MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 1992 | Rs. 5.00 | _ Mass Media in Education | | € Library Automation and Modernisation Physical Education A Sports Programmes did erktA ctiviein MEDLINE ye CD ROM Minimum a for Teachers e Education University Canadian B.C. Road, Jammu REQUIRES the following staff in different wings. Professor — Computer Science M.Sc. in Physics/Mathematics/Computer Science/Electronics or (4500-7300) M.Tech. with Ph.D. in Computer Science with atleast seven years’ experience of teaching and guiding research at MCA/M.Tech/ University Level/Industry with scholarly publications to credit. Reader — Computer Science Same as above but having at least four years experience. (3700-5300) Lecturers — Computer Science M.Sc. in Physics/Mathematics/Electronics/Computer Science or (2200-4000) M.Tech. with Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Science and Applications or M.Tech. from a recognized institution having some experience of teaching at P.G. DCA Level or experience of computer industry. System Engineers (Hardware & B.E/B.Tech./MCA Computer Science/Electronics with an op Software) : (2200-4000) of three years in hardware engineering/maintenance. Deputy Registrar M.A. with M.Ed. or LLB or MBA or a P.G. Diploma with sufficient (2200-4000) experience of administration in educational institutions/organisations. Administrative Officers M.A. with M.Ed. or LLB or MBA or P.G. Diploma with experience (2000-4000) of administration. Research & Training Officers M.A./M.Sc with M.Ed. or Ph.D. and experience of educational (2200-4000) research/training and publications in scholarly journals. Publication & Advt. Officer A Post Graduate with Diploma in Printing/Mass Communication/ (2000-4000) Journalism with experience of Book publication, writing, editing, news coverage and advertisements. Extension Officer M.A/M.Sc. Rural Studies/Adult Education/Extension Education/ (2200-4000) Women Studies with field and research experience. Officer, Educational M.A. (Mass Communication) with specialization in Audio Visual Technology/Communications production/presentations with experience of producing A.V. material (2200-4000) for students etc. appTrhoeva la boofv et hea papuotihonrtimteinets s cownilcle rbnee dc.o ntractu al/temporary to start with but are likely to be continued subject to Application accompanied by a Crossed In dian Postal order/demand draft for Rs.30/- payable to the Director and complete biodata with copies of certific ates and passport size photograph may be submitted within thirty days of this publication. Dr. Arun K.Gupta . DIRECTOR UNIVERSITY MASS MEDIA IN EDUCATION NEWS K. Venkata Reddy* VOL. XXX JANUARY 6 Over the years, man has developed many techniques to communicate his No. 1 1992 message to others, but it is only the transmitting technologies underlying the Price Rs. 5.00 mass media which have made it possible for the written and spoken word, A Weekly Chronicle of Higher sound and visual images, motion and colour, emanating from a single source Education published by the to reach an infinitely large numberof possible interpreters, simultaneously Association of Indian Universities or near simultaneously. ‘The power inherent in mass communications — press, film, radio and T.V. is thus evident. Communications controlled by a single source have the IN THIS ISSUE capacity to reach out to a large many, at any place, anywhere. The instan- taneousness and flexibility of production enable the media to adapt them- Library Automation and selves to changing ideas and conditions. The audio-visual media, through Modernisation 2 the completeness of their presentation, make a profound impact emotionally Physical Education and and intellectually. Above all, their appeal is universal, for everyone can Sports Programmes in receive their messages, literate and illiterate alike. They have the power to Colleges and Universities 5 inform, to persuade, to educate and to entertain. Hence the need for and Student Activism 9 relevance of the mass media in all educational institutions in India, par- ticularly in Indian universities which are committed to the spread of distance Campus News education and open learning. Today, we have many problems — high rate of illiteracy, accelerating MEDLINE on CD ROM 14 population growth which eats into any gains that educational expansion may M. Phil. in Communication & bring, increasing pressures on admissions at all stages, explosion in Journalism 14 knowledge necessitating change and review of curricula and teaching Urdu Courses at methods, urban-rural imbalance, wastage in education, need for raising Open University 15 standards and the creation of an environment favourable to social change and capable of softening its harsher incidences. News from UGC The traditional approach to solve these problems has clearly failed us. Countrywide Classroom We failed, perhaps, because we depended too much on the traditional Programme 15 system and the traditional approach to education to meet an expansion Minimum Qualifications effort in education which did not have anything traditional about it. for Teachers 16 The adoption of the resources of modern technology and the mass media Pay Scale of PVCs 17 can accelerate education at the rate at which we need to have it, thereby enabling us to achieve our social and economic goals. Basically, the mass News from Abroad media have