South Asian Librarianship : Current Challenges and Future Trends
Deepa Banerjee, University of Washington Libraries
The realm of academic librarianship is changing at a fast pace with the changing social and technological environment. The current digital environment facilitates easy access to electronic full text databases, books, and other internet resources. The librarians are embracing the new technological and social networking tools to reach the users and fulfill their information needs. Instant Messaging, Facebook, Second Life are some of the examples of the new technologies that facilitate instant connectivity. Furthermore, the academic librarians are promoting open access and digital archiving of the research material through institutional repositories and other digital initiatives so that users have free and enhanced access to relevant research materials.
Among this big group of academic librarians who are involved in these new initiatives, there is also a small minority of area librarians who are responsible for developing a linguistically diverse international collections and for supporting area studies that emerged since World War 11 "when the United States began to understand that the other parts of the Non Anglo American world and non-Western European world including Soviet Union might have a significant impact on United States ( Brown, 2006, p1). "Area studies meant learning about the totality of a nation and culture from the perspectives of multiple disciplines: History, Literature, Philosophy, Art, less frequently Music; Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and of-course language" (Brown, 2006, p7).
One such branch of area librarianship that emerged was South Asian librarianship. South Asia consists of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. The South Asian librarianship emerged mainly after World War 11 when:
The South Asian librarians have carried wide ranging responsibilities and come a long way since 1950s when they were confronted with the challenges of fulfilling the information needs of the researchers with inadequate resources. They have adequately expanded South Asian collections, formed consortiums and committees such as CONSALD and have been involved in key initiatives at local and national levels.
However, there are many issues and concerns that still revolve around these librarians. They must bridge the gap between a developed and developing world. They must bridge a gap between the limited electronic resources from the source countries and the current demands of easy electronic access to full text journal articles, books and other resources. Furthermore, it is difficult to find a good fit for this position – librarians who possess subject, language and area expertise combined with librarianship training to meet the expectations of the job. The library schools do not include programs for area librarianship. The roles of these librarians and the job expectations vary in different academic institutions and are inconsistent.
How do these librarians emphasize the importance of their roles to the library administrators? Should they follow the path of mainstream librarians or should they invent their own path to meet the job expectations. How do they fill the gaps in the collection without adequate funding? How do they participate in the cooperative acquisitions plan at a national level without adequate resources or institutional support? How do they enhance their interaction/communication with the South Asian Studies scholars, faculty members, CONSALD members and peers so that they have a better understanding of research needs, cooperative collection efforts, new initiatives and new resources.
This article is an attempt to explore some of the current challenges and the trends that will shape the future of South Asian librarianship. The following brief history of how the South Asian studies began in the US universities provides an understanding of how the South Asian librarian positions came into being.
US interest in South Asian studies goes as far back as early 19th century when American students enrolled in German Universities to study a new discipline of Comparative Philology which was related to Sanskrit language. Edward E Salisbury was one of those students who took the first position to teach Sanskrit in Yale in 1841. Soon after, eight leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, John Hopkins, Pennsylvania, Chicago and California established positions for Sanskrit and Indology. These subjects served as a background for the multi–disciplinary South Asian studies which was introduced in the middle of twentieth century in quite a few American Universities (Elder, Dimock and Embree, 1998, p20).
In the1920s, the US interest in Indian studies was limited only to the study of Sanskrit, Literature, Philosophy and Religion and very few universities offered these courses. Professor Norman Brown who is considered to be the father of the modern South Asian Studies promoted the study and research of India in the 1920s and continued it for the next ten decades. He was the founder of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of South Asian and Regional studies and the professor of Sanskrit between 1926 and 1966. He guided the establishment of the program for South Asian regional studies at undergraduate and graduate levels in 1949/50 with an affiliated faculty of twenty one scholars covering fields such as Geography, Linguistics, Sociology etc. (Elder, Dimock and Embree, 1998, p20).
