Innovative And Knowledge Era Of 21st Century

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

21st Century is considered as an innovative and knowledge era. Being a key player of innovative era library professional must possess various personal and professional skills to address the challenges and demands of challenging innovative era. Today library professionals need to be very dynamic with competent personal and professional skills to meet the dynamic needs. It is time to fundamentally change the way of service we LIS professionals provided as just mediators between books and the users but we are more than just mediators and providers of information. To meet the innovative and constructive challenges of innovative 21st century LIS professionals need to play very innovative and constructive role with innovative and constructive skill sets. Being century of Knowledge economy for LIS professionals 21st century has provided most responsible and challenging opportunity of leading the knowledge economy. In this study we have classified professional skills required for LIS professionals and tried to justify their role in meeting the needs of today’s innovative era with a sense of today’s market demand and every rupee spent in providing information and knowledge services to users.

Introduction

We are in ever changing competitive era where dynamic competency and skills are the moving force of every profession. As Einstein quoted we cannot solve the problems by using the same skills, efficiency, attitudes and thoughts which were created for solving some precedent problem. This view is applicable for every profession including LIS profession. LIS profession has undergone enormous changes with ever challenging needs of the today’s innovative and knowledge era. To meet the needs of the changing world LIS professionals should possess various personal and professional skills to be a part of changing world. Application ICT, strategic managerial approach and human oriented services in library profession is the need to cope up dynamic needs of the innovative user community which asks every LIS professional to be a manager, technician, a good friend, philosopher and a good human being.

Libraries in Innovative and Knowledge Era of 21st Century

Knowledge era is an era where knowledge is the source for every activity of the society. Life and economy depends on strategic accessibility of knowledge and information. With this Libraries are entering into the world to meet the needs of the people who are depending on the knowledge for their existence. The knowledge-based society places greater importance on the diffusion and use of information and knowledge, as well as its creation. In this new innovative world, libraries are indebted to focus on maintaining and enhancing their knowledge resources in order to cope up with ever challenging demands. We can attribute the libraries of innovative and knowledge era as follows:

Ever changing multidimensional needs of the users

Complex library system with multifaceted functions

Innovative and strategic services to meet the required level of competency

Organizational collaboration to address the challenge

Human oriented organization

Continuous updates and Improvements

Interactive and more dynamic

Technical platform to provide services with ICT application

LIS Profession in Innovative and Knowledge Era of 21st Century

"It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change." 

 Charles Darwin

A Profession, as an occupation, especially that one requiring extensive education in a branch of science or the liberal arts; or the body of persons engaged in such an occupation. Synonymous with `profession' are words such as vocation, employment, occupation, business, trade - all refer to the activity to which a person regularly devotes himself, especially his regular work, or means of getting a living. A professional is one who is engaged in an activity as a means of livelihood or for a gain or pertaining to or connected with a profession. Professionalism is the professional character, spirit or methods, the standard practices of a professional. The goal of librarianship is to mediate between humanity and humanity's store of recorded knowledge and information, to encourage an informed, enlightened and empowered citizenry; and to join with others in the fight for intellectual freedom and access to information. Changing needs of the knowledge era set more competitive and innovative responsibilities on LIS profession. Earlier librarian was considered to be a guardian and supplier of documents but in today’s world he placed on the top of all other profession as he is the key player of every aspect of knowledge economy. As LIS professionals are the key stake holders they need to be more dynamic and multitalented to meet the change with strategic personal and professional skills.

Challenging Role of LIS Professionals

The fundamental role of the LIS professional has not changed. Regardless of his or her specific position, nomenclature the librarian’s central role continues to be bringing information seekers and information sources together and bridging the gap between information haves and have not. This fundamental objective of librarians remains the same, whether he is working in traditional library, hybrid library or modern library. The environment, within which librarians work however, has changed dramatically. The communication pattern of research literature has changed, information seeking behaviors of the user community have changed drastically, strategic services introduced to meet the strategic needs, concept of borderless libraries emerged, various new and complex information products emerged, ICT became basic platform for every activity of library and information centre, social networking made libraries more dynamic and interactive. With all these changes with never changing fundamental motto in LIS profession librarian still a connection between information and user community, but in this changed world he need to be more efficient in personal, professional and all other skills required to meet the fundamental need of library users in changed world which is knowledge world.

