WeSchool celebrates Librarians Day to deliberate on the use of technology to connect with GenY

WeSchool celebrates Librarians’ Day to deliberate on the Best Practices to be followed to connect with GenY

Over the last decade, the librarians are experiencing a sea change in the information seeking behavior of our users and it is compelling them to transform the libraries from being just homes to thousands of well thumbed tomes, into techno-driven powerhouses of global knowledge. As the Gen Y’s expectations from a library are becoming a challenge for librarians, the librarians are expected to mould themselves to gel well with the tech savvy audience by imbibing the spirit of Dr. S.R. Ranganathan’s five laws which are very relevant even in the current overwhelming digital environment.

Keeping this objective in mind, the Learning Resource Centre at WeSchool had organized a one day event to celebrate the Librarians’ Day on Tuesday 13th August 2013 which was attended by 60 senior librarians from various organizations, institutions and industry. The objective was to share their best practices to connect with the users and readers in their libraries so that their needs are met at the right time in the right format. The deliberations took place on 7 themes such as Innovations in Marketing of Library Services, Library as a Social Space, Capacity Building to Meet Customer needs, Library Collaboration, Intellectual Property Rights(IPR and Digital Rights Management and Collection Development.

With the presence of renowned personalities like Prof. Harsha Parekh, Ex- Professor and HOD, Dept of Library and Information Science S.N.D.T. Women’s University, Mumbai, Mr. B.P. Prakash, Global Head, IRC, Tata Consultancy Services, Dr. S. Venkatadesan, Director, LRC, ISB, Hyderabad, Dr. Medha Joshi , HOD, LIS, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, Mr. M. K. Chettiar, CEO, Bharat Book Bureau, Prof. Vijayan Pankajakshan, Dean, HR, Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research and Mr. N.V. Sathyanarayana, Chairman and MD, Informatics (India) Ltd, the event was a reflection of the imminent evolution of libraries to technologically advanced knowledge centres. Prof Dr Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool said in his keynote address, “We are really happy to be able to celebrate the spirit of librarianship. The main aim behind this day was to discuss the need to convert libraries into futuristic knowledge centres, with the ability to add value to the education system through relevant TLP’s. Our endeavour through the event is to bring to light the best practices implemented by libraries and how to innovatively promote them as supreme centers of idealization and knowledge”. Mr. Giridhar Kunkur, Librarian at WeSchool said, “As an outcome of this event, based on the deliberations and inputs provided by the well known librarians, WeSchool is preparing a list of the best practices that could be adopted by the libraries in order to improve the performances by increasing the footfalls and use of resources in this overwhelming digital environment.”