Recent visit to the US

In my recent visit to the US to attend the SLA Conference at Philadelphia gave me rich insights into librarianship as practised in the US. For one, I was happy to note that things are improving economically and that there was quite a lot of optimism in the air as far as libraries were concerned. Some of the talks, especially the one by Thomas Friedman, impressed me a lot. His take on importance of librarians in the coming years was quite refreshing and recharged the spirit of librarianship. In a world that is flat - "connected" it was important to look at information that is relevant and separate it from what is not. It is here that the role of the librarian will become important.

One of the areas that could be considered as a trend in our profession is the increasing importance given to data management systems and practices, in the US, that seek library skills. Library Professionals can now look to exciting careers in data management techniques and tools that is very intrinsic to our jobs. I would recommend young professionals to look up this topic that would not only include data management but also data preservation and curation.

The conference also provided a broad framework of understanding that many of our colleagues in the US are trying hard to innovate and do things differently and make an impact. Trends also direct us towards open access movement, copyright exploitation by publishers, open source software popularity and redesigning library spaces as major signposts in our professional pathways.