Research in Library and Information Science in India

Last Friday, I had attended a lecture at local library. The talk was delivered by a Professor from one of the leading Library Science school of Bangalore. Topic was "Research Opportunities in Library Science". Part of the lecture, the speaker commented about two aspects of Indian Library Science research - 1) too many survey based or citation analysis based research topics and majority of them that too with similar themes 2) Plagiarism. I am not surprised to hear about this. Indeed, couple of Professors with whom I interacted in the past echoed similar views. I am not sure whether they are making any efforts to reduce such research by educating their students.

One issue I can think of are job related opportunities and necessary qualifications in the academic field. This is encouraging lot of part-time researchers to opt topics that are easier and obviously survey or citation based topics. Indeed, some of the library departments are in unannounced number race to produce PhDs. Things only will change if library schools encourage research scholars to focus on utility based research.