The academic interest in the Indian subcontinent was further stimulated in 1947 when India gained independence followed by partition and creation of Pakistan. In the middle of the twentieth century, US Philanthropic associations such as Carnegie Corporation, Rockefeller and Ford foundation began funding the expansion of South Asia programs in US Universities such as California, Berkeley, Michigan, Chicago, Columbia and Wisconsin. In 1955, a new South Asian Committee was established by the Far Eastern Association as requested by Ford and Rockefeller foundations. This committee, with funding support from Rockefeller and other foundations and with Professor Brown as a chair took its first step of identifying language and area studies needs and developing library resources in US Universities (Elder et al. , 1998, p20).
The establishment of federal funding or Title VI allocation for area studies programs including South Asia and the US support for the study of foreign area languages and cultures proved to be beneficial for the development of South Asian Studies in 1960s and 1970s. The research interest shifted away from general studies in many disciplines to interdisciplinary approaches such as research on cultural, social, political and historical questions at the regional and sub regional level (Elder et al.,1998, p20).
In the late eighties, the Department of Education took an initiative to assess progress, identify problems and discuss the future efforts towards the study of South Asian languages due to continued concerns over inclusion of South Asian languages in the higher education curriculum. There was another review of the future of South Asian Studies, the inclusion of South Asian studies at an undergraduate level and the development of library resources level by the South Asia Council of the Association of Asian Studies in 1993 (Elder et al.,1998, p20).
The review in the later years discussed the latest developments in Internet access and other electronic resources for the South Asian field both within the US and worldwide.
Expansion of South Asian Library Resources in US
By the end of second World War, the expansion of South Asian programs and sudden increase in the number of students and researchers interested in this area imposed a great challenge to the libraries. The collection built prior to World War 11 was not adequate to meet the demands of the modern South Asian Studies with a focus on Social Sciences and Humanities. In 1958 the National Defense Act of 1958 was passed which supported the foreign language training in American Educational institutions. There was also an amendment to the Agricultural Trade Development Act of 1954 ( Public Law 83-480) which later led to the creation of South Asia Cooperative Acquisition program..Under this amendment, the Library of Congress (LC) was given the permission for the acquisition and cataloging of foreign publications including South Asia for US research libraries (Elder et al.,1998, p20).
Library of Congress offices in New Delhi, India and Islamabad, Pakistan have administered South Asian Co-operative Acquisitions program based on joint participation of LC and major American libraries since 1962. By 1969, when the AAS' Committee on South Asia became the South Asia Regional Council and later the Suoth Asia Council- it formed its Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation to monitor the Library of Congress South Asia program. At the beginning of the program, LC acquired free copies of the South Asian publications for the participant libraries. After sometime, American libraries were overwhelmed by these materials and no longer wanted to add those materials to the existing collections. As a result, a complex profile of subject and language categories was created by LC for the participant libraries in 1985. This program has been successful in filling the gaps in the South Asian collections which were identified as inadequate for supporting the expanding South Asian program after World War II.SACAP program has played a key role in the expansion of library collections (Elder et al.,1998, p20).
South Asian Librarians – Current Challenges and Future Trends
At present, they are many other issues and challenges that confront the South Asian librarians. Following are some of the examples of current challenges and the shaping future trends which might address some of theconcerns.
Decreased funding for South Asian Studies Collections
The South Asian Librarians are increasingly finding it challenging to maintain the high quality of South Asian library collections due to limited library and other funding.Libraries are only able to acquire very limited South Asian or Western publications related to South Asian or interdisciplinary areas due to the constrained library budgets. The constant strengthening of the Indian/ South Asian currency is also affecting the affordability of the libraries to acquire monographs, serials, maps and other research materials through Library of Congress offices in New Delhi and Islamabad. These LC offices distribute materials to the South Asia Co-operative Acquisitions program (SACAP) participants based on SACAP profiles. The inflation is resulting in severe cuts to SACAP subject profiles.
The Title VI or the Department of Education federal funding to Title VI National Resource Centers on South Asia and their libraries for the development of the South Asian collection have been increasingly decreasing each year. The Title VI National Resource Centers include Columbia, Cornell, North Carolina Center for South Asian Studies, UC- Berkeley, Chicago, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Syracuse, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, Madison.
