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Report: Library Value in the Developing World

Raising awareness of how the library supports teaching and research staff is key to demonstrating library value in developing countries, concludes a new report published today. The findings are the result of a six-month research study with twelve developing country institutions conducted by SAGE exploring perceptions of the value of academic libraries by teaching and research staff in developing countries.

‘Library Value in the Developing World’ reports that developing country librarians are beginning to recognize the importance of evaluating their value for research and teaching staff. Communicating the value of their role however remains a key challenge. Librarians noted that whilst they receive positive feedback about the resource collections they provide, there is limited awareness of how librarians can better support research and teaching staff beyond these traditional parameters.

Chief considerations

Outlined in the report are examples of best practice from the case study institutions, along with recommendations on how working relations between academic libraries and stakeholders could be enhanced. These include: 

• Communication
  The report highlights the value of increased engagement between individual libraries and their academic staff to help reinforce their changing role in supporting academia and in supporting training and advice. Developing research partnerships, integrated teaching, research services and literacy instruction were all considered part of the ‘reinvented’ librarian role, beyond providing access to resources. The report suggests that librarians are building an increased understanding of marketing skills, as well as developing external relationships with the scholarly community to promote advocacy for the library.

• Support from the university
  Universities can also help to build awareness of the role of the library, the report advises, by investing in the professional development of librarians in both their provision of research and teaching skills, and by enabling librarians more contact time with research and teaching staff. It also advises that the University provide internal marketing support to help raise the status and recognition of librarians and the value they add to the work of academic colleagues and senior managers.

• Collaboration with publishers
  There are also considerations for publishers. The report advises that further research be conducted to understand the ongoing needs of developing-country libraries and their work. Part of this includes the adaptation of marketing and online resources to enable greater access for those in developing countries.

Source | http://www.uk.sagepub.com/

Next Oxford dictionary too big to print?

LONDON: The Oxford English Dictionary may disappear from bookshelves as future editions may be too big to print, its publishers fear.

Only an on-line format would be practicable as the third edition is expected to be twice the size of the current version, according to its publishers. The mammoth masterpiece is facing delays because "information overload" from the internet is slowing compilers, Michael Proffitt, the OED's chief editor, said. The edition will likely be completed by 2034 and may be offered only in an on-line form because of its gargantuan size, he said.

Source | Times of India | 22 April 2014

"Print should look at digital as complementary rather than an enemy"

Digital is becoming part of the marketing blueprint of many companies, but the percentage of a marketer’s total budget going to digital is still in single digits. As per the Pitch Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2014 report, internet will grow at 9.6 per cent this year.

Print versus digital has been a hotly debated topic for long. Some publishers feel digital is overtaking print as far as editorial is concerned, but when it comes to the advertising pie, it still has a long way to go. 

Sharing his thoughts on this, Tarun Rai, CEO, WWM said, “It is not necessary that the growth of one delivery mechanism necessarily causes the demise of another medium. The reality is that the number of media that consumers are exposed to now is huge as compared to a previous time.”

According to Pradeep Dwivedi, Chief Corporate Sales & Marketing Officer, Dainik Bhaskar Group, there is a clear trend of symbiotic campaigns, where print + digital is turning out to be more effective.

Manas Mohan, Publishing Director, National Geographic Traveller India and COO, ACK Media noted, “The year 2014 will see the distribution of digitised products and will also get various forms of common platforms such as Magzter. They will develop their own apps and efforts will be on brand recall and corrections.”

He added, “I sincerely believe it is because there are two level of digitisations – one is the e-commerce perspective, where more and more people are shifting. Flipkart is adding 25 per cent of books and magazines sales through e-commerce. Internet expansion, which enables a new way of distribution, and the process of buying and selling on the internet are giving a boost to the print industry.”

Digital ad spends may still show stark single digit figures – albeit slightly improving with each passing year – but the mood among marketers is upbeat, as they eye the flourishing internet industry as an effective communication channel, both for its wide reach and the heightened level of engagement it helps build for brands.