Skills Required for LIS Professionals of Knowledge and Innovative Era

Today’s Knowledge Economy is being shaped by the accelerating speed of change and that the ability to adapt competitative changes has become crucial, for this strength most of the organizations are acknowledging the increasing impact of knowledge as a primary driver. Knowledge is more valuable and more powerful in today’s innovative world to meet the challenges of competition in the modern knowledge world by enhancing the quality of performance, productivity, customer services and other such activities. To meet the strategic requirement of the knowledge economy LIS professionals need get hold of multiple professional and personal skills. The basic skills required for LIS professionals can be understand by following image.

Figure-1 Skill Set for LIS Professionals of Knowledge Era

Basic Knowledge

LIS professional should have to possess strong basic knowledge of institutional goal, mission and social, cultural, economic environment, organizational structure, decision making process of the organization where he works it will help him to identify the needs of the organization. He should know the role and responsibility of library in the organization. He should possess all basic principles of LIS profession which are required for handling the intellectual asset in systematic way.

Interpersonal Skills

Knowledge and Innovative world is a whole new world of competency, and interpersonal skills are keys for success. That’s why LIS professionals who are players of this world need to possess interpersonal skills to cope up with ever changing world. The basic interpersonal works required for LIS professionals are:

Good Communication and advocacy Skill- Communication skill is an important asset to communicate effectively with organization and users of various kinds without any barrier.

Adaptability, flexibility, and eagerness for new learning, new experiences and knowledge which is the basic pillar of ever changing knowledge world

Concession – this is must for working with others to arrive at mutually acceptable/beneficial solutions

Change management – it is the capability to work effectively in the face of ambiguity, open mindedness to change and adaptation of new work habits and technology. This is really important for LIS professional as we are working with rapidly changing needs and technology.

Initiative – the capacity to identify issues and to develop and implement solutions to address those issues every LIS professionals has to take their own initiatives rather waiting to others to solve the problem

Management Skills

Management is a strategic skill to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. To meet the desired objectives every IS professionals must have various management skills. Important management Skills required for LIS professionals are:

Coordination- LIS professional should coordinate every component of organization to accomplish the objective of the organization/library.

Decision making – making well-informed decisions in a manner that will help for the positive growth of the organization. Librarian need to take various critical decisions in the way of providing dynamic and complex service to user community so he need to possess competitive decision making skills.

Problem solving – When we are working in a dynamic and challenging knowledge world possibility of problems is common where we need to have strong problem solving skills otherwise they will act bottlenecks of our service. Identifying problems, determining relevance and accuracy of related information, and using good judgment to come up with solutions is the necessary skill a librarian should possess.

Human Resource Management – Being a Human resource manager librarian should acquire various HRM skills to ensure efficiency at recruitment, training, performance evaluation and other stages.

Financial management – librarian need satisfy multiple needs of the user community with limited financial resource so he need to understand the principles of planning and budgeting and other aspects of financial management to provide effective service with limited resource in libraries

Project management – In today’s dynamic knowledge world librarian need to handle many projects through his carrier to satisfy ever changing needs of innovative user community for that he must have project management skills which will help him in planning, organizing and managing resources to successfully complete specific project objectives within a certain time frame with more effectiveness

Risk management – Today librarian taking many challenging decisions to meet the needs of user community with limited resources in that way there is a possibility of risk so he need to have risk management skill to understand the advantages and disadvantages of any action or decision taken which will help to avoid possible risks.

Leadership Qualities

The first requirement for being a leader wants to make a difference in society and to the profession. Here in the knowledge society librarian is the real leader who makes lot of changes in the society so he needs to be a more responsible leader to change the world.   Being leader librarians must have following qualities.

Try to Do the right thing always

Keep learning always to cope with change and requirements

Use your skills and interests for the betterment of the organization

Know yourself about your strengths and weaknesses so that you can use strength efficiently and improve where you are weak.

Be Volunteer and don’t wait for others to initiate.

Embrace change and adopt it for improvement

Be a mentor of your subordinates and other colleagues

Be grateful whatever task you do never under estimate any task

Be passionate and do every task with a passion not just for doing.

Maintain a positive attitude in every situation

Learn how to motivate people effectively

Keep your sense of humor then you can have a healthy working atmosphere.

Collection Development Skills

The transition from traditional resources to new kinds of traditional, digital and electronic resources of information posed a complex challenge to the new age librarians. To meet varieties of needs with varieties of resources librarian need to have very good collection development skill in order to build right collection to meet the needs of right users at right time. In this view a librarian must have to possess the following skills of collection development:

Knowledge of publishing cycle – understanding the life cycle of scholarly publishing, from creation through various stages of use to disposition is must for the librarians to plan for collection development

Collections development and management – understanding the concepts, issues and methods related to the acquisition, and disposition of resources and collection development should be according to the aims and objectives of the organization.

