Impact of Globilization on Staffing Pattern for Digital
Libraries in Comparision with the traditional pattern
Ajit Sagaji Sonawane
Dr. Prabhash Rath
M.E.S College of Engineering
Wadia College campus,
Pune-411001, India
librarian.ajit@mescoepune.org
Gokhale institute of politics and economics
BMCC Rd, Deccan Gymkhana,
Pune, Maharashtra, 411004, India
prabhashrath@yahoo.com
Abstract—In the modern era of digital libraries there is a
huge flow of information available in the desktop of the users. To
cope with the information deluge, librarians should have the skill
to extract and maintain the information over large units of
storage devices. This presupposes good software skills to extract
the information and disseminate the information to the required
users. So there is a need for change in the staffing pattern today
as librarians not only need to know the traditional methods of
information storage but also need to adopt the latest
technological trends that are coming up for information storage
and use the tools and techniques to extract the information and
disseminate it to the intended users. Various programming skills
are required by the librarians to extract and maintain the
required information on the digital storage. In this paper the
main focus is on the changing scenario of libraries and the
information stored and extracted by the librarians and how to
change the traditional staffing pattern to cater to the everincreasing need of users for the library.
Keywords—Traditioanl Staffing pattern;
Computing; Digital information Storage;
I.
ICT;
Cloud
INTRODUCTION
The evolution and proliferation of electronic resources and
digital information in libraries has a number of significant
impacts on the usage of the print resources and traditional
libraries (1). This proliferation of electronic information has
changed the way students and research scholars use print
resources and traditional libraries. As the electronic resources
have increased it is necessary for the librarian to maintain the
information and disseminate the information to the intended
users. There are lots of softwares available for information
management in the library for example some of the open
sources software are listed below (2)

Library Find:
This software is a web based metasearch
webserver application. This server uses the Linux
web Server

Calibre :
This Software is used to manage and maintain ebooks and access the e-books information. This
software runs on various operating systems.

Koha
This software is an open source integrated library
management system. Which provides connection
with the OPAC interface.
To use and maintain these software’s we need technically
trained library staff. The library staff should have knowledge of
maintaining various networking devices and the software
system the library staff should have adequate knowledge of
Open Source Software’s and tools how to install and configure
the tools and how to use these tools to extract the information
stored in the resource pools. The traditional staffing pattern,
which focuses on the traditional methods of information
management and storage, needs some modification so that it
can cater to the new generations libraries. The traditional
staffing pattern is designed according to the traditional methods
of information storage and extraction. In this modern era we
need to modify the staffing pattern as the modern method’s of
information storage and extraction has changed and staff that is
recruited need’s to have the best of the software knowledge to
support the intended users of the library. There is a changing
role of the future academic library professional in the next
generation E-Learning environment.
II.
TRADITIONAL STAFFING PATTERN
The traditional staffing pattern designed by Dr. S.R.
Ranganathan has recommended the following staff formula
which is followed by all the academic public research libraries
across India (10).
a) Professional staff
SB+SC+SL+SM+SP+SR+ST
b) Non-professional skilled staff
B /30,000+S
c) Unskilled Staff
SB /D/4+SC /2+SL+SM / 4+SP / 2+SR / 8+A / 20,000
+D / 500+B /60,000+ (S / 100) /4+V / 30,000
Where:
B /30,000+SE
c) Unskilled Staff
B = Annual budget allotment in rupees.
S = Number of seats for readers
A = Number of volumes accessioned in a year
D = Number of periodicals abstracted and indexed in a year
V = Number of volumes in the library
In the traditional staffing pattern all these formulas focus on
the hardbound books in this the e-books are not considered.
The era when the formula was developed there were no ebooks so this formula best suits for the traditional library. We
would like to propose in this era of globalization a staffing
pattern, which caters to the need of todays users and
information storage.
III.