two roles to perform - roles which are complementary and yet essentially distinct. They can reach out to the mass audience through adult Smith Report on Canadian education and also serve the specific needs ofs pecific groups through formal University Education 18 education. Group Vs Individual Study 18 The mass media are supremely adapted to adult education. In the context of conditions obtaining in all developing countries, where illiteracy is still to be completely eradicated, where the need for modernization Book Review Zi continues to be the primary and urgent one, where access to information is Theses of the Month 23 denied or is not possible to people living in dispersed areas, the newer mass Classified Advertisements 31 media alone are the means of learning what is happening in their countries and in the world. Opinions expressed in the articles The educational function of the mass.media is certainly the more difficult are those of the contributors and do of the two functions. Learning is a process which takes place within the not necessarily reflect the policies individual learner while communication through the mass media is aimed at of the Association. (Contd. on page 13) Need for Library Automation and Modernisation Harsha Parekh* What is the need for library automation and moder- English Dictionary, McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of nisation? Why change the established ways of doing Science and Technology, Ulrich’s Periodicals Direc- things? It has been accepted that innovation, or change tory, Books in Print and a large number of directories, in the way of doing things, takes place in two different indexes and abstracts are available in this format. Ex- situations. In the first, an organisation or person recog- periments in electronic publishing (e.g. ADONIS which nises that there is a problem and seeks out a way for brings together core articles in medical sciences) are solving it. Alternatively, a new technique, developed in creating electronic periodicals. Modern libraries will an entirely different context, triggers off the recognition need to include books andj ournals in electronic format. of a problem which was hitherto latent and the techni- The work of collecting recorded information in new, que is adopted to solve this newly recognised problem. modern formats is perhaps the easiest of the changes libraries need to make. Both these situations regarding adoption of innova- tion are true in libraries. Social, economic and retrieval The techniques developed by libraries to organise factors have created problems for which solutions are information viz. cataloguing and classification have being sought through automation. Changes made in served their purpose well. However, in recent times, the administration and management of other organisations boom in specialized information has been of such have created in libraries a recognition of similar needs dimensions that statisticians have given up trying to in their own organisations. It is possible to identify five measure it with any degree of accuracy. different needs for automating libraries : so- "The quantitative growth of scientific and tech- cial,retrieval, economic, administrative and manage- nical information, far from slowing down, is ment. accelerating exponentially, i.e. the volume is The Social Need swelling by about 10% annually, due mainly to the multiplication of disciplines, their increas- The library is an institution created by society to act ingly marked specialization and interdis- as an intermediary between individuals and the store of ciplinarity" (Lefort, Rene: Forging links: the recorded knowledge. As a first step, it is required to exchange of knowledge. Unesco Sources: No. 26, collect recorded knowledge as it exists in a society — May 1991, p.12). whether it be in the form of clay tablets, papyrus rolls, magazines, books, journals, etc. Secondly, this collec- Information available about the total number of pub- tion is organised and arranged in such a way that the lications is incomplete. However, a good indication is materials are readily available for use. Finally, through provided by the increase in the number of titles of its services, the library delivers the information to in- scientific and technical journals: from 10,000 in 1900 to dividuals who need it. The methods of recording infor- 100,000 in 1990. mation and knowledge, the ways of organising them and information delivery systems have all undergone fun- The growth of documents has far outstripped the damental changes in the present day. capacity of the conventional tools of classification and cataloguing. Libraries need different methods to pro- Since this is so, libraries must adapt to the present vide access to documents. Today, computer scientists time i.e. modernise. Libraries have been attempting to in a slightly different context, have developed sophisti- keep'pace with the changes in recorded information and cated techniques of retrieval. The adoption and adap- it is not unusual to see films, audio discs and cassettes, tation of these techniques in libraries can lead to videos, etc. in the library. More recently, CD-ROMs improvements in making the collection more easily ac- have made their appearance. They are suited for exten- cessible. sive storage of texts and pictures used for reference. A number of standard library sources such as