Digital Collection- Librarian must understand best practices and models in developing the digital collection and he must know the methods of archiving resources systematically

Records management – Records management is an important task of librarian for that he need understanding how information is organized for easy identification and retrieval, including cataloguing and metadata standards for all formats.

Information Literacy

Information literacy is an empowering process, enabling millions to enjoy access to knowledge and information which broadens horizons, increases opportunities and creates alternatives for building a better life. In today’s knowledge world librarian need to have information literacy skill to bridge the gap between user and information.

Information literacy – LIS professional must know principles of information literacy and their applications in various environments of libraries.

Learning and teaching – Librarian must be a student to learn the models and strategy of information literacy and he must possess good teaching capability to literate the people in using the information sources effectively

Innovative thinking and lifelong learning – information literacy is a lifelong learning skill and needs innovative thinking to understand and execute the concepts and principles of information literacy

Research Interest

The effort to understand the new trends and creating new principles is one of the very few things that lift human life a little above here to survive in competitive world Librarian must researcher and innovator. LIS professionals should be knowledgeable and must involve in following activities constructively.

LIS professionals must have hold on basic principles of research like identifying problem, data collection, analysis, report writing and publishing.

Research and publication – Librarian must study new trends in LIS and should contribute to existing knowledge through writing, editing, refereeing or reviewing of books, magazines, journal papers and so on.

Conferences – conferences are the places to discuss and present professional issues through presentations to professional or scholarly associations/meetings where librarians must take active part to enhance the professional skills.

LIS professionals should take active part in teaching, conducting workshops, seminars, conferences.

Professionals should become active members of the professional organizations, professional communities of their interest.

Professional Ethics

Professional ethics are the professionally accepted standards of personal and professional behavior, values and guiding principles. Ethics in the information professions is concerned with the application of moral standards to the conduct of librarians and other individuals involved in information dissemination. Most of the LIS professional bodies identified some key codes of ethics for LIS professionals some of them are:

Encouraging reflection on principles on which librarians and other information workers can form policies and handle dilemmas

Improving professional self-awareness

Providing transparency to users and society in general.

ensure access to information for all for personal development, education, cultural enrichment, leisure, economic activity and informed participation in and enhancement of democracy

Providing services in a democratic way In order to promote inclusion and eradicate discrimination and to ensure the right to information of every citizen.

Professionals must support open access within the boundaries of intellectual rights for that they need to have adequate knowledge of open access policies and IPR provisions.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Skills

Library and information professionals of today’s knowledge and networked world need to acquire efficient knowledge and skills in information and communication technology as today most of the library, information and knowledge centres are relied on ICT to provide effective services to their dynamic user community. In this challenging environment library professionals need to be very much compatible to use ICT tools to provide better library services. Every LIS professionals must have strong knowledge and capability in the following areas

Integrated library systems (ILS) – LIS professionals must have knowledge of basic structure, content and use of an integrated library system

Emerging web technology – knowledge of major trends in web development including online social networking tools is must to provide innovative service with minimum budget

Electronic resources management – As we are dealing with digital resources in every subject we must have the knowledge of how digital resources are acquired, managed and accessed

Web page development – understanding of principles of web page design and maintenance is must for LIS professionals as they need to provide online services they need to have separate web page for library to make library service more visible and effective

Institutional Repositories- Institutional repositories play an important role in preserving and providing access to intellectual assets of the organization so it’s the duty of librarians to understand and implement the IRs to ensure better usage of intellectual asset. Librarian must be able to set up and manage IRs on his own.

LMS- Today education and Learning became more active and dynamic in this context librarian must further support for innovative learning by providing a systematic learning platform with the help of learning management systems. Librarians in this context must understand various kinds LMSs and its implementation.

Database management – Efficient organization and retrieval of knowledge depends on well organized databases so understanding how databases are designed and structured for convenient information retrieval is must for today’s librarians.

Human Values

Human values are an essential element of our human nature and are positive qualities that are shared among people throughout the world. When we practice human values at work, they are internal motivators that help us do our best and reinforce good character, morality and ethics in our work. Every LIS professional must be a great human being as he is the teacher for various user communities must possess maximum human values as Human values naturally foster important qualities at work, such as:

Open, trustworthy and honesty in work

Care towards every users

Creating harmony

Service based on a sincere caring for others

Conclusion

We librarians are the key players of this knowledge world and we have higher responsibility than any others. Being the bridge between knowledge and Users LIS professionals must have unique personal and professional skills to meet ever challenging demands of innovative era. The skills discussed in this paper are very much essential to every LIS professionals to perform his duty to the expectations of changing world.