Report on the National Training Workshop on CMS

Report on National Training Workshop on Content Management Systems

Conducted by MyDLIS – SAP, Dept. of Library and Information Science,
University of Mysore, Mysore
August 27 – 29, 2009

The National Workshop on CMS was inaugurated on 27th August 2009 by the honorable Vice-Chancellor Prof. V. G. Talawar. He started his inaugural speech with a punch statement “Knowledge is Dynamic, Information is Dynamic”. In his inaugural address he emphasized that Information professionals like Librarians have to update their knowledge and skills. He said, there are lots of opportunities available for the enthusiastic professionals. He pointed out that agencies like UGC have come out with ideas like Refresher course, UGC-SAP etc. to promote research and the dissemination of knowledge. He urged the professionals to come out of the shells and learn the technology and apply them in the library environment.

Dr. A. R. D. Prasad, DRTC, Bangalore gave the keynote speech. He gave a panoramic view of Content Management Systems. He said that content development is more challenging than software development. It is the content which makes a website more meaningful. Software, he said, is just a tool and not an end in itself. He said Joomla is one of the most popular content management systems. He urged the participants to adopt Open source systems like Joomla. He said, librarians have inherited the skills of information organization; it is the high time that we use them to organize the content on the web for meaningful retrieval.

Prof. P. Venkataramaiah, former Vice-Chancellor, presided over the function. He said information and knowledge are the two major needs for academic community. He said workshop like the present one would equip the knowledge intermediaries like librarians.

Dr. Mallinath Kumbar, welcomed the gathering and Dr. M. Chandrashekara, proposed vote of thanks.

On the first day, 3 sessions were held. The resource person for the 3 sessions was Mr. Anand Kumar Pandey, DRTC, Bangalore. He explained the various terminologies and concepts required to use Joomla. He gave a practical demonstration of the software.

The second and third days sessions were handled by Mr. Praveen Ratna Deepak. He gave a wonderful hands-on experience to all the participants. Particiants appreciated his patience in taking questions, sense of humour and simplicity in his explanation. He covered topics from installation to modules to menus and advanced features. He gave a surprise test and a project. There were 29 participants for the workshop.

The workshop was concluded on 29th August 2009. Dr. Jagadeesh Arora, Director, INFLIBNET;
Dr. E. Ramareddy, Librarian (Retd), Central University, Hyderabad; Dr. Shalini R. Urs, Professor, University of Mysore; and Mr. N.V. Satyanarayana, Managing Director, Informatics India pvt. ltd., were present for a panel discussion. Dr. Shalini R. Urs raised two important questions: Whether the libraries have transcended themselves in to the content management systems? Whether the fundamentals of libraries have changed? The panelists gave their perspectives from their vast experience. The session ended with the distribution of the certificate. Dr. Mallinath Kumbar, Dr. M. Chandrashekara, Dr. N.S. Harinarayana, Dr. H. Adithya Kumari, Dr. R.T.D. Ramesh Gandhi and all the other participants were present.

Report Prepared by: Mr. Chetan Hegde M, Librarian, Amrita School of Arts and Sciences, Amrita Vishwavidyapeetham University, Mysore campus, Mysore - 570026