VARANASI: Call it decreasing interest in reading or negligence of the district administration towards library, the books shelves at the government district library are gathering dust and entering into oblivion.
Established in 1957 near district headquarters, the plight of the district library is that only four to five readers visit it daily. Records point out that as many as 850 people hold life-time membership of the library. These are the records of 1962.
Librarian Chandradeep Ram Chandela said that the membership is not renewed so it is difficult to identify the members who are regular. "Around 5-6 members have taken the membership this year," he said.
The number of visitors and members is low as compared to other libraries, it also failed to keep stock of good and better conditioned books in the shelves.
Chandela said that there are around 38,000 books in the library. "The books are purchased by Putakalaya Prakoshtha of the state government which sends the books in libraries. We have recently received around 150 books. We do not place a demand of books and topics of books with the state government," he added.
In the past, the library had books of wide range of subjects like history, geography, economics, literature, agriculture, theology, physics, chemistry, biology and other subjects. At present, it had a good stock of Hindu, Urdu and English literature books.
The books are not arranged according to subjects, topics and genre. The almirah and shelves do not mention about the subjects of books. Most of the books stocked in some almirahs were poorly arranged. Bindings and pages of the old books were damaged.
The librarian is not aware about the funds received by library for annual maintenance.
The librarian said that soon it would be made fully computerised. "A computer, scanner and other equipment have reached us. But we lack trained manpower to handle the work as it involved bar coding of books, library cards and other technical aspects. We are waiting if government will provide any assistance for this, till then computers are placed in office itself and not in use," Chandela said.
At present, there is one hall in which over 25 almirahs and shelves are kept along with the reading desk.
In 1994, there were proposals to extend the library with two more halls which would be connected to each other.
"The halls are half built as the funds were not proper utilised by the then incharge and at present we are using the place as store," said Chandela.
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