In the age of information technology, where data is available at the fingertips of those who seek it, librarians should be tech-savvy.
The focus of the national seminar held by the Kerala Library Association (KLA) here on Friday was on information technology interfaces in libraries and information centres.
Rather than seeing technology as a threat, it must be adopted and adapted into a supporting system for information services, the speakers at the seminar said. Borrowing from Web 2.0, they have to go to Library 2.0; library services are user-centred, collaborative and participatory in nature.
“An integrated application of Web 2.0 facilities such as social networking sites, RSS, weblogs etc, leads to Knowledge Management 2.0 (KM 2.0),” said A Neelameghan, former head of the Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC), Bangalore, who was delivering the keynote address on ‘Knowledge Management 2.0 in the Inclusive Knowledge Society Environment’.
In building the future knowledge network, librarians and information professionals will also have to seek out indigenous knowledge to add to the pool, he said.
“Information professionals will have to reach out to community members to help identify, evaluate and collect the information available,” said Neelameghan.
The concept of libraries as physical spaces that people approach for acquiring knowledge is rapidly diminishing, said C A Augustine, former head, Department of Library and Information Science (DLIS), University of Kerala. “New-age libraries are cyber spaces with a two-way access to knowledge where users can add to or change the knowledge content,” he said.
The two-day seminar, which concludes on Saturday, has technical sessions with paper presentations on online resources, software applications for information management, library designing in the digital era and technology interfaces in libraries.