15th Day of my Internship

Faculties and passed out students of SFIT donate their books to library. Once we receive the donated books we first check the condition and then decide if the books to be included in library collection or not. The books which are selected to be included in library collection are to be stamped as donated and have to mention the donors name inside the book, then have to give accession number, to be classified and then to be entered in the system. So yesterday i did classification and cataloguing of donated books. SFIT Library use 20th edition of DDC. Ma'am has given me an activity of preparing Library Orientation  presentation for F.E students so was collating information through various sources we can get information like library website, library tour etc.

14th Day of my Internship

While i was at the circulation counter in library there was one particular book that catched my eye which was displayed under Management and ERP (Enterprise and Resource Planning) section, which was looking very familiar to me, i took a closer look and i smiled :) it took me back down the memory lane. It was the book written by  founder of the firm My Financial Advisor where i was working before joining Library and Information Science course Mr. Amar Pandit. The book was 'The Only Financial Planning Book you will ever need'.  I remember i was under Client Acquisition Team arranging meetings of prospects and clients for financial coaches and i use to give this book for their meeting. When i saw that book yesterday i felt as if i bumped into an old friend. Small world isn't it? :) :)

Back to library work. Yesterday i was working on Dspace activity which  i was talking about in my last post, continuing with the same work, arranging the photographs and videos of the event happened in SFIT and library year wise. Trying to include all knowledge we gained doing our project work in class into this assignment :) :) 

12th and 13th Day of my Internship

Hiiii Girls!!!

It’s been three weeks girls working as an intern in St’Francis Institute of Technology Library. Learning new work every day, working on mistakes, feeling happy when you are doing well, sometimes I mean😊 Both ma’am and library staffs are very cooperative. I hope you are also enjoying your internship😊

I am working on Dspace activity. For online institutional repository, they are using Dspace software where they have uploaded question papers, abstracts of research papers of faculty. My work is to upload photographs of the events happened in SFIT and in library. The activity is very interesting and challenging as well, getting to know about new software and also practically working on it. There are many points which i learnt while working on this activity eg: there are many photographs of one event, but we can’t add all the photographs, otherwise the server will crash. We need to select some photographs which are important. While working on any software which we know that students will be accessing it, it’s important to come up with different ideas on how it can be easily accessible to students like, while adding keywords it’s important to know what key terms students will use while searching a particular events photographs or documents.  Keywords is only one example, there are many like what should we give name to main title, adding metadata etc… What we learnt in class girls I am getting to do it practically😊 These are some points I learnt while working on this activity, there is more to learn till I complete this assignment😊

Last week library kept all last year’s B.E project reports for display for students to go through, it will be on displayed till end of this month😊 They normally keep projects in cupboard, but library came up with an idea to display in library last year's all B.E project reports for students to go through😊

I want to share with you girls a information which ma’am shared with me. You know girls when we use to work on assignments in college and when we needed some images for our assignment we use to go through the Google Images and copy them. Actually there are some Google images  where unless and until we have an owner’s permission we can’t use the image for our website or blog etc, if we use it without permission it is called ‘Copyright Infringement ‘. But how will we know which Google image is under copyright? Google offers an Advanced Search option which helps us to filter Google Images which are free license, royalty free or open to the public for use in anyway. While doing image search on Google, click on Settings, under Settings you will find Advance Search, click on it, you will find Usage Rights at the end and select the option which is appropriate to you. Even i didn't knew this option, learnt while working on Dspace activity😊 

Looking forward to new learning tomorrow😊

Good Night Girls😊

11th Day of my Internship

I have been given a project by ma’am where I have to collate photographs of the events happened in institute and in the library. After collating I have to upload the photographs in institute’s repository i.e Dspace. Through this activity will get to know how Dspace software works. New Learning!! 😊While I was segregating photographs according to events and year, I came across photographs of librarian with their alumni. I was just wondering, how happy they might be feeling when they both meet after a long time and discuss whats happening in their life, proud moment when they get to know they are working in a reputed companies etc.. How good they might be feeling?😊

Sharing with you an article written by Bill Gates in his blog.

Link: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/A-Teacher-Who-Changed-My-Life

A Teacher Who Changed My Life

By Bill Gates 

August 16, 2016

Three very strong women—my mother, my maternal grandmother, and Melinda—deserve big credit (or blame, I suppose) for helping me become the man I am today. But Blanche Caffiere, a very kindly librarian and teacher I’ve never written about publicly before, also had a huge influence on me.  

