Traditional libraries preserve book experience in Internet era

New Delhi: Traditional libraries confronted with dwindling patronage and shrinking budgets continue to find their relevance following the 'survival of the fittest' theory, believe librarians at leading libraries. 
"Ours is one of the oldest libraries in Delhi. I have been employed here for more than 30 years and have witnessed several trends regarding the usage of library. 
Though the preferences and needs of the visitors have changed over the years but that hasn't really affected the no of visitors in the library over the years" says Radheshyam, an employee at Delhi Public Library, Chandni Chowk. 
Many predict that the digital age will wipe public book shelves clean, and permanently end the era of libraries. Librarians too say they are faced with an existential crisis.
"Despite the perceived outdated tag attached to the traditional libraries, both libraries and librarians are irreplaceable for many reasons. The role of a library is to create space either as a physical library, an online library or a hybrid model," says Neeti Saxena, Head, India and Sri Lanka, Libraries and Cultural Centres, British Council Library here. 

"The amazing amount of useful information on the web has, for some, engendered the false assumption everything can be found online. It's simply not true," says Karan, librarian at Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies. 
Karan adds " While one might use the internet or a search engine to find these databases, deeper access to them requires registration. You are still online, but you are no longer on the internet. You are in a library." 
In the digital age internet is effectively pulling students away from the stacks and revealing a wealth of information, especially to one who is equipped with the tools to find it. Though the traditional libraries are not the beginning and ending point of all scholarly research yet that doesn't establish that students have started ignoring libraries as effective mediums for research. 
Read more news at: http://zeenews.india.com/news/nation/traditional-libraries-preserve-book-experience-in-internet-era_808229.html

The hidden gem: Dara Shikoh’s library

Nivedita Khandekar, Hindustan Times

If you are on Lothian Road and going towards Red Fort, behind the row of shops on your left is a significant centre of learning. The present-day campus of Delhi government’s Ambedkar University has a hidden gem on its sprawling premises: the Dara Shikoh Library. An old but renovated building  sporting a mix of Mughal and British architecture is the proud legacy of Dara Shikoh (1615-1659), the eldest son and heir apparent of emperor Shah Jahan. However, his younger brother Aurangzeb beat him to the Mughal throne.

Dara Shikoh, an erudite scholar, had a huge collection of books. An example of his penmanship are his translations of several Upanishads from Sanskrit to Persian. After his death, the building underwent numerous changes.

It became the residence of a Mughal noble, then that of a British resident, a government college, district school, a municipal school and much later, in the 20th century, the Delhi government's department of archaeology moved in.

Every occupant or agency added on to its architecture. The English built the tall imposing Roman-style pillars as additions were made from two sides to the Mughal-era building. Inside, you can still see the decorated sandstone arches akin to that of a baradari.

The archaeology department’s administrative wing recently shifted to Vikas Bhawan II, adjacent to Metcalfe House. "However, our museum artifacts and archival records continue to remain there. In the future, we hope to put this building to better use,” said Vishwa Mohan, additional secretary, department of art and culture.

Read Detailed News at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/The-hidden-gem-Dara-Shikoh-s-library/Article1-947882.aspx

Literary treasures under threat at India's oldest library

One of India's oldest libraries, which was established by the British in the 19th century and contains several priceless works of literature, is facing closure after the government withdrew funding.

Hardayal Library in Delhi houses one of the country's finest collection of rare antiquarian books, including a 1676 print of Sir Walter Raleigh'sHistory of the World, a series of early British Indian travelogues and hand-written and gold illuminated translations of Hindu and Muslim religious works.

The collection is potentially worth millions, with 8,000 rare books out of a stock of 170,000.

It was established in 1862 as a book club for British officials who brought their own prized editions with them from home, and was kept in the Lawrence Institute in Delhi's town hall. In 1912 it became the Hardinge Library, named after the British viceroy, and was renamed the Hardayal after independence.

Today the building is dilapidated, its books are caked in dust and their musty pages are slowly disintegrating in rooms without air-conditioning.