The budgetary challenges can be met if:
Limited Clientele
The South Asian librarians are still sometimes seen as serving a very limited clientele. Their services are still considered to be limited to the students and faculty from the South Asia program. In reality, the South Asian programs are expanding with new hires in the areas of Anthropology, Art History, Cinema Studies, Cultural Studies and other inter-disciplinary areas.
The research focus is increasingly becoming broader and global in nature. Many inter-disciplinary topics have emerged out of the core South Asian subject areas. As a result, the services of the librarians have extended beyond the traditional services to South Asianists only. Their clientele has become more diverse and it includes students and faculty from History, Social Sciences, Art History, Cinema Studies, Business and other departments. These librarians also offer their services to the community members outside of the universities as well.
Inconsistency in their roles and responsibilities
There are inconsistencies in the roles and responsibilities of a South Asian Studies librarian in different academic institutions. Some librarians mainly work as bibliographers or catalogers only while others have collection development, desk and virtual reference responsibilities in other areas in addition to the South Asian studies. Some are outsourcing some of their cataloging and other responsibilities. The inconsistencies in their roles are due to the different requirements, institutional policies and funding capabilities of academic institutions and the libraries. Moreover, the area studies are becoming blurry and it is not clear who is responsible for providing services to the newly emerged inter-disciplinary areas.The language and subject expertise of these librarians vary and sometimes do not meet the institutional requirements. The time allocation to different tasks also varies among the institutions.
A recent survey conducted in 2007 by Committee on South Asian Documentation and Libraries (CONSALD) to assess the state of South Asian Studies academic libraries, collection methods and acquisitions on a national level, indicates that the majority of the librarians devote 40% of their time to collection development responsibilities and the rest of their time to cataloging, reference and other responsibilities (CONSALD, 2007).
It is indeed challenging to set a parameter or exactly define the roles and responsibilities of these librarians as each library’s requirements are different. However with declining or static budget, the librarian’s need to shift their energies towards collaborative projects and /or regional, national or international partnerships while balancing the needs of the individual libraries. These collaborations will ensure utilization of the professional strengths of the librarians in varying roles for cost and time effective projects from which all the academic libraries will benefit. Examples of such projects include national cooperative collections for South Asian Studies, creation of bibliographies and databases, oral history projects, contributions to Digital South Asia Library (DSAL) and participation in consortia such as SAC West or SAC East etc….
Lack of a well coordinated co-operative acquisitions plan
South Asian Studies collections in the academic libraries is in need of a well coordinated and well defined co-operative acquisitions plan. Co-operative acquisitions plan among the libraries at a regional or national level is the key to address the budgetary limitations in the individual libraries. These plans will help minimize duplication and facilitate acquisitions and development of a fully comprehensive regional or national South Asian collections while balancing the needs and priorities of the individual institutions.. To carry out these plans, librarians will need to work with the faculty and administrators so that they have a clear understanding of the institutional priorities and the funding capabilities of the academic institutions..
At present, the majority of Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation (CONSALD) member libraries participate in South Asia Cooperative Acquisitions Program administered by the Library of Congress offices in New Delhi and Islamabad. This program has its limitations in terms of limited flexibility within its subject profiles. Each participant library receives the materials based on SACAP profiles. Subscription or non-subscription to the similar subject or language profiles result in some areas being over represented while some being under represented or not presented at all.
CONSALD has recently conducted a survey in 2007 among the CONSALD members to assess the state of South Asia libraries, collection methods and acquisitions at a national level. Twenty three respondents took part in the survey." The survey provides two major findings: (1) collection at a national level is uneven—a number of South Asian language materials are not being collected sufficiently while some material is being over-collected or duplicated and (2) the majority of bibliographers are willing to give time and money to a cooperative acquisition project that would focus on collecting materials that fall outside of traditional and/or current collection development methods" (CONSALD<2007).