Mrs. Caffiere (pronounced “kaff-ee-AIR”) died in 2006, shortly after reaching her 100^th birthday. Before she passed, I had an opportunity to thank her for the important role she played in my life, stoking my passion for learning at a time when I easily could have gotten turned off by school.

When I first met Mrs. Caffiere, she was the elegant and engaging school librarian at Seattle’s View Ridge Elementary, and I was a timid fourth grader. I was desperately trying to go unnoticed, because I had some big deficits, like atrocious handwriting (experts now call it dysgraphia) and a comically messy desk. And I was trying to hide the fact that I liked to read—something that was cool for girls but not for boys. 

Mrs. Caffiere took me under her wing and helped make it okay for me to be a messy, nerdy boy who was reading lots of books.

She pulled me out of my shell by sharing her love of books. She started by asking questions like, “What do you like to read?” and “What are you interested in?” Then she found me a lot of books—ones that were more complex and challenging than the Tom Swift Jr. science fiction books I was reading at the time. For example, she gave me great biographies she had read. Once I’d read them, she would make the time to discuss them with me. “Did you like it?” she would ask. “Why? What did you learn?” She genuinely listened to what I had to say. Through those book conversations in the library and in the classroom we became good friends.

Teachers generally don’t want to burden their students with extra reading beyond the homework they’ve assigned. But I learned from Mrs. Caffiere that my teachers had so much more knowledge to share. I just needed to ask. Up through high school and- beyond, I would often ask my teachers about the books they liked, read those books when I had some free time, and offer my thoughts.

Looking back on it now, there’s no question that my time with Mrs. Caffiere helped spark my interest in libraries (Melinda’s and my first large-scale effort in philanthropy) and my focus on helping every child in America get the benefit of great teachers. I often trace the beginning of our foundation to an article about children in poor countries dying from diseases eliminated long ago in the U.S. But I should give some credit as well to the dedicated librarian and teacher who helped me find my strengths when I was nine years old. It’s remarkable how much power one good person can have in shaping the life of a child. 

10th Day of my Internship

Hii Interns!!! 😊

The students of SFIT had developed a “Book Overdue” App, the students have to download the app from Google Playstore and if their book is overdue they will get a reminder. Sometimes students forget that their book is overdue and they have to pay fine, therefore this is the great initiative taken by the students for students. Isn’t that great? And you know what.. I generated QR code for “Book Overdue” App. I have an app which scans QR code on my mobile but I never generated one, so I learnt how to create QR Code with help of Chinmayee ma’am. It was very easy. You just have to add the link of the app in QR code generating website, click on generate and download the QR code THAT’S IT. Wasn’t it easy? 😊Generated QR code, took print out and displayed it in library, so that students can scan the QR code and it will take them to the link where they have to download the app. Many students have downloaded the app and it has been helpful to them 😊

Sucheta ma’am was sharing with me about various groups (UG students, PG Students, Faculty, Non-Faculty, Scholar Card and Active User Group, Merit card Group etc…) they have in their library software (Libsuite) where they have to enter each and every detail  e.g. what will be the groups fine, how many books they can issue, how many times they can renew etc. All these details need to be entered in the system in back end, if any mistake happens while entering the said details it affects directly at the Circulation. You remember girls.. when our book gets overdue; our librarian immediately tells us the total amount of fine to be paid looking at the system that is because they have already entered the details in the software from the back end. Learnt how back end works 😊

Today I managed returns counter for some time with help of Sucheta ma’am. Issue and Reissue is easy, but returns section is little challenging specially for me who is a slow learner, searching for the library card, collecting fine if any, giving back the remaining amount, keeping back the book card inside the book pocket. And all this activity has to be done immediately when there is a rush hour. Managed well, but need to work on speed 😊

9th Day of my Internship

You know what girls😊 if students doesn’t fare well in their semester exams. For them library collects solutions of the question papers from professors. If students require solutions they need to give their name and email address and librarian will send them the soft copy of the solutions. Isn’t it great? This is one of the initiatives taken by the library for students, and great thing is that the professors of the institute gives their full cooperation.😊

Sharing with you one more quote which is displayed around the library.

8th Day of my Internship

Students and Faculties donate their study books to the library. Library decides which book from the donated books will be included in Take Away and which books will go to Book Bank.  Take Away and Book Bank is a new concept which library has come up with. In Take Away, the donated books are kept for students on display on 15^th October Dr. Abdul Kalam’s Birthday which is also a Reading Day, and these books are given for free to students who are interested. In Book Bank, the library selects books for first year, second year, third year and post graduate students from the book collection and these books are issued to students for a semester and to be returned on the last day of the particular semester. Isn’t a nice concept, Girls?

