South Asia Chapter Officers
Reshma Dangol
Chair
SAARC Secretariat, Nepal
Reshma Dangol currently works as a Professional Librarian in the SAARC Secretariat. She is the General Secretary of the Nepal Library Association and a Library Trainer of CTEVT. She has worked as a Country Representative and Chair - Elect for ASIS&T South Asia. She has been recognized in the IFLA Wall of Fame. She is engaged with ASIS&T and IFLA. She has been elected as a member of IFLA in the Standing Committee of Knowledge Management Section. She has been awarded the Excellence Award in SAARC 2019. She has conducted various webinars, seminars, and conferences nationally and internationally. She played a major role in the success of the 'Building Strong Library Association (BSLA)' program affiliated with IFLA. In addition, her journal article has been published in the 1st and 2nd International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (i-IKM), Bangladesh in 2019 and 2021. Her article in Knowledge Management has been published in Souvenir on the occasion of 10th Library Day of Nepal published by the Ministry of Education and Science, Nepal. She is currently associated as Honorary Reviewer for the UGC approved journal "College Libraries" affiliated by WBCLA. She worked as Rapporteur at the WLIC 84th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. She participated in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF 2021) in Katowice, Poland.
Sourav Debnath
Chair-Elect
IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India
Sourav Debnath works as an Assistant Librarian at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad, India. Before joining IIT (ISM) Central Library, he was an Assistant Librarian at NIT Tiruchirappalli for four years. Sourav was a Junior Research Fellow at DRTC, ISI Bangalore, for a year after obtaining MLIS from the Central University of Gujarat. A recipient of the Indian Library Association's Dr. K Padma Umapathy and KS Umapathy student fellowship in Lib. & Info. Sc. He served the ASIS&T South Asia Chapter as a Social Media Manager and Secretary from 2018 to 2022. Besides volunteering as a treasurer for SIG-III, he loves reading autobiographies in his leisure time.
Amara Malik
Secretary
University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan
Amara Malik is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Information Management, University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan. She is serving at various national and international professional forums including ASIS&T and IFLA. She has published a good number of peer reviewed articles in prominent journals of the field. A number of her research papers have been published in international journals (e.g. Information Development, Health Communication, Library Hi Tech, Journal of Information Science, Information and Learning Sciences, Online Information Review, portal: the Academy and Libraries etc.). She has also presented her research work in many international and national conferences and has participated in many seminars and workshops. Her research interests include LIS education, digital references services, human information interaction, social media and emerging technologies in the field.
Apart from that, she is member of national and international associations such as Pakistan Library Association (PLA), Punjab University Library and Information Management Alumni Association (PUILMAA), IFLA, Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). She is actively participating in professional activities, for example, working as; supervisor for IFLA internship program (2021- 2022), corresponding member of Section Education and Training (SET, IFLA), social media manager of BSLISE project (IFLA) and elected communication officer of South Asia Chapter and SIG Social Media (ASIS&T, 2021-2023).
Md. Atikuzzaman
Treasurer
Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
Md. Atikuzzaman is currently serving as a Lecturer at the Institute of Information Sciences at Noakhali Science and Technology University. He secured first position in the University of Dhaka in both his post-graduation and graduation in Information Science and Library Management. He received the ‘Lion Md. Jonab Ali and Farzana Jonab Gold Medal’ and ‘Mohammad Shahidullah Gold Medal’ at the university's 52nd and 53rd convocation. The Librarian Times (TLT) also recognized him with the "Excellence Student Award - 2018." Later on, he was awarded the Dean’s Merit List of Excellence and Dean’s Merit List of Honour from the university. He joined the Library Association of Bangladesh (LAB) in 2018 and has been an active member of the ASIS&T South Asia Chapter since then. Currently, he is serving as a treasurer in the chapter. His research interests are focused on social media, information literacy, cloud computing, knowledge management, and the use of the internet and other technologies. He has attended several international conferences in the USA, Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, and other countries.
Dr. Mohit Garg
Webmaster
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India
Dr. Mohit Garg is working as Assistant Librarian (Senior Scale) at Central Library, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Before joining the IIT Delhi, he worked as Assistant Librarian at Indira Gandhi National Tribal University (A Central University), Amarkantak, Madhya Pradesh. He has qualified UGC-NET-JRF and Ph.D. from IGNOU, New Delhi. He holds B.Tech(IT) from USICT, GGSIPU, New Delhi, and MSLIS from Indian Statistical Institute Bangalore. He is a two continuous term (2017-2021, 2021-2025) Standing Committee Member of IFLA Indigenous Matter Section, Netherlands, and other international and national associations. He has published Research papers in Scopus Indexed, and UGC CARE Listed Journals. His areas of interest are Application of ICT, Open Science, Research Methodology, Research Ethics, Information Retrieval, Data Science, and Machine learning.