Following are some of the facts revealed by the recent survey:
"Among respondents, 91% said they utilize SACAP while 82% state that other vendors are used. These outside vendors are used by 78% of CONSALD members for firm orders; 22% use them for approval plans; and 11% for blanket orders. Two respondents stated that other vendors are used to acquire material not made accessible through SACAP" (CONSALD,2007).
Language
The majority of academic institutions have active programs in the languages of Bengali, Sanskrit, Hindi and Urdu materials and as a result the academic libraries are likely duplicating each other in these languages. Materials in languages outside of this core group such as Oriya, Rajasthani, Assamese, Gujarati, Konkani and many more are at-risk for non-collection. Languages such as Newari, Pushto, Sinhala etc which are required by two or less institutions require special attention.
If those materials are purchased primarily through SACAP or a similar group of vendors, then libraries may not be acquiring rare or unique materials that are available outside of these suppliers. It is necessary therefore, that some libraries opt out of the similar group of vendors and try other specialized vendors for a coverage of wide range of materials (CONSALD, 2007).
Subject
The subject area data suggests that libraries are focusing on the acquisition of materials in the subject areas of History, Humanities, Anthropology, Religion, Literature while subject areas such as Human Rights, Medicine, Folklore, Education, Media are underrepresented. Social Sciences is less represented than Humanities.
Source: CONSALD Survey, 2007
A cooperative purchasing of social sciences material might help restore some balance between the needs of institutions. Acquisition priorities can be distributed over a number of individual institutions so that resources and knowledge can be shared.
Region
India – particularly north India – and Pakistan are the most represented as per respondents as far as regional expertise is concerned. Co-operative projects could focus on other areas of South Asia that are at the risk of non-representation which would enable the acquisition of critical but rarely collected materials. More attention should be directed towards non-core regions: south, northeast, and northwest India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Tibet, for example.
Miscellaneous Items and Journals
"Standardization for coordinating items such as newspapers, videos, and ephemera is needed. Many survey respondents mentioned that tracking and acquiring videos and ephemera is particularly difficult. A cooperative project would enable a formal arrangement between libraries so collection time and funds could be spent on one type of material (e.g., one institution collects all Diaspora newspapers while another collects all NGO publications). A number of respondents said they would like to see these materials especially newspapers and ephemera – made available online. Transferring these materials to an online format such as jpeg, PDF or tiff, should be a priority of the project" (CONSALD, 2007).
Planned and Coordinated Buying Trips
A future cooperative project should take into consideration-planned buying trips to South Asia according to the subject, language and regional expertise of the bibliographers. This person or group would acquire special materials targeted by the group of librarians (CONSLAD, 2007).
Need of more international co-operative preservation projects
A shift from institution-by- institution approach to more international co-operative projects is certainly required to preserve the rare and unique South Asian collections in South Asia, US or elsewhere by microfilming or digitizing the materials. The microfilming and the digitization process can be further delayed by the restricted federal or other sources of funding or non permission from South Asia based libraries, government or other relevant organizations to microfilm and digitize the relevant materials held by them.
At present, the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) which is a consortium of North American universities, colleges and independent research libraries accomplishes its mission of providing access to the resources vital for the disciplines by acquiring and preserving newspapers, journals, documents, archives and other traditional and digital resources. They achieve this mission through cooperative actions with its members and partners. CRL had been acquiring South Asian material for over four decades.CRL also houses and lends an expanding and very special collection of microforms related to South Asia initiated by the independent South Asia Microform project (SAMP), a consortium of over 20 paid institutional subscribers in US and Canada. CRL has administered SAMP since 1967 and the collections initiated by SAMP serve as a broad base for South Asian Studies.
Libraries can form international partnerships with organizations such as British Library’s Endangered Archives program to preserve South Asian endangered materials. Some initiatives such as preserving Marathi manuscripts, conservation and archiving of pre 1947 printed Telugu materials and Indian paintings, preservation and access to endangered Urdu periodicals and more are already in place and progressing well.