As I said earlier I have been given abstract activity where I have to collate all the bibliographic details from the research paper with abstract to be put in word in proper format, there are some articles where I have to search abstract from online databases. Through this activity I am getting to know various online databases are there for engineering.

Looking forward to a new learning tomorrow 😊

7th day of my Internship

SFIT Library has their own Institutional repository in Dspace where students are able to access question papers and abstracts of the paper published by the faculties online. My recent activities along with bibliography list is to arrange each abstract of the article with the bibliographic details in proper format  in word, so that it can be converted in PDF format and then to be uploaded in Dspace.

Girls, like how we use APA style for citation or for reference, in engineering they follow IEEE style i.e The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers😊

6th Day of my Internship

Exam Exam Exam Exam!!!😊

Yes, from today our engineering students exam have started students are everywhere with books in hand to go through the important points they can make a note before they enter the exam hall. And for library, when student’s exam is over for the day be it morning and afternoon, it’s a rush hour for library because students come to return books and to issue books.

I want to share some stupid mistake.  I was taught to arrange library cards in returns section last week and I confidently arranged.. Has I said before, students exam have started so it’s a rush hour for library. Many students come to return their books and some students come to issue their books , so when in morning, students came to return their book I was handling  issue and reissue counter and ma’am and other library staff were handling return counter and when taking returns they were not able to find the locate library cards from the cards arranged, it was taking them to find, when this happened 3, 4 times then I realized i might have done something wrong, this intelligent lady of the universe did a very intelligent mistake of the universe obviously😊, I realized I might have not arranged the cards properly, then after the rush hour was over in morning I immediately arranged all the library cards in a right way. What mistake I did was that my first step was correct to arrange the card according to the authors name but I missed the second step i.e to arrange the cards according to the accession number as well so that it will easy to locate the card. And in afternoon when the rush hour was back the library staff was able to find the cards easily and I breathe a sigh of relief. So girls I learned a lesson through my stupid mistake. Don’t worry they haven’t fired me. They were very patient and understanding😊

Ma’am has given me the list of Bibliographies of books they have prepared and I have to check the count of books available in library and also to check the syllabus of the course in which there is a list of recommended books, if any book is missing to be added in the list. Through this activity I can understand their syllabus better.

Sharing with you a quote which is displayed in the library area.😊

"Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life. Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity." 
- Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

3rd, 4th and 5th day of my Internship

Hii Girls!!!😊

Writing blog after a days gap.

Sharing with you all the interesting things I learned last week😊

You know girls, like a regular library card, SFIT library also provides additional card with regular library card i.e Scholar Card for students who are topper in class, Merit Card for students who achieves more than 8.6 GPA (Grade Point Average) in exam and also there is Active User card for students who make maximum use of the library. Isn’t it great?😊 If students wants a particular book and it’s not available in library, students can request for the same by filling up the book requisition form and it is procured after the approval of teacher, librarian and principal. Learnt the process of how students can apply for new library card and if the library card is lost what are the process to be followed.

Catalogued Post Graduate books, last time cataloged software has different section to catalogue under graduate and post graduate books and yes also catalogued magazines and periodicals, barcoded them, displayed them. They have a pigeon rack like we have in our university library where we keep periodicals, same here they are used for display of magazines and periodicals and to keep past magazines inside the pigeon rack. What we saw or felt in our university library during our search for periodicals for our project, I went through all the process we follow before the magazines or periodicals are kept on display rack. It was a new learning.

Learnt how to print book card, which we keep inside the book pocket, due card where we stamp the due date. Also learnt practically how to stick the book pocket, where to put the accession barcode, where to stick due card and putting book card, where to tape the classification code on the book etc…

Ma’am shared how they maintain bills of books and magazines they order and what other documents is required when the bills are sent to the accounts department. Right know the software they are using is Libsuite  and soon they will be getting transferred to Koha, so ma’am shared with me what are the important points to be kept in mind before transferring a data to other software.

Valentine’s Day was yesterday and you might have also celebrated it. Last week our library selected red colour books which is part of the syllabus from each rack and kept it on display till Valentine’s Day, isn’t it fun and something interesting? I loved their idea.😊

What I like the most about the library is that they care for the students. They are there FOR the students, they think about the students comfort first. They come up with new ideas every time on how they can assist students with their studies for eg: if the students need question papers through email, they just have to give their name and email address and by end of the day the student receives the soft copy of the question papers he requested😊This is only one example I shared with you girls, there are many examples I will share with you during my internship😊 

These were my learning for last week. Looking forward to new learning tomorrow😊

Also wanted to share an article, it is little lengthy but it's a good article, whenever you get time do read.😊

This is the article which was published in 'The Guardian' newspaper. The article is a lecture given by a science fiction author Neil Gaiman at a Reading Agency annual on the future of reading and libraries. I hope you will like it😊

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on Libraries, reading and day dreaming

Tuesday 15 October 2013 14.51 BSTFirst published on Tuesday 15 October 2013 14.51 BST, The Guardian.

