Indo-American Librarian Series - Dr. Murarilal Nagar

extracts from : A Sanskrit Librarian Comes To America, By Dr. Murarilal Nagar, 1999.

But when the same librarian serves in a foreign land, his mission is unique and multifold. In addition to all the noble causes that inspire a librarian to serve his readers, he strives for and achieves much more.”(p. 5)

Ranganathan and I worked together closely for about six years. However, there was no regular or rigorous training in English language and literature. There was no schooling in English grammar. So there was no scope for any improvement or refinement....

For example, once Dr. Ranganathan wrote a book. He said, "I want to send this to (a friend in London) to be rendered into English."
I asked him, "What do you mean, Rao Sahab? You have already written it in English."
He remarked, "It's not English."
A Sanskrit Librarian Comes To America 5
I said, "If what you write is not English, then what about me?”
"You write horrible!" he replied. ...

One of the main reasons there is no immediate development of libraries in India, is the fact that the librarians do not form a coalition with other forces fighting for the same causes, viz. dispersion of knowledge, removal of ignorance, and the advancement of learning. These forces are the educators, book-publishers and sellers of books.(p. 18)

NB. Mohamed:
"A publication entitled Wheat Loan Messenger contains quite a lot of information desired by you on your current subject of research, reading and writing—my three R’s. Of course I edited it. A copy is preserved in the rare book room of the Library of the University of Missouri at Columbia . Of course, it cannot be borrowed, but you may be able to get a Xerox print." MLN

For more please write to us:
Om Shanti Mandiram, 1405 St. Christopher
Columbia MO 65203-2356 USA.
Phone: (573)449-5871. Email: omshanti@missouri.edu
Kindly visit us http://www.missouri.edu/~omshanti

What others say about Dr. Nagar:
Linda M. Canestraight
Dear Mohamed,
It is with great pleasure that I respond to your email quest for information about Dr. Nagar. I have known him over 20 years starting back when Mrs. Nagar first came into my computer lab to data enter all his manuscripts into a now archaic mainframe system so we could use special customized script programs to allow printing of diacritical marks in his text to publish his is manuscripts. I am not a librarian but a computer support specialist and while Dr. Nagar was working as Ellis Library, new technologies launched and we were faced with converting all his manuscripts created with old computer technology to new programs utilized by libraries and people everywhere. Dr. Nagar and I worked together getting special PERL scripts written to assist the conversion of all his diacritical marks to characters recognized by MS Word. Once in MS Word we could print his manuscripts again but found that the world couldn’t because of his special font needs. We had to wait 3 years for Adobe Acrobat to be created to allow us to save files in PDF format to preserve the font and special Indic text and make all his writings available for viewing around the world.

Out with the old and in with the new as the library card cataloging changed to digital format. Dr. Nagar embraced the new technology and immediately his research methods took off around the world with a point and click instead of waiting for days to find out the result done by some other librarian on his behalf. The World Wide Web opened a whole new doorway for librarians in today’s world making research must easier.

Dr. Nagar is 88 years old and has been retired for a decade now but his librarian skills are still being used daily as he is always deep into some new research. He spent many years researching Om (AUM) using today’s library technologies and written a series of 5 books on Om, all research work being done without leaving his residence. The power of the library today is limited only by its users.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like anything else, you have permission to use any of my words in your blog.

Thanks,
Linda Canestraight
Univ. of Missouri
IATS Helpdesk
(573) 882-4866
CanestraightL@missouri.edu

Kathy Strickland
Dear Mohamed,

I certainly cannot answer any of your technical questions, but I can tell you of my work with Dr. Nagar and what a dedicated scholar he is and has been.

I worked alongside him in his library office while I was a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Together we published a journal called Om Shanti and a reformed version of "Laukikanyayanjali"("A Handful of Popular Maxims") in English and Sanskrit. My mother helped edit the book Dr. Nagar referred you to below, "A Sanskrit Librarian Comes to America," which tells the amazing story of his career.

I was a journalism student at the university and interviewed Dr. Nagar and his wife, Sarla, for an article published in the local paper. If any of the information from this story about their life of service to Om would be of use to you, I would be more than happy to share it -- or to speak from my own experiences with the Nagars.