Limited On-line Resources
The librarians face the challenge of limited information resources to fulfill the information needs of the users. The scarcity of resources, copyright, government and cultural restrictions in South Asia present a huge challenge in creating and sharing electronic resources with the rest of the world.There is still a wide technological gap between the developed nations and the developing nations and a lack of encouragement and training to actively create and disseminate information resources in a digital environment. In South Asia, very limited institutions are actively involved in creating and sharing the scholarly resources digitally.
The scholarly research published in South Asian journals have low visibility because of the poor dissemination process. At the moment , the only South Asian journals that receive visibility are the ones that are indexed by major indexing and abstracting services such as JSTOR, Web of Science, Bibliography of Asian Studies. Some articles that are co-authored by scholars from other parts of the world also receive some attention. A very small percentage of South Asian scholarly output is available freely through open access initiatives.There is a lack of mandatory policies that promote equal participation in the information society both as producers and users of knowledge.
Many different institutions and academic libraries in South Asia such as Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Technology are carrying out various digital library projects to preserve the wealth of knowledge or the cultural heritage of these countries and make them available through digital archives at national and institutional levels. They are collaborating with world’s leading institutions. These institutions receive substantial support from national and international funding agencies. Some examples of digital library initiatives include Digital Library of India, Archives of Indian Labor : Integrated labor History Research Program or AHKRC Digital Library, Pakistan (Das, Sen and Jocelyn, 2008).
Open Course initiatives have also gained popularity in India and Pakistan. These open course initiatives such as Egyankosh: a national digital repository or National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning at a national and institutional level aim to provide open access to learning resources.
India now provides access to more than hundred open access journals and the majority of them are in listed in the Directory of Open Access journals.The open access journals in India are mainly available through seven major journal publishers such as Indian Academy of Sciences, MEDIND@NIC: Biomedical Journals, Indian National Science Academy, Medknow Publications, Indian Medlars Center of National Informatics Center, Indianjournals.com, Kamal Raj enterprise.
These rapidly progressing initiatives will help alleviate the challenges that are associated with the limited creation, development and access to scholarly electronic resources.
Lack of Communication among CONSALD members
There is a need for the librarians to commit more time to formal and informal communication among the CONSALD members and other skate holders so that they have a better understanding of the collection development efforts, institutional priorities and policies of other academic libraries, the on-going South Asia related projects at other libraries and the possibilities of collaborative projects.
The librarians should be encouraged to interact with CONSALD members on a regular basis through email, chat or other technological modes of communication.
CONSALD members are in the process of creating a website that would prove to be an effective tool for providing information and interaction among CONSALD members.
Limited interaction between the faculty members from South Asia programs and libraries
The policies and priorities of the South Asian program significantly differ from the priorities of the libraries. The interaction between the libraries and the South Asian faculty members are not sufficient to identify common areas of interest or align the priorities. Good communication and working relationships between the faculty members and the libraries are crucial for an understanding of their research interests, collection and bibliographic needs. This will ensure efficient rendering of the services to the program.
Librarians can stay informed of the departmental activities and their new directions by attending regular faculty meetings, individual meetings with the faculty members and be involved in the activities of the department.This interaction is also essential for co-operative collection development. Interaction with the faculty outside of South Asia is crucial to understand the interdisciplinary focus.
Lack of library training programs Education or preparation of librarians
The library schools don’t offer any courses in area librarianship. Library Science students are not encouraged to prepare themselves for these positions due to limited availability of these positions and very special skills needed to fulfill the job expectations
Librarians can partner with Library and Information schools to teach area librarianship courses and to encourage students to take these courses. They also need to discuss the challenges and rewards of these positions with the students so that they can make an informed decisions.The librarians need to make themselves more visible through marketing, doing interesting projects, displays, exhibitions and publishing articles about their activities through media outlets. On-line tools such as blogs and wikis are great tools for publicity.
