Research Notes, Jan 25th

Some research notes so far, as of January 25^th:

The Documentation and Research Training Institute (DRTC) is one of the premier library and information science training institutions in the country. I paid a visit to DRTC on Friday, January 18^th, as I interviewed Dr. A.R.D. Prasad, one of the more well-respected voices in the Indian library community. He is the first person I have interviewed in relation to the Indian National Knowledge Commission’s working group on libraries.

It took nearly an hour and a half to get to the institute from my uncle’s house in Bangalore – DRTC is located in the Indian Statistical Institute (apparently for no logical reason and without “significance”…yuk, yuk) on the southwestern outskirts of the city, near the city limits and adjacent to Bangalore University. It is located on a nice and quiet campus, reminiscent of a Bangalore that existed about twenty years ago. The air was clean, the campus was wooded, and monkeys even roamed some of the interior corridors of the buildings! I was surprised to see monkeys running around here, as they are fairly scarce these days within the Bangalore city limits.

Meeting A.R.D Prasad seems to be a key encounter. He appears to be one of the more dynamic people in the Indian library community and we seem to have a lot of views in common regarding libraries, technology, and issues related to India’s development (and the dangers of hyper-consumerism currently affecting the country). Having him as someone to talk to and consult with will be good. We had a frank discussion about a lot of topics, and it appears that the state of public libraries in India is fairly poor (not a complete surprise), and levels of technology remain fairly low. Prasad is an advocate for transforming Indian libraries into “community information centres,” but how wide and deep this sentiment is within the larger Indian library community remains to be seen. He suggested some other people to speak with, including the Karnataka Public Library Director, Dr. Rajendra. It seems that the Karnataka public library system is one of the better ones in the country. What that means remains to be seen…..

I spent parts of Monday, January 21^st and Tuesday, January 22^nd at a conference focused on the conservation of India’s scientific heritage. A contact of mine, Christina Birdie, is the librarian at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. She was one of the organizers of this conference, as it brought together a group of librarians, archivists, and scientists for a discussion about Indian scientific and cultural heritage preservation. While not a topic of great interest for me, it provided a good opportunity to meet some key people in the Indian library community. The conference brought about a surprisingly decent number of contacts. I met some prominent LIS people from Chennai, and consequently my time in Chennai appears to be fixed up, with an invitation to speak to a library science class at the University of Madras and a public lecture for the Madras Library Association. I also made a key contact whom I will meet when I visit Delhi in the first part of February.

I am cautiously optimistic, but it seems that I am in the process of developing a nice group of dedicated and dynamic Indian library professionals for potential collaborative opportunities. A bulk of my contacts are lined up in Delhi and Kolkata. I am flying out of Bangalore for Delhi on Sunday, Feb 3, and have booked a room for several days at a guesthouse in south Delhi. Some time around Feb 16 I am planning to travel to Kolkata. Then after a week it’s on to Chennai, then hopefully some R&R in Pondicherry, the former French colony on the beach about a three hour drive from Chennai.

A contact at the Bangalore conference suggested I attend a library advocacy conference in Delhi taking place on March 13 and 14 at the Max Mueller Bhavan (part of the Goethe Institute). After taking a look at the conference website, it seemed to be a great fit for my research interests and one of those things that I need to do. However, a slight problem - my flight leaves Mumbai on March 10^th. So, I spent part of Friday on the phone with Continental Airlines changing my flight to leave instead from Delhi on Saturday, March 15^th. The extra fee for changing the ticket was worth the opportunity to make more potential research contacts and have an audience for some of my research ideas.

The state of public libraries in India seems to be quite poor, as I have anecdotally known and now have a better sense of. How fruitful a focus on these institutions will be for long-term research projects remains to be seen. Perhaps re-framing the issue more broadly in terms of community information systems/programs might be more fruitful, as the concept of an Indian public library remains underdeveloped.

The talk with Dr. Rajendra, the Karnataka public library director, was useful. At least based upon what he has told me about the Karnataka public library system, it looks like a good candidate for a future case study. I am particularly excited about his discussion of turning libraries into village knowledge centres. It seems that a good area to focus on would be to pursue library developments at the village and gram panchayat levels. He admits that the level of technology in Indian public libraries remains low, but he has applied for money from the national government to turn libraries in Karnataka into technology centres and may also receive funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Next week I will be taken on visits by Karnataka public library officers to both Bangalore city libraries and rural libraries close to the city. Needless to say, I am interested in seeing what transpires. Stay tuned….