MODERN STAFFING PATTERN
In this era of globalization the E-books are growing
tremendously we need to keep track of not only traditional
books but also the E-books and to maintain and keep track of
the information of these books we need skilled staff in the
library who can handle the E-Resources and the E-books. The
information technologies are changing day-today and growing
at a tremendous speed, the knowledge society is becoming
more complex, competitive and dependent on technological
changes and information explosion. The need of e-information
service to the users are also growing and becoming very
essential. The impact of web based e-learning and teaching
environment has influenced every facet of library and
information service in academic libraries and providing new
opportunities and challenges to the library professional for
involvement in the knowledge based society including
electronic and multimedia publishing, internet basedinformation service, global networking, web based digital
resources (3). What skills do librarians need in today’s worlds
with its Google-esque movement toward ubiquitous instant
instantinformation ? A content analysis of randomly selected
jobs ads from ALA’s online job List over a five-month period
suggests that librarians are acquiring a wider range of
information technology (IT) skills that different employers
deem essential (4). The borderless library is a technologically
empowered web-based library, which provides services to its
Users throughout computer networks. As the changes occurred
in library environment, the library and information science
professionals should be acquainted with different skills (5). The
library staffing pattern should change or adopt the
technological changes which are taking place in todays global
environment of technology. We would like to propose the new
staffing pattern of digital libraries in comparison to the
traditional staffing pattern.
The Modern staffing pattern which we would like to
propose is as follows:
a) Professional staff
SBE+SCE+SLE+SME+SPE+SRE+STE
b) Non-professional skilled staff
SB /DE/4+SCE /2+SLE+SME / 4+SPE / 2+SRE /
8+AE / 20,000+DE/ 500+B /60,000+ (SE / 100) /4+VE /
30,000
In the above formula a),b),c), The main change is E which
stands for Electronic, E-books, E-publications, E-resources,
Videos, CD, DVD, Digital Library.
B = Annual budget allotment in rupees.
S = Number of seats for Ereaders
A = Number of Evolumes accessioned in a year
D = Number of Eperiodicals abstracted and indexed in a year
V = Number of Evolumes in the library
The electronics data associated with the libraries today is
growing we have more E-books, E-journals and E-Resources in
the libraries across the world today.
The electronic data today is more as compared to the
traditional data today we need to maintain this electronic data.
In Our library we have maintained all the E-data onto the
Private cloud server which is only dedicated to the library and
is accessible over the LAN network to all the users of the
organization who would like to access the E-Information.
Figure-1. Cloud Library Infrastructure in the campus of M.E.S College of
Engineering
The above figure (Figure–1) shows the cloud library
infrastructure of our organization M.E.S College of
Engineering. It contains the following Unit as shown in the
Figure-2 below.
SBE /DE/4+SCE /2+SLE+SME / 4+SPE / 2+SRE /
8+AE / 20,000+DE/ 500+B /60,000+ (SE / 100) /4+VE /
30,000
Unskilled Staff for Digital Library= 10
Approximately above number of Unskilled staff is required
in the digital library so that the library infrastructure can be
maintained properly.
V.
DOMAIN AREA OF WORK
The domain area of the project is the web-based application
the multi-tier architecture is the main consideration of .Net
2010 that allows creating the system. The Software allows
managing and maintaining the project Status and reports that
are very useful for better productivity and also less time
consuming.
a) Microsoft .NET Framework Common Language Runtime
Figure-2.Overall View of Cloud Library Infrastructure in our Organization
This library infrastructure requires a professionally trained staff
in the domain of information technology today digital
information is growing at a tremendous speed the librarian and
the supporting staff needs to keep-pace with the every
changing requirement of the library information storage and
access.
IV.
IMPORTANT RESULTS OF WORK DONE
Finally we have drawn the conclusion using the new staffing
pattern proposed for the ideal Digital library envisaged at
M.E.S College of Engineering. All the calculation done is
based on the E-Resources and Digital library Usage.
a) Professional staff
SBE+SCE+SLE+SME+SPE+SRE+STE
= 1+1+1+1+0+0+0;
Professional Staff Required for Digital Library = 4
The Current Scenario of this College is they have to
depend on the System Administrator of the College to get their
technicalqueries solved.
The above formula proposes that they should at least have
4 technically qualified staff that can manage the digital library,
which is running in this college.
