Bhubaneswar 6th June 2021: HelpLIS -Mission has been established specially to serve the COVID affected Library and Information Science (LIS)Professionals and the deceased professionals’ families. Due to this coronavirus pandemic, lots of precious lives were lost within the past year. The Library and Information Science (LIS) fraternity also have lost a number of our dynamic and dedicated library professionals due to Covid-19 infection and resultant complications. More than 60% of the LIS professionals are working in private institutions where they have neither job security nor retirement benefits. While the families of those working in government and well-established institutions were mostly compensated adequately and supported, those who were in most of the private establishments received very meager support or sometimes, almost nil. In this situation, a group of LIS Professional Associations have come together and decided to establish HelpLIS -Mission which will assist the Covid affected professionals and their families. For this purpose, the mission will create a fund through donations from LIS professionals, professional associations which will be maintained by MANLIBNET, New Delhi.
The website of HelpLIS-Mission (www.helplis-mission.org/ ) was launched during a webinar held on Sunday 06th June 2021, 11:00 AM, It will be mentioned by LIS Academy Bangalore. Along with MANLIBNET & LIS Academy, a few Professional Associations i.e., Odisha Library Academy, Madhya Pradesh Library Association, Asian Library Association, Society for the Advancement of Library and Information Science, Advance Information Network of Libraries are the founding partners of this mission. Also a few corporates i.e., Balani Group, Bharat Book Bureau, Informatics India Limited, Total Library Solutions are coming forward to support HelpLIS-Mission. In the coming days, many Library Associations and corporates will be coming together and exhibit their solidarity to the Librarian community. Odisha Library Academy President Dr. Banamber Sahoo in his address expresses the full cooperation to HelpLIS-Mission to achieve its goals and all members of OLA feel proud to be part of this mission.
