'E quitable access', 'inclusion', 'innovation' - these words get bandied about with a certain ease. Yet, curiously, in India, even as the call for 'innovation' and 'inclusion' grows louder, the silence on the institution that can help it happen - the public library - remains deafening. A network of libraries, funded and cared for by the exchequer, open to all and without charging a fee, has the capacity to nurture and promote each of these lofty aims.
The fact is that reading lies at the heart of learning and innovation. It is the one act that has the ability to change the way we view and engage with the world. But the mere reading of school textbooks or the prescribed reading lists is not enough.
Books have the capacity to introduce us to the worlds that would otherwise remain inaccessible. They can change our lives by introducing us to new ideas, engaging our minds, giving impetus to our creative selves and pushing us to innovate. It is not just that the absence of public libraries affects the poor, it affects all sections and classes and society, both individually and collectively.
Libraries have the ability to enhance capacities for educational improvement of all classes in society. For, libraries are not just collections or storehouses of books. They are an ecosystem in themselves. Now, more than ever, libraries serve as distributors of many information services.
From being simply a storehouse of books, libraries provide access to computers, to adult learning classes, skill upgrading, job search centres and help in community cohesion. We have seen the central role that libraries play in countries like the US and in many parts of Europe. It is in great measure because of multifarious roles that public libraries play that people rise up to protest at any talk of closure.
The well-to-do can access, at best, in a limited manner, a part of the offerings of a modern public library. They can buy books or seek membership of private exclusive libraries, but that too is tempered by the capacity to pay and competing uses for that money.
Andrew Carnegie, an immigrant from Dunfermline in Scotland, believed that "there is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free public library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration." It is no small wonder then that Carnegie donated the bulk of his money to setting up free public libraries.
Unfortunately, a public library system is woefully lacking in our country. Even the poor substitute of small neighbourhood libraries, peddling mostly in current and popular fiction and non-fiction titles, are almost non-existent and dwindling where they do exist. Consider the capital city of Delhi; it doesn't have an active, vibrant public library system.
The Delhi Public Library, put in place in 1944, is woefully neglected. Its network has not kept pace with either the sprawl of the city or the increase in population. Instead, Delhi is served by a few private libraries or services provided by foreign missions. These are limited in scope and collection and are invariably paid services; leaving more outside its service net than within.
Source | Economic Times | 17 November 2011