Dr. Muhammad Tariq
Communications Officer
Dr. Muhammad Tariq, is an academician, researcher, trainer and Library professional, having more than 22 years of experience in LIS/IM field. He has been teaching at M.Phil and PhD level since 2014. Moreover, he has supervised 26 M.Phil thesis and 4 are still under his supervision. As a researcher, he has published his 28 research articles and also attended 14 national / international conferences and presented his papers. He has conducted many trainings in different institutes at national level. His area of interests are Artificial Intelligence, innovation, leadership, communication, online information resources and soft skills. Currently working in COMSATS University, Lahore Pakistan. He is Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Information Management Sciences (IJIMS) and also the chief editor of CUI Lahore Newsletter.
Rehana Kousar
Membership Officer
University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences,Lahore
Rehana Kousar is an enthusiastic library professional working at the University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences Lahore, Pakistan. She has been in profession for over 16 years, and has a wealth of experience in a variety of settings. Prior to joining UVAS, She served as Medical Librarian at Central Park Medical College. She is also associated with Chughtai Public Library (A Network of Public Libraries in Pakistan) since 2013 as Library Consultant.
She is PhD scholar at Institute of Information Management, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. She has presented many research papers at national conferences and participated in numerous trainings, workshops, seminars, symposia, webinars & also conducted various workshops & trainings as well. She is the Chief Editor of the kids' magazine "ننھے لکھا ری Young Writers” and also Chief editor of quarterly CPL newsletter. She also has contributed to a book titled "صحت تعلیم سے Health by Education".
Dr. Syeda Hina Batool
Past-Chair
University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Dr. Syeda Hina Batool is a postdoc/teaching research fellow at the UBC School of Information, Canada. In her permanent role, she is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Information Management, University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan. She is serving at various national and international professional forums including ASIS&T and IFLA. She has published a good number of peer reviewed articles in prominent journals of the field. She conducted numerous workshops nationally on different learning skills (information literacy, use of social media) including qualitative research, literature mapping, proposal writing, mendeley and NVivo software. Among her other responsibilities, she is editorial board member of one of the prominent journals of the field Libri.
Naresh Agarwal
Chapter Advisor
School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston
Naresh Agarwal is a Professor and Director of the Information Science & Technology Concentration at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston. He earned his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (NUS)'s Department of Information Systems, School of Computing. Naresh's research area is information behavior and knowledge management. His first book 'Exploring Context in Information Behavior' was published in 2018. His second book was published in 2021 as 'Engineering to Ikigai' in South Asia and 'You know the glory, not the story' internationally. He has been a keynote/invited speaker in several countries, including Bangladesh, France, India, Iran, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan, South Africa, the UK, and the US. Naresh is a Past President of ASIS&T. In 2012, he was awarded the ASIS&T James M. Cretsos Leadership Award. In 2018, he started projectonenessworld.com to gather human stories through interviews. You can learn more about Naresh at nareshagarwal.com.
Md. Anwarul Islam
Chapter Advisor
University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Md. Anwarul Islam is a Professor at the Department of Information Science and Library Management, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He earned his PhD from the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan. Additionally, he served as a VLIR-UOS fellow at the University of Antwerp, Belgium; an ACRC Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and a Jacky McAleer Memorial Titular Post-Doctoral Research Fellow for the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research interests lie with knowledge management, information behavior, social informatics and Informetrics. He has been a member of ASIS&T since 2015 and has served in various capacities. In the past, he served twice as a member of the membership committee, country representative, and communication officer in the Asia Pacific Chapter. Additionally, he has held roles as Co-Chair in SIG-III, Chair in SIG-KM, Chair in the South Asia Chapter, and jury chair in the Cretsos Leadership Award. He received the New Leaders Award in 2017, James M. Cretsos Leadership Award in 2021. Recently, he received the ASIS&T Louis Lunin Award in 2023. Currently, he is serving as an advisor to the South Asia Chapter, jury member for the Lois Lunin and SIG-Use award. .
