Libraries : A place of unending discovery

SOME OF us think of libraries as dusty, musty places filled with old books no one wants to read and people who for some strange reason love to rummage through the shelves or lose themselves behind piles of faded bound volumes. But for many others, libraries are places of unending discovery, where a chance find can lead to hours of fulfilling reading. In reality, libraries are real storehouses of knowledge. Predictions that the printed word would become obsolete, and that books as we know them would cease soon after the beginning of the new century may have worried young people fascinated by books and libraries. But we can see clearly that the publishing industry is far from dead, and libraries are still very much a part of academic and cultural life the world over.

True, the face of the modern library is undergoing change, but at its core it remains the same storehouse of organised knowledge that it has always been. Library science has taken on the avatar of an information science, a discipline that brings together the craft of cataloguing information and the art of imagining connections that can lead to new knowledge. In India, the relatively low rate of literacy and the position of academic life in general have relegated the librarian to the background, but in many developed countries, library science is considered one of the top ten career fields. As India becomes a more information conscious society, people who understand how to organise and access bodies of knowledge will most definitely be valued.

Today's libraries house much more than books — they include computer-based media such as CD-ROMs and online databases, audio-visual media such as tapes, films and video/laser discs, microfilm and microfiche. Today's librarians, therefore, must be able to work with a wide range of media and formats, and understand how people use information for research, education, or entertainment. They need to be techno-savvy but also understand where to go for antiquated and out-of-print volumes that some researchers might need.

A librarian's work involves identifying material, acquiring and cataloguing it, and helping people retrieve what they need. They need to keep up with the latest publications in a wide range of fields, and make decisions about what to include in their own collections, within a given budget — or where to find materials that they do not have. In addition to organising the collection, the librarian may also help users retrieve material, and sometimes put together bibliographies and reference lists for researchers. Some librarians specialise in organising information for online databases, designing access and retrieval systems that make it possible for users to search large bodies of information easily and efficiently. Others focus on documentation, an allied field that is becoming increasingly important in today's knowledge society. Yet others become archivists, helping store valuable information media such as scrolls, paintings and ancient manuscripts. A librarian is therefore not just a back-office person who is lost among the bookshelves, but someone who interacts with users and helps them in their search for knowledge.

In India, most librarians begin their career after a degree in library science. While a few institutions offer short-term diploma courses, the best way to enter the field is to obtain a bachelor's degree in library science, after a basic degree in any discipline. This is generally a one or two-year course, which can be followed by a master's. Increasingly, library science degrees also include information science, as librarians are seen less as administrators of books and more as "information architects". Information architecture is an emerging field that explores ways that content can be grouped (organisation), how to refer to the content groups (labelling), and how to move between the groups (navigation). As we move from storing information in books, to creating electronic libraries, which are multi-directional and use multi-media, information architects have an important responsibility to organise this "mess" of data in ways that users can access quickly and easily.

The "careerscape" of library science is therefore quite varied, and the nature of work can change according to the nature of the institution that one works with. A school librarian, for instance, has quite a different task from a librarian at the State Archives or the Museum of Natural History, who again has a job very different from a person who manages the database of CNN Online or a Film and Television Institute. If you are among those who finds the organisation and storage of information fascinating, and have no trouble living among piles and piles of books, this may be a field to seriously consider.