Information Technology is growing fast and there is every need to train the library professionals to cull out the best knowledge and pass it on to the end users, H.K. Kaul, Director, Developing Library Network (DELNET) said.
Addressing presspersons, he said library professionals should be trained and the purpose of the National Convention on Knowledge, Library and Information Networking (NACLIN) was to remove the barriers between knowledge and users of knowledge.
In this connection, Former President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, will inaugurate a national convention and an exhibition and release a souvenir on Tuesday, December 9 at Ananda Convention Centre here.
Information and knowledge technologies keep evolving and are becoming more sophisticated day by day and library professionals need to adopt them, digitise the existing collections and have access to quality resources which are scattered in different libraries, archives and knowledge centres across the globe for providing better services to their users.
Mr. Kaul said that a vast gulf existed between the new technologies that are emerging in the best IT centres in the world and most of the libraries in the country which do not use the technologies. NACLIN seeks to bring the two together through lectures and workshops for the library professionals by the IT and Library experts.
DELNET was established in 1992 and has as many as 5,000 members.
“Our plan is to ensure that the barriers are diminished. We are now working towards developing the knowledge society and DELNET is giving a helping hand,” he said.
The knowledge society will provide access to individuals. He said that around 600 public libraries in the country would be developed into model libraries under a scheme of the National Mission on Libraries.
Dr. Pierre Grard, Director, French Institute of Pondicherry said that there should be free access to scientific information.
“We are pushing as much as possible the links between the scientific publications and libraries,” he said.
About 350 delegates and experts from India, France, U.S. and Australia would take part in the three-day convention. The theme of the convention, hosted by DELNET and the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) is ‘From Building Collections to Making Connections: Transforming Libraries in the Knowledge Era.’
