Role of Libraries in Transforming Society

1. ROLE OF LIBRARIES IN TRANSFORMING
SOCIETY
“સમાજના પરિવર્તનમાાં પુસ્ર્કાલયોની ભૂરમકા”
Dr Mayank Trivedi
University Librarian & Senate Member
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
Vadodara
Date : 28th March, 2022
E-mail : librarian-hml@msubaroda.ac.in
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2. ANDREW CARNEGIE
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3. RAJA RAMMOHANROY
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4. THE BARODA LIBRARY MOVEMENT
 Human life without education is
inhuman and that formal
education without the
provision for an efficient
library system is a total
waste.
 The people must rise superior to
their circumstances and realize
that more knowledge is their
need, their greatest want.
 They must be brought up to love
books, not simply attractive
bindings or pretty pictures, but
their contents.
 They must be taught to regard
books as a part of their lives.
 Libraries will not then
appear a mere luxury but a
necessity of existence.
H. H. THE MAHARAJA SAYAJIRAO GAEKWAD
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6. SOCIAL ROLE
 U.S. scientist Jesse H. Shera (1976) justifies the library as a wide part of a
social system created by people, naming libraries as social institutions for
the needs of the society.
 Because the library is a social infrastructure, changes in the environment
make a huge impact on it.
 Libraries played an extremely important role in the struggle for India’s
independence.
 Library is a temple of knowledge and that students should utilize its
resources to gain knowledge and use it to evolve as good human beings.
 Libraries could play in enabling and empowering and masses and creating
civil discourse.
 As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in
society.
 The resources and services they offer create opportunities for learning,
support literacy and education, and help shape the new ideas and
perspectives that are central to a creative and innovative society.
 Libraries as the lungs of a democracy is as relevant today as it was then at the
time of the nationalistic movement in which it had a significant role.
 It is a space, where people in the community can socialize, can share their
skills with each other and help each other.
 Even in developed economies, the role of libraries in democratizing access
to knowledge, and thereby truly creating an aware and awake citizenry, is
extremely important.
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7. LIBRARY AS CATALYST
 Information role (Dissemination)
 Repository role (Archiving)
 Education role
 Social advocacy
 The cultural center
 Preservation of Knowledge(Digitization)
 Support to Research(RDM)
 Education and the local learning center
 General and special information service
 A shelter
 Libraries transform lives.
 Libraries transform communities.
 Librarians are passionate advocates for lifelong learning.
 Libraries are a smart investment.
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8. WHY LIBRARIES
 “Libraries have an enormous asset, which is trust. People trust libraries. And
that means that they feel comfortable coming to the library and sharing their
ideas and concerns and working together with us to help solve problems.” - --------
------Richard Frieder
 Libraries as social institutions have become integral part of the society.
 As gateways to knowledge and culture, libraries play a fundamental role in
society.
 The resources and services they offer create opportunities for learning, support
literacy and education, and help shape the new ideas and perspectives that are central
to a creative and innovative society.
 An authentic record of knowledge created and accumulated by past generations.
 In a world without libraries, it would be difficult to advance research and
human knowledge or preserve the world’s cumulative knowledge and heritage
for future generations.
 Libraries are like Change agents
 Libraries are rich repositories of historically and culturally significant
collections, many of which are not available anywhere else in the world.
 Today, many works are only “born digital”.
 Without the legal means to preserve and replace works in a variety of media and formats
– including format shifting and migrating electronic content from obsolete storage formats
– many of these works will inevitably be lost to future generations of historians.
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9. DIALOGUE & DELIBERATION
 "I would recommend that a library use D&D. It
seems really useful for two situations:
 giving people the chance to talk about
challenging national issues and
 allowing people to discuss local issues or the
local “face” of a national issue.
 It’s the kind of event that local residents expect
from the library, in that it isn’t advocacy but
rather it’s an opportunity to learn and think
through an issue.”