Oxford Libraries have delivered information primarily by *Deputy Librarian, S.N.D.T. Women’s University, requiring individuals to come to the library and consult or borrow materials. It is mainly a self service institution Bombay-400 020. though the value and extent of personalized services MOND NAR 61 99) | 29 JAN 1992 offered by librarians is not denied. Individuals move major limitation in relation to complex subjects. Com; themselves and go to the mountains of information. plex subjects — made up of 2 or horg on — are: Caches RIY 8 Today, developments in computer and telecommunica- represented as a chain of concepls.e.g. tions enable the movement of information more quickly, ‘The Use of Audio visual methods in teaching sc easily and cheaply than movement of people. Taking at secondary schools in Bombay’ may be represented by a subject heading or a class number which may be this opportunity, there have developed a number of interpreted as: organizations—such as news services, electronic database providers, electronic brokers, teletext, etc. Secondary schools — Science Teaching — A-V which seek to provide information. Libraries are now Methods — Bombay only, one among a number of institutions that provide While the string may bring together all materials on information content oriented services. the first component i.e. secondary education, materials The growth in the number of databanks and on the second, third or fourth concept in the string are widely scattered. In such systems, it is very difficult to electronic information brokers from about 300 in 1980 to more than 4000 in 1990 are an evidence of the change. locate references to say "Science teaching in Bombay" These services provide factual information (e.g. names, for these would be scattered under different types and addresses, statistics, etc.), bibliographic references (e.g. levels of education institutions. Searching for a topic such as use of "audio visual methods in Bombay" would indexes and abstracts) and also full text document be even more difficult for the references would be scat- delivery back up. . tered under different subjects. In asense, therefore, they can be seen as alternatives This problem can be avoided by the use of computers to libraries. An individual instead of moving to the since each element of a complex subject can be sear- library, may sit at home or office and obtain required ched. Thus, the system’s capability to access documents information from these competitors to traditional is considerably enhanced. libraries. By linking a thesaurus to a computerized bibliog- All the three basic activities performed by libraries raphic database, searches can be narrowed, widened or have changed. If libraries desire to adapt themselves to modified more easily than in manual systems. Users the changed social environment in which they function, find it easier to consult automated catalogues than tradi- they need to fundamentally change the way in which they tional card catalogues. Subject searches by patrons work. have greatly increased in libraries which have Computers are altering the flow of information, automated their catalogues. changing the way old services are performed and creat- Future developments are likely to enhance even ing totally new services. Responding to the changing world of contemporary information access is a social more the retrieval capabilities. Recent research on im- proving retrieval by providing a more meaningful man- need. Automation is a strategy necessary for adapting to this changing environment and for the very survival machine dialogue, feedback loops, and relevance ranking is likely to have considerable impact on bibliog- of the library as an institution. raphic database searching. The development of The Retrieval Need software such as hypertext which allows a search to be steered to other associative concepts may help in The need to automate libraries can be looked at from another point of view viz. the need to improve the making the retricval activity at the computer terminal closer to the retrieval process in the human mind. retrieval tools of the library. At present through the making of catalogues and the use of classification The challenge of improved retrieval — both in terms schemes, access to the stock of recorded information is of better recall and relevance — created by the over- provided through authors, titles and subjects. With whelming growth of information and the greater automation of the catalogue, it is possible to increase demands for specific information can only be met with the access points to a collection without duplication of the help of the computer. effort. Thus, in addition to the conventional searches it could be possible to search the catalogue to locate books The Economic Need published by a certain publisher after a particular date. Sometime in the 1960s, B.C. Vickery had added a Effort saved in duplicating catalogue entries could be sixth law to Dr. Ranganathan’s 5 laws of library science used to make analytic entries to books and journals thus - viz. "No library is an island". This is even more true improving access to the existing collection. today. A combination of factors such as growth in the Classification schemes and subject heading lists used number of publications, and the increase in the to provide subject access to library collections have a specificity of demands