‘Technology not a threat to librarians’

Is the all-pervasiveness of technology a threat to public libraries? Though the internet penetration numbers in India would suggest that there isn’t reason to panic yet, librarians working at public libraries across the State feel they must do more to keep themselves and their professions relevant.

Many of them, who spoke with The Hindu on the sidelines of the sixth national seminar on “Save Libraries and Librarianship” organised by the Karnataka State Libraries Association, said that authorities must do more to step up on technology to keep libraries relevant and useful to the public at large. Some felt that even if funds are allocated for embracing digital technologies, or procuring digital licenses, it wouldn’t work without actually training librarians.

No threat

Speaking at the inaugural of the day-long seminar, M.V. Satyanarayana, CMD of Informatics India, said that libraries are an evolving organism and stake-holders must not view technology as a threat. He said that currently most big digital libraries are created and owned by publishers. “But worldwide, huge public libraries are also being digitised.” “There is a change in medium, of course. But I don’t think there is a threat to librarians. The foundation of librarianship is strong, and the fundamentals are irrespective of the medium in which the knowledge is being made available,” he said. M.M. Badni, director of the department of public libraries, said that while funding is an issue, the library cess collected should be utilised effectively.

The former Chief Additional Secretary Chiranjeev Singh believes that librarians will not be deserted, but that simply their roles will change.

“To keep up with that, there is a need for the state to give IT training to librarians and equip them, and the public libraries, with the latest. If you look at developed countries like the US or Germany, the public library system has only expanded and become all the more stronger and relevant.”

Upgrade technology

Rajendra Babu, general secretary of the association, said that there is a need to upscale technologies at libraries.

“Librarians need to be trained in order to be able to offer members much more than they can get online. Public libraries across the State are doing well, in smaller centres some are offering IAS coaching also. Such diversification is keeping these libraries relevant.”

The association gave awarded five people for their contributions to libraries on the occasion. They were S.L. Sangam, visiting professor, Indian Statistical Institute; Satish Kumar Hosamani, deputy director, Department of Public Libraries; Ramaraj Urs, university librarian RGUHS; M. Anke Gowda and Vishala B.L., selection grade librarians at the Mangalore University.

Link: http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/technology-not-a-threat-to-librarians/article5361452.ece

The Evolution of e-publishing: Why India has lagged behind in adapting eBooks

Despite its success the world over, India is yet to adapt to eBooks. Gargi Gupta dives into the narrow pool of e-publishing in the country to find out why it comes up short.

Rasana Atreya was an IT professional...and then she wrote a novel. It was good, too, for the manuscript made it to the shortlist of the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize for best unpublished novel by a writer unrepresented by a literary agent. Soon, a publisher offered a contract, but Atreya decided to do something adventurous — self-publish her book, using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service. Nearly a year after its publication, her eBook Tell A Thousand Lies gets around 1,000 downloads a month.

Of these, only a few are from India. “Mostly it is from the UK, US and, amazingly, Mexico, from where I get a lot of fan mail telling me that my book about two sisters in a small south-Indian village could have been set in their country,” says Atreya. With 70% royalties coming her way (print publishers pay their authors a fraction of this), Atreya today makes more money each month from the sales of her book than the entire advance that the print publisher had offered her. No wonder then that Atreya has resigned from her job to become a full-time writer and says her decision to self-publish was one of the best things she’s done.

Atreya’s is undoubtedly a success story, but it is the only significant success in the e-publishing/ebooks space in India. For unlike in the West, where as a recent PwC report reveals, ebooks have garnered 9% of the publishing market, and will grow to 22% by 2017, eBooks in India account for a paltry 1% or less. The main barrier, says Random House India spokesperson Caroline Newbury, is the lack of awareness in India about ebooks, how to download them and the ereader devices available. “But this is changing rapidly,” she says. If eBook sales are higher in the US or UK, Newbury feels it is because these places have had dedicated e-reading devices and eBooks for much longer.

So how close is India to this inflection point from where the local market for eBooks can be expected to really take off? Around 18-24 months, feels Santanu Chowdhury, CEO of Swiftboox, a store that specialises in ebooks in Indian regional languages. VK Karthika, publisher and chief editor, HarperCollins India, agrees: “When eBooks first started to come in, I had thought they would take 10 years to reach India; then last year, when we started working on our ebooks programme, I thought it would be five years. Now I think it will take about two years.”