Shortage of librarians who possess library training combined with subject, language and multi-tasking skills
The South Asian librarians carry out multiple new tasks while maintaining their traditional roles and serve a diverse clientele. Their skills and tasks range from subject and language expertise, liaison with the department, committee work to reference and research skills, use of new technologies and more . They have an important task of aligning departmental priorities with library priorities. I t is challenging to recruit librarians who possess such wide ranging skills. There is an on-going debate about whether library training is more important or the area studies training.
Most library schools emphasize more on research and information technology skills with little emphasis on in-depth area studies training. Some believe that an advanced degree in area studies is more important than the library training as it is easier for an expert in area studies to acquire library and information skills. Moreover the language and subject expertise of the recruited librarians may be limited to few languages, subjects or regions and may not fulfill the institutional priorities.
Moreover the language and subject expertise of the recruited librarians may be limited to few languages, subjects or regions and may not fulfill the institutional priorities.Original cataloging of materials can be very challenging with limited subject expertise.
For example the 2007 CONSALD survey indicates that the majority of the bibliographers possess expertise in Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Bengali while other areas such as Oriya, Konakani, Marathi and Gujarati are under represented.
Source: CONSALD Survey, 2007
It is also evident from the survey that subject expertise of the librarians is limited to History , Religion and Litearature.The graph below indicates how librarians match with institutional needs and priorities by academic division. The above graph demonstrates that bibliographers are able to provide expertise in the humanities and biological sciences, but not Social Sciences (CONSALD, 2007).
Source: CONSALD Survey, 2007
The survey also indicates that regional expertise is limited to India and Pakistan. The graph below indicates the expertise and institutional needs
Source: CONSALD Survey, 2007
Library schools need to incorporate training of area studies librarian where emphasis should be placed on subject and language expertise along with other conventional library training. The library administrators should place more importance on recruiting subject and language experts and promote continuous education or professional development for the acquisition and development of subject and language skills. They should allow release time for continuous professional development of the librarians. The current organizational climate is unable to support these professional development initiatives fully..
While it is true that South Asian Librarians are confronted with some current challenges, it is reassuring to know that CONSALD members have taken steps in the right direction to overcome the challenges over time. The recent survey conducted by CONSALD is a major step towards identifying and ddressing major concerns and planning positive changes after the assessment of the institutional policies and priorities, collection strengths and gaps , the expertise of the librarians, the modes of communication among CONSALD members and the national and international partnerships for preservation and sharing of resources . They are in the process of designing a better CONSALD website that would provide access to updated and relevant information and increase interaction among CONSALD members. They have already initiated informal communications about cooperative acquisition project that would focus on collecting materials that fall outside of traditional and/or current collection development methods. Some inititaives have already been taken to index the majority of South Asian journals through Bibliography of Asian Studies, DSAL so that these journals receive high visibility.The various "Open Access" inititives are opening the doors to increased and free acees to the digital scholarly literature and the cultural heritage of these countries. These open access initiatives in South Asia will encourage more creation and dissemination of scholalry literature. For a high visibilty of scholarly output.
A wide variety of initiatives on the part of librarian will ensure a co-ordianted collection devepment, recruitment of area and language experts, education, training and preparation of the librarians for meeting job expectations and challenges of the next few decades and access to more scholarly resources in the future. The future of South Asian librraianship will be promising if there is a collective effort towards betterment and future progress.
REFERENCES
Brown, C. T. (2006, February).The changing nature of area studies. Paper presented at the Center for Research Libraries and Library of Congress International Collections Development Worshop, Washington, DC.
Committee on South Asian Libraries and Documentation.(2007). Tools for building a National South Asia Collection : analysis of the CONSALD Online Survey.
Das, Anup K., Sen, B. K., and Jocelyn, J.(2008). Open Acccess to Knowledge and Information : Scholarly Literature and Digital Library Inititaives: the South Asian Scenario. New Delhi: UNESCO.
Elder, J W., Dimock, E.C., Embree, A. T. (1998). India's Worlds and US Scholars. New Delhi: Manohar.
Maheshwary, A. C. (2006, October). U. S. Resources on Indian and South Asian Studies. Paper presented at 6th Scientific Symposium Frankfurt.
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