The galloping growth of technology and the meteoric rise in the number of internet users are reshaping the marketing landscape of the country, with digital gaining a foothold where broadcast and the traditional media mix used by marketers and media planners ruled so far. Along with the obvious proponents of the digital platform – that is, the e-commerce players – most other industry verticals are also jumping on to the digital bandwagon and experimenting with what clicks for their brands.

As Sam Balsara, Chairman and MD, Madison World summed up, “Print should look at digital as complementary rather than an enemy and view themselves as content providers to digital. It won’t help them expand, but will help them retain readership.”

Source | http://www.exchange4media.com/

Libraries not a closed chapter yet in Mumbai

MUMBAI: When Sobhi Sofi and two other postgraduate students of SNDT were sent to intern at the Nehru Centre's gorgeous new library, they scarcely imagined that they would get so mesmerised by the dusty world of journals and books and the Dewy Decimal System. "Even after our internship work was over, we couldn't pull ourselves away. We ended up staying on to do our own research," says Sofi, who is doing her masters in political science.

Back in the day when people read books rather than text messages, and Wikipedia was not the Oracle, going to a library was as important— and as matter of fact— as going to church. It was the place that took you into worlds away from your world, where you could get happily lost in translation, where you made some of your best non-human friends.

It is with a view to bringing this culture back into the city that the Nehru Centre recently launched a public library, featuring more than 25,000 books, 100 journals and a rapidly-expanding documentation centre which has 1,50,000 newspaper clippings on subjects ranging from astronomy to foreign policy. "I want to create a public library culture in the city, very much like how it is in the west," says its dynamic librarian Arati Desai.

Unlike many of Mumbai's libraries and reading rooms, where heritage architecture provides ambience by default, and noisy fans encourage dozing rather than reading, the Nehru Centre library is most inviting, with air-conditioning, wi-fi and even ergonomic chairs prompting reactions from students like 'awesome'.

Not surprisingly, a woman who visits regularly and reads whatever she can lay her hands on, wrote recently in the comments book, "I wish I could live here!"

If public libraries are a component in a city's cultural index, Mumbai would not score too well. P Jayarajan, who used to head the British Council's libraries across India, says, "Libraries are absolutely essential if you want to create a knowledge-driven society. The public library system in India started in a good way, but over the years things have declined a lot, especially when you compare them with public libraries in other countries. They fail to cater to different categories of people. So, you hardly find any women or young people there."

Vispi Balaporia, honorary secretary of the Asiatic Society Library, which boasts of a formidable collection of over 100,000-plus books and other research material, says, "We are funded by the ministry of culture but, unfortunately, they keep reducing the amount and we are really left in the lurch." She recollects her own childhood where books became her best friends. "I regret that today children are getting disconnected from books - so they miss out on that special feeling that books can give you."

But where the government has failed, institutions and individuals have stepped in. In fact, despite the onslaught of malls and digital distractions, there is clearly a subterranean world of book lovers who find entertainment between the covers, judging by the number of new libraries that have sprung up across the city—open to the public and offering subsidised membership, some walk-in, some circulating libraries. Apart from the Nehru Centre library in Worli, there is a comic books library in Versova and the charming M Cubed in Bandra, which has become an active hub for book clubs and film clubs, and a godsend for mothers who are endlessly looking for ways to extricate their children from their iPads and itouches.

After learning that a prime space in Bandra had been earmarked in the development plan for a library, three mothers along with the Maharastra Mitra Mandal, a local activities group, got together and threw out an invite to people to donate books. Some two years and 13,000 books later, the library is buzzing with members of all ages. A range of membership rates goes down to almost-free for that mother with three children and free for low-income children from organizations like Akanksha. The library has made such a mark that, recently, someone from England who had no connection to it randomly heard about it and wrote a letter saying, 'I've heard about the wonderful library you have created so can I please donate my top ten favourite children's books to the library?' And the next thing, packages from Amazon were arriving at the library's doorstep.

If libraries are the hallmark of a civilized society, apparently Mumbai has some hope. As Desai of the Nehru Centre says, ""I can't wait for the day when all those ergonomically designed chairs are full."

Source | Times of India | 12 April 2014