CAPACITY BUILDING IN FUTURE LIBRARIANSHIP IN E-LEARNING: ISSUES AND CHALLENGES

Catering value based services in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) umbrella in e-learning environment to the educators, learners both in-house and distance mode has become crucial for the libraries which is not only challenging but also imminent to meet the users’ demand. Librarians in the midst of globalization of education, availability of mammoth literature on Internet domain, prevailing of multidimensional research required to reshape the resource collection to meet the varied demands of the patrons and in the process the notion of the librarian changed from document manager to document provider and subsequently to knowledge disseminator, network manager, technology manager, cybrarian, etc. Moreover, the prevailing technologies in libraries altered the learning horizon especially among the students through e-learning which is synonymously represented as web-based learning, digital learning, Internet learning, On-line learning etc. and such learning procedure solely rests on e-resources. This is the upshot of the change management in learning environment which shifted from traditional to blended and then to electronic. Strategic changes of the libraries in its service in the present days of education system, rather concentrated to uphold the value of the library for sustainable development. A true value of learning wheel, the future librarianship is going to witness encapsulating required skills and competencies in view of unconditional prevailing of ICT in every stage of its operation like, acquisition, organization, dissemination and preservation of knowledge for yielding to new horizon in service domain. Again, capacity building and skill development being the major and indispensable criteria in such a dynamic change, the librarian needs to accept the challenges in spite of all resistances and the responsibilities in facilitating services in next generation of librarianship.