Through a collection of rare texts he helped bring to the university library, and through his expert knowledge of the Vedas and other holy works, Dr. Nagar opened my eyes to a new Truth. I am forever greatful.

Om Shanti,
Kamalee
kamalee7@fastmail.fm

International Information Literacy Resources Directory

International Information Literacy Resources Directory
The Information Literacy Section of the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA) has created this database to record information literacy materials from different parts of the world, on behalf of UNESCO.



Librarians, educators and information professionals are invited to participate.

If you have developed information literacy materials and would like to share them with the world community, please submit the required data.

See also:

Literacy concepts in the LIS curriculum, C.R. Karisiddappa [karisiddappa@yahoo.com ], Niels Ole Pors [nop@db.dk], and Terry L. Weech [weech@uiuc.edu] -- (LIS) curricula in three different contexts - India, Europe, and the U.S.A.

INFORMATION LITERACY: AN INTERNATIONAL STATE-OF-THE ART REPORT, First Draft, Project Coordinator, Jesus Lau, (Mexico) jlau@uv.mx

IFLA Guidelines on Information Literacy Information Literacy Weblog

Information Literacy: Research Literature Review

Information Literacy in Canada
a place to discuss information literacy in Canada

Canadian Research Libraries Information Literacy Portal

IL in developing countries
See my previous posts:

Information Literacy Programmes

Information Literacy (for all) - A useful gateway

Information Literacy: Presentation, by Mohamed Taher PowerPoint Format


[Thanks to Prof. Neelameghan for identifying this valuable resource]

Blog archives: Web 2.0 tools as sources for social history

PS. This is not about archives of manuscripts, artifacts and museology stuff. This is not even about digital archives or concerns about Archiving the e-generation. Bloggers wonder and would say, Wow: Blogs as social history?
Web 2.0 tools, like blogs, podcasts, RSS, and wikis, into education is becoming a common feature. But nations caring to take steps about this (so called personal-private diary-like) source, is worth documenting.

This Blog-archive-story is a national plan to index, store, and share social history as depicted in Blogs. Historians, librarians, archivists are now sharing a common tool for common purpose.

Blog archives? Posted by George, September 11, 2006
You mean this stuff will be sticking around forever?!? Eeep! The wonderous Maud points to an article on the National Library of Scotland’s (hey, is Scotland allowed to have a “national” anything? Ouch!) plan to archive the blogs of leading Scots.

THE National Library of Scotland is to create an archive of the blogs, journals and e-mails of leading Scots, which curators claim are the manuscripts of the 21st century, writes Karin Goodwin.
Full story: National Library to store blogs

See also:

British Library to store 'blog' of lives of Britons: report

LONDON (AFP) - The details of a day in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Britons will reportedly be recorded and compiled into a digital time capsule that will be stored permanently at the British Library.
The "One Day in History" project, described as a "blog for the national record," will feature British celebrities such as actors Stephen Fry and Derek Jacobi, and the writer Bill Bryson contributing to the compilation, along with any Briton with access to the Internet who wants to participate, The Sunday Times reported

Students and teachers at 29,000 schools have also been invited to join in the project, along with pupils at the Dubai British School, who will blog about expatriate life in the Middle East. Any Briton who logs on to the website www.historymatters.co.uk can also submit their own contribution.

Anyone who participates is asked to submit between 100 and 1,000 words about their day on Tuesday, in either English or Welsh -- the project was inspired by mass observation exercises conducted by sociologists through and since World War II to record the details of daily life.

"We want this day to have its own place in history and be a snapshot of everyday life at the beginning of the 21st century," said Fiona Reynolds, the director-general of the National Trust, which is organising the project.

Previous posts:

Blog As A Teaching Tool

Vertical and tacit: Multifaith and Knowledge Management in Perspective

Communitywise Blogging by Information Professionals

Library 2.0 Theory

Isolatr Vis-a-Vis a Unified Theory of Web 2.0

Technocrati Tags:Archiving
Knowledge sharing
Web 2.0
Library2.0;
Library 2.0
Streaming media
Library Education

Unusual Reference Questions - Globalism Visited

I asked a librarian in Puerto Rico once what an American name would be, and she answered “Smith” without blinking. I guess they were still clinging to the old view of America even when America has undergone so much change ethnically and culturally.(1)

