How often do you visit a library? Of course, you will be going to your school’s reading room or library almost every day, but have you ever been to a public library in your district centre?
You must. Libraries pack a lot of knowledge in different forms –books, newspapers and magazines, compact discs, monographs, digital documents, and many other forms.
Have you heard about electronic books or e-books? They are paperless and in digital forms. Now there are gadgets available to read them on. Yes, you guessed it right. The iPads, tablets, and similar devices can read e-books. With paperless books growing in number, soon there will be libraries without any physical books. No, it is not a joke.
It is happening already. A new 4,989 square-foot library called BiblioTech, in the Bexar County in San Antonio in the United States (US), will hold no physical books. All the titles are in the e-book form.
The US also has the world’s largest library. Established in 1800 in Washington DC, the library is now divided in four buildings. It also has another campus in Virginia. If you measure it in terms of shelf space and the number of books, the Library of Congress is the world’s No. 1 of its kind. In total, it has 151,785,778 items! This includes more than 2 crore catalogued books and 5,600 books that were printed before year 1500, and several monographs, newspapers, reports and other printed material.
There are several hundreds of rare books and more than 60 lakh manuscripts.
The library administration says this mammoth collection of books can fill more than 1,300 km of bookshelves.
The library is open to the public, but mostly it is used by the 541 members of the US Congress, their staff and other members. It is one of the best research and reference centres in the world. Interestingly, this library also runs a service called the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. Through this, it offers audio books and books in the language of the blind, Braille, and serves about 8 lakh people in the US.
Ancient libraries
A lot of people describe ancient Egypt as the cradle of civilizations.
So it is no wonder that one of the most important old libraries is located in Egypt. The Royal Library of Alexandria, which is also called the Ancient Library of Alexandria,is located in, as the name suggest, Alexandria – the second largest city of Egypt. In ancient times, this was a place of union for scholars and statesmen.
There is no accurate information on when was this library set up.
But many believe it was organized by Demetrius of Phaleron during the rule of Ptolemy I Soter (367 BC– 283 BC). An orator and scholar from Athens, Phaleron modeled the study centre after his teacher Aristotle’s school. The library faced several attacks. One of these came in 48 BC from Julius Caesar of Rome, who burned it down. Another one, from Roman emperor Aurelian, also caused much damage. Still the library continued to be a beacon of knowledge for people across Africa and West Asia. Today, the modern version of the library is called Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
It is a major cultural centre now. It can hold about 10 lakh books, features an Internet archive, six specialized libraries for arts, video and audio materials, the visually challenged people, children, young people, microforms and rare books and special collections.
It also has four museums for Antiquities, Manuscripts, Sadat and the History of Science. The library also runs 15 permanent exhibitions on various subjects, along with a planetarium and four art galleries.
Now, what about the most important libraries in India? We have a strong tradition of libraries and teaching. Remember, the Nalanda University that saw its great days during year 427 to 1190s had a very vast library. It was so vast that when an army under army under Bakhtiyar Khilji attacked it in 1193 and set it afire, it took them about three months to burn the whole library down! Since the British started ruling India, the country saw a series of libraries, especially in cities like Kolkata and Mumbai. The nationalist movement for freedom also gave momentum to libraries.
Today, the country has thousands of libraries, including public, government-funded libraries, university libraries, privately-sponsored libraries and cooperative libraries.
In India
During the British Raj, the National Library Kolkata was called the Imperial Library. It was formed in 1891. But much before it was set up, there was another library in Kolkata, called Calcutta Public Library (1836). The British later merged both these institutions to create the library we see today.
After India got freedom, a legislation in 1948 gave it a special status.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was the then Union Minister of Education, opened the library for public use in 1953. Today, it is the largest library in the country and is located on 30 acres in Kolkata’s Belvedere Estate.
The library has a total number of about 25 lakh books. Apart from collecting English books, the library has dedicated divisions for regional languages such as Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, and more. Its Sanskrit division collects and processes Pali and Prakrit books. The library also has a foreign language collection, which includes books from
languages such as Chinese, Thai, French, Polish and many more. The library is run by the Union Ministry of Culture.
There are several similar libraries in India. Prominent among them is the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. It is located in Teen Murti Bhavan premises, where Pandit Nehru lived for 16 long years. Interestingly, this building was designed by British architect Robert Tor Russel and built in 1929-30. The library stores all the works that talk about India’s struggle against the British. It also encourages academic research in history. During the past four decades, this library has become an important institution of research.
It regularly conducts lectures and seminars. The famous Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture is held here annually.
The library houses several thousands of books, along with an impressive manuscript store. Over a thousand precious collections are here; they run into more than 50 lakh pages in 24,000 boxes. Its oral history section boasts of audio interviews with eminent people from India and abroad. The size of this collection is really huge: at the moment, it has 8000 spool tapes running into over 6,000 hours of interviews.
Further, it stores about 2,700 audio spool tapes of speeches that Nehru had given. The library is located in the same building that
houses the famous Nehru Planetarium in Delhi.
Jinoy Jose is a Delhi-based journalist.
