
3.      Change Management
4.       Library Vendor/ Publisher Interface
5.       Management Models and Framework, Library Services
6.      Advocacy

Utmost pain has been taken in preparing an online website (http://library.du.ac.in/ocs and http://crl.du.ac.in/ical09  first of its kind in propagating the conference, we have also worked out guidelines for peer review of the papers which will be received online and manually and hope to generate a draft report for consideration by various authorities.

On this occasion Prof. Mungekar released the conference broucher which is enclosed with this press release and Prof. Deepak Pental, Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi had launched the Online and static webside. Prof. S.K. Tandon, Pro-Vice Chancellor had addressed the occasion in the capacity of Chairman, Organsing Committee.  

For further Details please visit: 
 http://library.du.ac.in/ocs  and 
 http://crl.du.ac.in/ical09 

 Rajesh Singh 
Dy. Librarian
E-Resources & Training
Central Library
University Of Delhi
DELHI-110 007
011-27666404, 27667848
http://crl.du.ac.in/   

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