I've had lots of wonderful reference questions over the years. But there are
a few I remember with special fondness. I took a phone question from a woman
who described a flag in great detail. She wanted to know what country it
came from. After looking through several flag books with no luck, I asked
her where she had seen the flag. She told me she had "seen" it in a dream!(2)

Google for more unusual reference questions / uncommon reference questions / real questions (transcribed)

Survey instruments:

http://montanalibraries.org/MLNCoopRef/VR-RFI.1.doc

STATEWIDE VIRTUAL REFERENCE PROJECT

Virtual Reference In-Depth Questionnaire

evaluate the Virtual Reference Project: questionnaire
__
References
(1) Puerto Rico- How to Eat the Cake and Have it Too. davidkessel's blog
From the same source: One of my professors at the University of Puerto Rico explained that Puerto Rican was a “nationality”, a cultural concept, whereas “American” was “citizenship”, a political aspect.
(2) [PUBLIB] unusual reference questions (fwd). Sender: Eileen Simmons

Information Literacy Programmes

Information Literacy Programme in Colleges, by G.Mahadevan
The Hindu, Wednesday, Oct 04, 2006

To bridge awareness divide between urban, rural areas Aims at bridging the awareness divide between colleges in the urban and rural areas

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Department of Library and Information Science, University of Kerala is preparing to place before the Syndicate a proposal for implementing an information literacy programme in colleges affiliated to the university.

The programme aims at bridging the awareness divide between colleges in the urban and rural areas and to enable students in the latter category of colleges access subject-related information across a variety of formats.

The Information Literacy package will aim to provide students the basic information about IT tools, to introduce to them electronic sources of information, train them in searching for information stored in a multi-media format, train students to use computer-aided instruction packages, introduce various online search programmes and methods to identify sources of information, including subject gateways, in the Internet and train students to use the `Online Public Access Catalogue.

The project proposal drawn up by head of the department G. Devarajan points out that the lack of awareness among students in colleges located in rural areas would lead to under utilisation of information resources even if IT tools are made available in such colleges. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct an information literacy programme one that includes visual literacy, media literacy, computer literacy, digital literacy and network literacy among such students, the project document says. Continue reading or contact Dr. Devarajan

See also:

Mokhtar, I. A., & Majid, S. (2006). Teaching information literacy for in-depth knowledge and sustained learning. Education for Information, 24(1), 31-49. [Graduate Student (By Research), School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University, 31 Nanyang Link, Singapore 637718]

Institutionalizing information literacy in tertiary education: lessons learned from South African programs, Karin de Jager

Information literacy: A plug-and-play approach, ANDRETTA Susie; CUTTING Andrew;

This paper reflects on issues raised by the development of an Information Literacy module for first year undergraduate provision at the University of North London. Information Literacy here is defined as an essential attribute of the independent learner, consisting of ICT skills as well as more complex Information Handling skills. Discussion focuses on how the module aims to develop generic, transferable IL skills and to foster a transition to a more independent learning mode. The module is customised to the needs of a variety of disciplines and subjects by a ‘plug-and-play’ principle, and uses a range of delivery methods to support students with diverse prior ICT skills. [see another source]

"Asian culture" and Asian American identities in the television and film industries of the United States, Hemant Shah, Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education, Volume 3, Issue 3 (August 2003), © University of Toronto Press


Library of Congress Subject Headings:
Academic libraries--Technological innovations.
Information literacy.
Library orientation for college students.
Libraries and the Internet.
Libraries and colleges.
Internet in higher education.
Information society.
Library orientation.

Not included in LC:
>>Bibliographic instruction
>>User education
>>Library skills
>>Information skills

Much more: IL controlled vocabulary

See also my previous posts:

Information Literacy (for all) - A useful gateway

Information Literacy: Presentation, by Mohamed Taher PowerPoint Format PDF format

NB. Thanks to David Dillard, Temple University, for this info. [[DIG_REF] INFORMATION LITERACY : COUNTRIES: INDIA: Information Literacy Programme in Colleges]

History of the book: Writing on the Stone Slab

Writing May Be Oldest in Western Hemisphere |
“A stone slab bearing 3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars has been found in the Mexican state of Veracruz, and archaeologists say it is an example of the oldest script ever discovered in the Western Hemisphere.” continue reading

See also:

Centre for the History of the Book: University of Edinburgh

History of the Book in Canada