Old cane office chairs and rusty metal desks are piled high throughout what was once a sweeping verandah. Stray kittens prowl the discoloured marble floor and a domed room on the roof terrace is squatted on by the watchman. Madhukar Rao, the chief librarian, said he was not allowed to discuss the government's decision to withdraw funds, but voiced his concerns for its readers and staff as he gave The Daily Telegraph a tour of his rarest volumes.

For the 300 students who work in its two reading rooms it is a rare sanctuary from Delhi's chaos. Yet the staff who serve them have not been paid for six months. "The cost of living is so high, how will they survive?" asked Mr Rao.

His colleagues nodded in agreement as they displayed their most treasured editions: Relation of Some Years by Travaile Begvenne, printed in 1634, Voyages Around the World by John Francis from 1705, and a series of London Surveys from 1754. There is a Koran written by the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and a translation of the Mahabharata, a Hindu religious epic, in Persian by the Islamic scholar Abul Faizi. It is illuminated in gold.

Many of the most valuable texts are deteriorating fast, in part because of poor preservation. The pages of Sir Walter Raleigh's history are protected by acetate sheets. "Each of these books could be worth thousands of pounds if they were in decent condition. A wealthy individual or the government should make sure it's preserved," said Peter Harrington, a London antiquarian books dealer.

Meena Agarwal, the mayor of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, said: "We have limited funds for such activities and the North Delhi Municipal Corporation cannot grant funds on its own. The government has to issue orders."

A campaign to save the library has been launched with the support of some of India's leading writers and scholars, including the critic and author Nilanjana Roy and the academic S Irfan Habib, who used it in the 1980s for research.

The library was set up with donations from Indian royalty, including the Begum Sahiba of Bhopal as a tribute to Lord Hardinge after he survived an assassination attempt when riding an elephant. The attack was led by the freedom fighter Lala Hardayal, after whom the library is now named.

You can read more news at: http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_literary-treasures-under-threat-at-india-s-oldest-library_1738388

Traditional archives rule over online ones

WRITTEN CHARM

As technology becomes increasingly available and digital information expands on a daily basis, academic library use is on the decline or so you would assume. 

Research libraries in colleges and university campuses are finding that gate counts and circulation of traditional materials are falling at many libraries across the country, as students find new study spaces in dorm rooms or apartments, coffee shops, or nearby bookstores. When all the information is available on mobile phones nowadays and news can be accessed with the click of a button, it looks like the humongous libraries are on way to becoming museums. 

But librarians who work in these places have a different take in this regard. According to them, libraries will never die out as they have their own charm. “The very concept of a library cannot end. It has a certain environment attached to it. Logo ko ek prakar ka anand milta hai yaha aake padhne me,” says Sudha Mukherjee, librarian at Delhi Public Library, H-Block, Sarojini Nagar. 

“Real readers look for satisfaction when they read a book and only a library can satisfy a reader. Online libr­a­ries can never be an alternative for physical libraries,” she further adds. 

The shift to electronic resources has many scholars and librarians worrying about the loss of a central community resource in physical libraries, whether they are at the university or public level. University boards are becoming increasingly skeptical about new additions and library buildings, since they cost so much. 

Many academics mourn the loss of a common culture of library use across campuses and communities while others hail the era of a new type of library with a new structure of knowledge and practical use. There has been a move to make the library seem more than a tool and storage house for books and information as different programmes are offered and coffee bars are added. This is a huge transition.

Another librarian Vandana Kamal Vanshi of National Archives, seconds Sudha and says, “Physical libraries are not losing their charm at all. Reading inside a library gives one a different feel all together. It cannot be compared with online libraries that are becoming increasingly available. They cannot give you the variety of reading as compared to the traditional ones. 

“One can have the access to each and every book available in a library but online, it is not possible for one to search all books at one time.”

With the rapid expansion of the internet to the general public, people are seeking answers in the quickest and most convenient way. While physical use may have been reasonably expected to decli­ne in recent years due to the large scale shift to digital libraries and the increase in sources such as e-journals, the trend has appeared to be on a much larger scale. 