That India has a lot of potential is something everyone in publishing  agrees upon. “India is the third largest market for English books,” says Amazon India’s spokesperson. “A high propensity for reading, coupled with growth in literacy, increasing Internet penetration, Internet-enabled devices and a rapid growth of middle class population with increasing disposable income make it a very promising market.” No wonder then that everyone — publishers, stores (both online and brick-and-mortar) and manufacturers of eBook reader devices and apps — is hurrying to grab an early-mover advantage in the eBooks space.

The last 12 months or so, especially, have seen a lot of new launches and activity. Swiftboox, for example, is tying up with small and medium publishers in Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil, etc and offering to digitise their backlists using a technology that works with Indian vernacular languages. In October this year, HarperCollins launched an e-imprint, Harper21, with a series of 21 e-singles by 21 authors at a “token cost” of Rs21 each. “We decided to introduce readers with a format that was not too long or complicated to read by known authors, and could be finished while travelling on the Metro, for instance. We are not really looking at it as a revenue earner now,” says Karthika. In the last year or so, leading English-language publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House and Aleph have started to release new titles in both print and eformats.

Regional language publishers, however, still remain largely out of the ebook revolution, says Chowdhury, of Swiftboox. The market is also being flooded with ereaders and ebook apps of late — GooglePlay Books launched in India in February this year; in June, Amazon launched its Kindle range of e-readers and the Kindle Store; Flipkart, the leading books retailer, came out with its eBooks app in August; and last month, Kobo, a popular brand of ebook readers globally, unveiled its range in India. Even brick-and-mortar stores like Landmark have jumped onto the bandwagon with online ebook stores.

Why, these days, even highend smartphones come preloaded with Blio, a free-to-download ereader software! Clearly, there’re all waiting for the eBook revolution to happen.

The top shelf

Oxforddictionaries.com describes electronic publishing as “the issuing of books and other material in machine-readable form rather than on paper”.

E-publishing, short for electronic publishing, refers to work published online, on a compact disk, emailed, or provided in a format compatible with handheld electronic readers. Amazon Kindle and Kobo are two eBook readers popular amongst bibliophiles.

Source | Daily News Analysis | 25 November 2013

A LIBRARIAN’S JOB GOES BEYOND JUST ISSUING BOOKS

Books are a colossal gateway that leads you to a world full of imagination, ideas and inspiration. It is books that make you curious, wander and wonder. Imagine if you were the royal guardian of these books. Does that excite you? Well, if you love reading books, then being a librarian is a career option for you and that too a fruitful one.

Ask anyone what a librarian does, and the answer will be: The librarian issues books, ensures their return and keeps tracks of due dates. Well, that’s just one aspect of what a librarian does.

Who can take it up?

The minimum qualification required to take up a course in Library Science is graduation, that is BLIS (Bachelor of Library and Information Science).

The duration of the course is one year after which you can go on to do a Master’s degree. Being a librarian sounds easy, but it entails more than just keeping books or dusting them off. One needs to have a basic interest in books and good communication skills.

A librarian should be able to anticipate the reader’s needs. Following up on the trends relating to publishing, books, children’s reading pattern is an integral part of being a librarian.

Librarians are keepers of information. Hence, a huge bank of information will have to be maintained, organised, acquired and disseminated.

It is a slow but steady process, as you go from being a library assistant to a junior librarian to assistant librarian and eventually a director and head the library. Employment opportunities are available in foreign embassies, information centres, news agencies, universities and academic institutions, private organisations and special libraries.

Vani Mahesh, founder of Easy Lib, Bangalore, believes that you can be a librarian only if you are passionate about books. “It is something you’re going to be doing everyday,” she says. “You have to possess a natural love for books. You could be making or breaking into a child’s reading habits.”

Mahesh is of the opinion that India needs more libraries, and definitely more librarians. “Take a book shop for example.

Most of these bookshop keepers don’t even know the kinds of books they have, which is why I think we need more librarians.” The city is warming up to the idea of developing the skills of a librarian.

The Goethe Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in collaboration with Hippocampus conducted a Librarian Training Workshop in February in which teachers from over 20 schools participated.

The trainers, Eva Von Jordan and Julia Willhem, who were from the Frankfurt Public Library, Germany, taught the different aspects of librarianship.

T. Vijayalakshmi, head of the library and cultural centre, British Council believes that inspite of advancement in technologies, libraries are indispensable.

“They are powerhouses of knowledge in a format which is easily accessible to people,” she says.

“If libraries are crucial to house and disseminate knowledge, then librarians are necessary to provide the right guidance on their appropriate use. They will be able to direct a person to the right resource.”