---------------------- Jen Wilding
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10. EVERYDAY DEMOCRACY
 Idea and Tools for Community change
 Dialogue to Change process encourages diverse
groups of people to come together, engage in
inclusive and respectful dialogue, and find
common solutions to community problems.
 Everyday Democracy’s process is suited for
communities that want to build trust,
relationships, and collaboration among
residents and that want to examine issues of
institutional racism and socioeconomic and
other disparities.
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11. PARADIGM SHIFT
 Library Professionals to Information Professionals
 Traditional Libraries to Digital Libraries
 Library Co-operation to Resource Sharing
Networks/Consortium
 Collection Development to Content Development
 Conventional Education to Web-Based Education
 Print to e-only
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12. NEW ROLE
 Organising the Universe of Knowledge
 Managing online content
 Understanding the needs of library users(KYC)
 Developing Technical skills
 Evaluating users’ need
 ERAMS
 New normal
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13. LIBRARIES AND SOCIETY
 Education is the backbone for the progress of any
society.
 Libraries provide the crucial role in promoting
education, research, preserving culture, heritage
and history, personality development, ethics and
other important values.
 A society cannot flourish without proper education
and the primary requirement of the education
system is the knowledge available in the books.
 Libraries acquire books along with other reading
materials, organize them, preserve them and
disseminate the information to the users.
 In this way libraries play an important role in
development of the society
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14. OBJECTIVES -OU
 To offer everyone equal opportunities to develop their
abilities, to improve their level of education and to
retrain for a new career
 To provide an efficient and less expensive education
 To provide adult and social education in large scale
and with minimum expenditure.
 To stem the tide of admissions in formal
universities.
 To offer educational facilities to people in their own
homes and at their own jobs and at a time
convenient to the learners.
 To provide education facilities to those individuals
who look upon education as a life-long activity
 To provide an effective alternative path to wider
opportunities in education and especially in
higher education
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15. COMPARISION OU AND DE
BASIS FOR COMPARISON OPEN UNIVERSITY DISTANCE EDUCATION
Meaning Offers the policy of open
admissions, distance and
online learning programmes.
A type of learning provided by
various universities to students
who are not present in person at
the site, as the teacher.
Type It is a type of University. It is a type of education mode.
Colleges There are no affiliated colleges,
rather it comprises only study centers
and institutes.
DE is provided by both open
universities and traditional
universities. And there are many colleges
affiliated with traditional universities.
Study Centre and Exam
Centre
Students have the option to choose
their study center and exam
center.
Students cannot select their study
centre and exam centre.
Social Interaction Social interaction with teachers
and peers is present.
No social interaction.
Classes Provided on weekends, i.e. on
Saturday and Sunday.
No classes provided.
Attendance For practical courses, students are
required to complete 75% attendance
during classes.
No minimum attendance
requirement.
Library Facility Available to the students. Not available to the students.
Objective To open up learning opportunities to a
large group of people and facilitating
them to learn easily and productively.
To provide efficient and inexpensive
education at a higher level, to all the
qualified and willing persons.
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16. BAOU- STRENGTH
 People’s University of Gujarat
 7-Regional and 270+ Learner support Centre
 Highest students gross enrollment in the State
 Offering 72+ programmes and offering Certificates
to PhD courses
 Mission Statement, “Education for all”
 SDG4 : “Quality Education”
 Digital India – 6th pillar : “Information for all”
 Reach to unreached
 OER and MOOCs
 COVID-2019
 Blended teaching-learning
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17. POINTS FOR BRAIN STORMING
 Human Libraries(270+ LSC)
 Networking of Open Universities of India
 ONOS~ Consortia for OU(15 Uni)
 All the LSC(270+) of BAOU can be converted into
Community Centers
 Coffee Table Reading
 Services such as education, health, social services,
libraries, the Police, Fire and Ambulance
services all help to support the quality of life in a
community.
 Adult Education
 Life long learning
 Read India- Read-100
 MOOCs and OER by BAOU in Regional Language
 Future is DE/Open Education
 Byju Ravindran 17

18. THANK YOU…….
Together, we can!
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