Talk on the Changing Role of Libraries

On Thursday 7th January 2016, the American Centre Library organised a talk on the Changing Role of Libraries by Prof. Elizabeth Cramer, coordinator, Bibliographic Services, Appalachian State University, North Carolina. The talk was attended by eminent librarians, classifiers, cataloguers, educationists and some prominent research scholars. I represented The Indian School as Librarian.

Ms. Cramer started her session with a power point presentation. The presentation showed how libraries are changing rapidly today. Libraries are beginning to digitise books to a great extent now, thus changing the traditional character of a library which is associated only with physical books.

Libraries have much more to offer now. Libraries are no longer required to be silent places. Besides the mandatory reading space, other sections of the library can be effectively utilised by organising story sessions, theatre viewing spaces, video game corners or even a cafe.

Libraries in Ghana, Zambia, and Bolivia are deprived of funds so librarians here undertake other activities to survive. They organise activities to make the libraries more inviting places, where people not only both read and relax as well.

Like other fields, Library Science has also taken long strides in recent times. Consequently the role of the librarian has changed too and s/he is expected to assume diverse roles. So we can say that change is the need of the hour which we must adapt to.

The speaker also told us that libraries in the United States are following current trends. Hence, there is a de-emphasis on maintaining only a book collection and instead focussing on knowledge creation, technology and the community. Towards the end, there was a comparison between the libraries in the United States and those in India. We too feel the need for India to adopt some of these changing trends.

As a librarian, I realised too, that this change from paper to the e-book is an innovative idea and soon school libraries will begin to move towards it. For now, the role of school libraries lies in generating not only creativity but promoting reading as well, because reading empowers the mind and the library is the ideal place from where such an exciting journey can begin.

The workshop was an enriching one. Such sessions help not only in creating awareness about upcoming trends but guide us to incorporate these changes too.

Ms. Tarannum Athar, School Librarian