Figure 3. Common Language Runtime
The (CLR) Fig [3] is responsible for run-time services such
as language integration, security enforcement, and memory,
process, and thread Management. In addition, the CLR Fig [3]
has a role at development time when features such as life-cycle
management, strong type naming, cross-language exception
handling, and dynamic binding reduce the amount of code that
a developer must write to turn business logic into a reusable
component. The recruitment policies in the ICT era of digital
libraries require skilled man power which can be calculated
using the following formula. LIS Curriculums = Skills
Required in Digital era = Job Advertisements = Recruitment
Policy (6).
b) Non-professional skilled staff
B /30,000+SE
= 1500000/30,000+30
Non Professional Skilled Staff for Digital Library=
80
This requirement is their for nonprofessional skilled staff
which will look after the library infrastructure and main the
library infrastructure.
c) Unskilled Staff
VI.
IMPLEMENATION OF THE STAFFING PATTERN
The entire infrastructure required in the digital library is
deployed now the main focus is on the implementation of the
newly designed staffing pattern for the digital library. We need
to hire skilled manpower for the utilization and maintenance of
the digital library infrastructure and to provide access to the
intended users seamlessly without any obstacle to the intended
user of the library we have calculated the number of Eresources in our organizations which are related to the library
e.g E-books, E-journals, E-Magazine, E-News papers etc.
which accounts to approximately 1.25 Laks of resources which
is around 3-Terabyes of data. We have also calculated the DOI
numbers of each E-resource which was available in the library
resources.
So to manage and maintain this information we have
taken into account the new formula and calculated the staff
required and the skills required by the library staff. From this
study we figured out that the software skills required by the
library staff should be as given in the next paragraph. As the
library is shifting its focus from concentrating on supply
towards centering on what is asked for by its customers. In
correspondence with this trend, information reference is
becoming more and more significant. The library acquires a
gateway function, referring to information, irrespective of the
location where it has been physically stored (8).
Fig 5. Login Screen for reporting tool of library software.
For proper management of a Digital Library, the library staff
should have basic knowledge of programming languages such
as ASP.NET, C#. NET, JSP, PHP, APACHE SERVER,
TOMCAT SERVER. The basic programming and
configuration information of these softwares should be known
by the newly appointed staff for the library to manage and
maintain the digital library infrastructure.
In the Library a software has been designed which is a web
service which helps the staff access the various resources in
the library. The web services are as follows.job skills, both
technical and behavioral, currently deemed desirable by
prospective employers. The results also illustrate the
usefulness of using content analysis and co- word analysis
methods for establishing a baseline for exploring the field of
librarianship The Technical cluster most closely resembles
some skills associated with Systems Librarians (9).
The above screen shots are of the web services designed and
developed for maintenance and information extraction from the
digital library infrastructure. Various web services are designed
to perform most of the operations which are also available in
the traditional library. Some of the operations which are same
in modern and traditional library are implemented as web
service in this software program this software can be accessed
over LAN, WIFI, MAN, WAN network.
This software helps the developers to design their own user
interface for the library and use these services which will help
them speedup the process of information exchange over the
global infrastructures. The library information can be accessed
by the intended user from any where with out any obstacle. Its
simple need only login information and then we can manage
the library information.
VII.
Fig 4. Web Service Created for Project Management
CONCLUSION
Last but not the least we would like to conclude by saying
that in the era of globalization there is a need to change the
staffing pattern to cater to the needs of the digital library.
Nonstop design and development sounds too good to be true.
So how do you keep multiple teams-distributed around the
campus or around the globe working in concert and focused on
the end goal? We need to have good and trained man power
which can help the library grow and maintain the existing
infrastructure of the digital library. The staff should have
adequate knowledge of programming skills of IT and should be
able to tackle problem, which are there in the library
management software. He should have good and sound
knowledge of software like FTP client where he can push and
pull information from the server and update/upload the
contents to the web servers. He should maintain all his
resources efficiently and effectively and provide all the
resources to the intended user he should give high availability
of information 24x7 with out any delay in the extraction of the
information. Hence in todays global environment of
information and technology a librarian and the library staff
have a challenging role to play for information dissemination
to intended users. So we need to change the staffing patter to
support the global changing scenario of libraries.
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