It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important. I’m going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I’m going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living through my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

                         

So I’m biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.

And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it’s that change, and that act of reading that I’m here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it’s good for.

I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read. And certainly couldn’t read for pleasure.

It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Literate people read fiction.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it’s a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it’s hard, because someone’s in trouble and you have to know how it’s all going to end … that’s a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you’re on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children’s books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I’ve seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It’s tosh. It’s snobbery and it’s foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn’t hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child’s love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian “improving” literature. You’ll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King’s Carrie, saying if you liked those you’ll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King’s name is mentioned.)

And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

You’re also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it’s this:

The world doesn’t have to be like this. Things can be different.

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It’s simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you’ve never been. Once you’ve visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we’re on the subject, I’d like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it’s a bad thing. As if “escapist” fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn’t you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child’s love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children’s library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children’s’ library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old.

But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally.

I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we’ve moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That’s about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before – books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it. That includes health information. And mental health information. It’s a community space. It’s a place of safety, a haven from the world. It’s a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now.

Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.

According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the “only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account”.

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce.

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.

I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us – as readers, as writers, as citizens – have obligations. I thought I’d try and spell out some of these obligations here.

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time.

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it’s the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers’ throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves.

We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we ‘ve lessened our own future and diminished theirs.

We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I’m going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It’s this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things.

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we’ve shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.

We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy. This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. “If you want your children to be intelligent,” he said, “read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

2nd Day of Internship

Hiii Interns !😊😊

What a cold morning was today!! You might have also felt it 😊

 It was a 2^nd day of my internship.  Morning today i worked on something which I noticed in our university library.. stapled and stamped newspapers ! I got chance to do it practically. New work has been allotted to me .. every morning to check in the newspapers if any article on the related subject or about new technology which is published, we make to make a note of it and from tomorrow I will start my first search 😊

 Today I also posted the list of active users on library blog J Girls, you remember we learned  cataloging in theory .. got to do practically on the system and I must admit it was a good experience. Also they taught me the process of updating details of new library member/student in system, what verification to be done etc. With all the above experience, simultaneously was at circulation counter doing issue and reissue of the books and also did shelving. Yet to know and understand their subjects so that it will be easier to interact with the students.😊

Ma’am discussed about the future plans/ work to do during internship, it’s exciting but also very challenging, hoping to achieve it.  So girls, 2^nd day went well. Looking forward to new learning tomorrow.😊

This poster was at the entrance of the library, wanted to share with you girls.  😊

It's a cold and starry night outside my window but lots of sleep in my eyes. It is past midnight and after few hours it will be again a new day so Good Morning to all of you and Good Night to Me😊 

1st day at St'Francis Institute of Technology Library

Hiii Girls☺☺☺☺

Just like you  even i was feeling very very nervous before reaching the institute, even though i had work experience before still i was feeling butterfly in my stomach as if it was for first time☺Institute campus is so beautiful, greenery all around the campus. The Library is in 2nd floor, very neat, well organized. Librarian Chinmayee ma'am and Library Assistant Sujata ma'am were very welcoming. They made sure i am comfortable. They took me around the library and the library collection. To be honest i never wanted to work in a library where they have only one kind of collection, i wanted to be around all kind of subjects, genres, language, but if life would have accepted all our wishes and choices wouldn't this world be full of chaos??☺☺ I took it has a challenge to learn new genre. The library has a collection full of computer, technology, engineering books and some general books like autobiographies, philosophy, psychology etc which i was happy☺☺ to see in middle of this huge collections of IT books. It was also great to see Chinmayee ma'am and Sujata ma'am conversation with students who come for issue and return books in their break, its the way they comfortably talk which brings smile on students face, be it regarding late fee, book pending anything, their communication skill is great.
                                                    Today i went through the whole collection of the library the way they arrange the books, how it is organized. They taught me how issue & reissue is done. After lunch break i even done practically at the counter, was a great experience. Being a student we only experienced issuing our books in front of the counter but the feeling being on the other side of the counter is great☺☺ Meeting students, talking to them, issuing their books was amazing feeling, even you might have also experienced by now☺ I even did shelving of the books today. 1st day experience was good. Looking forward for tomorrow's new learning☺☺