An avid lover of books, Reshmi Sharma, a media professional cannot read anything online and only find satisfaction in reading an actual book. “I need to have the feel of a book. I cannot read online. I just do not get the feeling while reading something online.”

Going by the trend, the traditional library is here to stay though there is no denying that more and more libraries are increasingly digitising records and putting books for their readers. After all, the smell of a ‘real’ book can only be enjoyed by the bookworm.

A canticle for libraries

The hard thing is that you cant infuse jaan by donating books or legislating, it can come only from love

By Anurag Behar

The heat would melt the tar on the road, as I walked back home from school with friends. None of us would notice that the stiff black leather shoes burnt the feet with concentrated heat. From home I would walk to the British Library, the melting tar would stick to the shoe. Despite all our claims of the lake-generated pleasantness, Bhopal burnt in April and May, as much as the rest of north India.

The library was an air-conditioned oasis. I was willingly lost, hardly noticing the air conditioning. Lost in Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man. Lost in Punch. Lost in Christie, Sayers and Wodehouse. Lost gazing at the stars, in a fascinating atlas of the universe. Lost in Toynbee, Greene and Yeats. Often understanding little but so completely lost, that is how I discovered the world.

For every book I read, I read many more back-covers. I probably learnt more from the back-covers than I did later at my four-year engineering programme.

Last week I took my mother to a shop near the library. While she shopped I went and just stood in front of the library which was no longer there. In its place there was another library, the Vivekananda Library. This was a June evening, not a May afternoon, after 25 years. And out walked a familiar face from the past, from the different library.

Since 25 years change a boy, more than a man, he could not have recognized me. We chatted briefly, all he needed to know was that there was a time that I used to visit the British Library. His lament (in chaste Bhopali) started with “saheb, ab jaan nahi rah gayi” (there is no life any more). He said that they buy books with no thought, often from the shop across the road. The membership has dwindled. The staff runs the place for the salary they get, not for love; it’s a travesty of the memory of the great man whose name it bears.

Both of us were blinded by the dense fog of nostalgia. For me it was the discovery of the loss of the dearest of friends. The only solace being that perhaps things were not as bad as he made it out to be. I went back to my mother, who knows what the library meant to me.

When I used to go to the British Library, I also used to visit the Hindi Bhavan, which was my gateway to Indian literature. It had a great collection in imposing glass cases and steel almirahs, but it didn’t have any jaan. I would select the books quickly and get them issued, never linger on, never get lost.

The Bhopal I grew up in was a small town. My father grew up in a much smaller place, a very small kasba: Sarangarh. It was one of the many tiny “princely states” in Chhattisgarh. In the 1940s through to the 1960s, the success of people from that tiny, unknown place was remarkable. It was a simple measure of success in socialist India, the number of people who joined the ICS, IAS, IPS or other elite government jobs. The reason was well understood in Chhattisgarh: Sarangarh had good education. My father’s recounting of this good education has two stories. One is about how the local school became good.

The other story is that of the competition of libraries. In my father’s earliest memories, his tiny kasba had two libraries. He devoured the books in both. In some time he set up a library of his own, along with some friends. Some other people set up another library in competition. This competition was about who had better books. He was a member of all four libraries, benefiting from this unheard of phenomenon of library competition in a nondescript nook of India. Soon another one came up. A couple of years later, his uncle became the vice-president of the local municipal council. The uncle and nephew conspired to build what became a large municipal library, with a lot of jaan. It lit life there for a couple of decades; even I have seen its embers. My father says “whatever I became is in large measure because of that library”.

There is no substitute for a good schooling system and so we must improve ours. But education and learning, including that of adults, is also significantly influenced by the overall intellectual environment of local communities. Libraries are institutions that can substantially help with this. It’s no surprise that vocal gratitude for libraries, and lament if they are lost, I have heard from hundreds of people.

Even the age of Kindle and iPad, cannot obliterate the social institution that a good library can become. A library with jaan, is much more than books, it’s a place for meeting, exchange and discovery. If every kasba had one, the local schools and colleges would have an invaluable ally in education.