Bhakti Gala
Chapter Advisor
Central University of Gujarat, India
Bhakti Gala is an Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Central University of Gujarat. She is the Past-chair (2020-21) of the ASIS&T South Asia Chapter and the current Chair-elect of ASIS&T SIG-III. As Chair of the SA Chapter, she has been awarded the ASIS&T Special Chapter Project Fund leading a team of multilingual and multi-country members working on COVID-19 health information literacy. A winner of the 2014 ASIS&T SIG III International Paper Contest, her collaborative research work on financial information literacy through public libraries was further shortlisted as Finalist, 2019 Best Short Research Paper Award, at the iConference, Washington, DC, USA. She has worked on international research projects funded by OCLC/ALISE and her scholarly outputs have been shared through national and international journals and conferences. Bhakti is passionate about reading and equitable access to information through libraries and her specific research interests are Information literacy, Open Access Resources, Public Libraries, Information Behavior, Metadata, Digital Archives, and Digital Libraries.
PAST COMMITTEES
2022-2023 Officers
Chair: Syeda Hina Batool, University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan
Chair-Elect: Reshma Dangol, SAARC Secretariat (Nepal)
Secretary: Amara Malik, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Treasurer: Dr. Amjid Khan, Allama Iqbal Open University, Pakistan
Membership Officer: Sadaf Rafiq, Government college university (GCU) Lahore, Pakistan
Social Media Manager: Mallikarjun Dora, Vikram Sarabhai Library, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India
Country Representative: Fiza Batol Yousufi, Afghanistan
Past Chair: Dr. Ruwan Gamage, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Chapter Advisor: Naresh Agarwal, School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston
Chapter Advisor: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Chapter Advisor Bhakti Gala, Central University of Gujarat, India
2021-2022 Officers
Chair: Ruwan Gamage, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Chair-Elect: Syeda Hina Batool, University of the Punjab, New Campus, Lahore, Pakistan
Secretary: Sourav Debnath, NIT Tiruchirappalli, India
Treasurer: Prasadi Kanchana Jayasekara, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka
Newsletter Officer and Webmaster: Manika Lamba, University of Delhi, India
Webmaster: Md. Monirul Islam, Army Medical College Chattogram, Bangladesh
Social Media Manager: Amara Malik, IIM, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Social Media Manager: Shona Akter, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Membership Officer: Kiran Sharma, BML Munjal University, India
Country Representative: Aminath Riyaz, Faculty of Arts, Maldives National University
Country Representative: Reshma Dangol, SAARC Secretariat (Nepal)
Past Chair: Bhakti Gala, Central University of Gujarat, India
Chapter Advisor: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Chapter Advisor: Naresh Agarwal, School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, Boston
2020-2021 Officers
Chair: Bhakti Gala, Central University of Gujarat, India
Chair-elect: Ruwan Gamage, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Secretary: Sourav Debnath, National Institute of Technology (Tiruchirappalli), India
Treasurer: Shohana Akter, Librarian at Alliance Francaise de Dhaka
Newsletter Officer and Webmaster: Manika Lamba, University of Delhi, India
Webmaster: Muhammad Rafiq, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Social Media Manager: Syeda Hina Batool, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Country Representative: Aminath Riyaz, Maldives National University
Past Chair: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of Dhaka
Chapter Adviser: Naresh Agarwal, Simmons University, USA
2019 – 2020 Officers
Chair: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of the Dhaka, Bangladesh
Chair-elect: Bhakti Gala, Central University of Gujarat, India
Secretary: Ahasan Habib, Islamic University of Technology (IUT), Bangladesh
Treasurer: Aminath Riyaz, Maldives National University
Webmaster: Muhammad Rafiq, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Social Media Manager: Sourav Debnath, Central Library of National Institute of Technology, India
Social Media Manager: Syeda Hina Batool, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Country Representative: Ruwan Gamage, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka
Past Chair: Kanwal Ameen, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Chapter Adviser: Naresh Agarwal, Simmons University, USA
2018 – 2019 Officers
Chair: Kanwal Ameen, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Chair-elect / Co-Chair: Md. Anwarul Islam, University of the Dhaka, Bangladesh
Secretary: Bhakti Gala, Central University of Gujarat, India
Treasurer: Aminath Riyaz, Maldives National University
Webmaster: Muhammad Rafiq, University of the Punjab, Pakistan
Social Media Manager: Mohammad Joynal Abdin, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Social Media Manager: Sourav Debnath, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirapalli, India
Chapter Adviser: Naresh Agarwal, Simmons University, USA