makes it frequently very difficult UNIVERSITY NEWS, MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 1992 for libraries to provide the right book at the right time ion. While the library needs to monitor and control a to the right reader from within its own collection. A large number of books and journals, there are only libr—a horwevyer large its collection — is limited in its limited items of information about each document and capacity to deliver documents. To meet this situation these are used and reused in many different ways. The libraries have developed union catalogues, resource title and author of a book, for example, are repeated in sharing schemes, inter-library loans etc. Through these the order letter, accession register, the catalogue cards, means, libraries attempt to extend their collections the shelf list, the book card and, perhaps, the binding translocally. Computerized catalogues linked through record. Automation will enable the multiple use of this telecommunications make it possible for readers and information from only one input. librarians to consult catalogues of distant libraries. Re- Similarly many library activities consist in sorting and quests for interlibrary loans or photocopies can be con- arranging the same information. The accession veyed almost immediately through electronic mail. register, the author, title and subject catalogues and the When the need is urgent and limited to a few pages, shelf list all contain, basically, the same information. electronic facsimile transfer can be used to deliver the They are all surrogates of the collection arranged dif- document.’ This development frees the library from ferently. Other outputs such as lists of new additions, dependence only on its own collection and makes acces- charges of books issued, bibliographies, lists of books sible the collections of a number of libraries. This trend sent for binding, etc. are all subsets of the same infor- towards a library without walls mation. Computers are good at using and reusing infor- "transforms the library into a switching station, mation, arranging and sorting it in different ways and where documents may be accessed through creating multiple types of outputs from it. some communication system when needed in- The administrative need for automating the transac- stead of being collected locally". (Miska, Fran- tions in the library is by itself a strong argument for cis: The future of reference II: a pradigm of computerization. academic library organization. College & Re- search Library News 50 (9) Oct 1989 p.781-790). The Management Need This trend is not a dream or luxury, but a necessity. The management of an organization requires a good As a rule in most of the libraries 80% of the demands flow of information between different departments and made on it are satisfied by only 20% of the collection. branches; so also a library. The acquisition department Sharing of the remaining collection will mean a greater would benefit from information about the books in utilization of our resources. heavy circulation, while the circulation department Documents are of course recognized as a resource, would find it useful to know about books being but information about documents is also a resource that processed. can be shared. Sharing of information about books and Information is also required by managers including jcwqOteoeuaicClviutoelsarL nilnCutooaisigm lleouil sniuca nos nafgtdbnr ,n ald eetio etemitsddwihma teepverteibrdo nnyo bg vari uetebothdlslfeoio i msubotardrgpatcearfeeecrafrsii. p,fset h isioio mrccne ma lnauae tnminacbalddieek st ii mecnsoao.gtnn no eds M yircode roregaeoraessepr pddheopa irnrsnasoa gtsedb i uetvacehcte-ne-o ihladliaiimbbbvnoprriauraaottorrui vyynr e g p m oletafearhc nfetdnd ioiivfmarinfamtgegina reeneasn pcgr—taeea ts f mntgodee r orrnofn tsu mstp ,orbs naoo itfoaeot kgntfo ih drcer i senulapagipdlb bpeaorlrnpauisnrtee yi rr.ncsf go,co.uT ir lrhmdcaeaIu b nlnobcnafueeetot ie,r uod msn aie ctnfdotio oberorer tn---oa } management information system for managers of library The Administrative Need and information centres can be met with the automation Even if we disregard the wider social, retrieval and of the regular activities. economic issues, within the library too there are factors Conclusion Tstwtetwsafiheirhehhfemmemieeei paaecnt clstl hihii idin eaefcencsrni socr ec cifresywaar eas toieas twisrp te ooookei nlrfois uofkn irtc t,ftn oiis hl tfor eoerh nc wewcte up pio nol erttaeantoahosnteio icuedidtnemthro i doveynviuiam ef ncavra o eiroetigtsre sinde e,r ,oaenc nsauehptc.twrnaarqa ooiafr eufmclridt ma aksumlottlict eriiothtnmeoiaeaie tond n,on. ,d nn,s e ipoepncefadlaLcoe u errifdrtttek yifhioaeoc becms ra uaea lalic tgnlnakirdi reileo bflonaofrny tsotag htryersehttrsyir e.o - s jptsLaouuotdfistgrd btdaeoirEIibtontanaflhgii ricee onytch.rngha a, a et arl iosu gtofuoIhtun flamesom tct e mhtewintieaeomnevh tf atiei ftit dindaeoiv e geunefssft oa iooirnnorr wmsraee jh ala eluiytiuidssctitbtst iohroa ois a ln,mfrdl:p wiaiio reeettswosrdihsce ve en iuit rtgsooodehs n one e aeet rldau hb ir terotbeioertor til awmh serorpi aivinesetetaldnereshnyud ,f et c eso nsetperoewse atmCoe n nc o mddoptmsneu poh ebnsoneutwss itissis nlcne.bidoyafe ilbs unsedltl-d.sea Library activities are particularly suited for automat- sienervviitcaebsl e.at a reasonable cost, automation seems to be ee