The hard thing is that you can’t infuse jaan by donating books or legislating, it can come only from love—I don’t know what else to call it.

Anurag Behar is chief executive officer of Azim Premji Foundation and also leads sustainability issues for Wipro Ltd. He writes every fortnight on issues of ecology and education. Comments are welcome at othersphere@livemint.com

Source:http://www.livemint.com/2012/06/13205015/A-canticle-for-libraries.html

Libraries Should Be What Users Want—With a Little Help from Librarians

By Francine Fialkoff on May 29, 2012 

The future is vibrant—and it is working—in Colorado, where LJ held its 12th Design Institute (DI), visited area libraries that reflect and respond to their communities, and heard from both librarians and architects about new library spaces for collaboration and creation. It’s engaged in upstate New York, at Fayetteville Free Library (FFL). There, Director Sue Considine and transliteracy development director Lauren Britton have launched a Fab Lab for creation of physical products—and those can be as high-tech as what comes out of a 3-D MakerBot or as low-tech as the product and designs of a crochet group, which can be made into a book to inspire others. (For more on maker spaces, listen to the OCLC/LJ webinar, Made in a Library.)As many of us here at LJ gear up to attend the American Library Association conference in Anaheim, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on the future of libraries. To quote political muckraker Lincoln Steffens, “I have seen the future, and it works.” Unfortunately, Steffens was referring to the post–World War I Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out. I feel a bit more confident, however, about the future I see.

It’s all-encompassing at Skokie Public Library in Illinois, which has a digital media lab for adults, not just teens or college students. It’s confirmed in LJ’s Patron Profiles (going online soon, in print p. 50–51), which reports that power e-users “aren’t choosing the web over coming to the library in person…they are choosing to do both.”

The message is the same all over: libraries are not just warehouses for books but places of creation and community. They’re not just information sources but maker spaces and social spaces. They’re places that “make us want to linger,” as MS&R architect Traci Lesneski put it at the DI at Denver Public Library last month. When Dan Meehan, HBM Architects, asked the roomful of librarians how many thought their libraries would have 25, 50, or 75 percent fewer print books in ten years, most hands shot up at 50 percent.

Librarians have already started planning for that change. Like Considine, they’ve begun repurposing their collection development dollars. “Lauren [Britton] came knocking at my door—she was a circulation clerk—with her idea [for a maker space] at a time we were looking at our budget,” says Considine, “examining what we do, what we should not do…. We want to help the community create content, not merely consume it…to provide access [to tools to achieve] their hopes, dreams, aspirations…. Librarians do that every day already.”

The particulars may vary, but the thinking is the same. Find out what your users want and “what they don’t even know they need,” said Louise Schaper at the DI, channeling Steve Jobs. (Schaper is project lead on LJ’s New Landmark Libraries; the latest round of winners, academic buildings, will be revealed in July.)

Despite all the talk of downsizing collections, libraries aren’t abandoning the book brand, or the collection. Joseph Sanchez (instructional designer at Auraria Library at the University of Colorado, Denver; a panelist at both the DI and the OCLC/LJ webinar; and a 2011 LJ Mover & Shaker) has helped lead development of the ebook purchase (not license) model at Douglas County Libraries, CO (see “Momentum Builds for DCL’s Ebook Model,”). His vision goes much further, with a collection development policy that would add the audio, video, ­ebooks, and “physibles” (digital objects that can become physical) that the library user creates to the library’s holdings. It dovetails with Britton’s idea at FFL. “In a read/write culture,” she says, “[library users] write their own book and make two copies: one to take home, one to be cataloged.”

In Sanchez’s plan, library users/creators donate one copy to the library of origin to be cataloged and circulated. They can sell the digital file or product to other libraries at fair market value. “Here’s thousands of libraries willing to distribute your creation if you agree to sell, not license it,” says Sanchez.

With minds like these in the library field, it’s no wonder the future looks like it really does work.

Source: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/05/opinion/editorial/owning-up-to-the-future-libraries-should-be-what-users-want-with-a-little-help-from-librarians/