New Delhi: Ministry of Culture has launched the scheme “National Mission on Libraries – Upgradation of Libraries providing Services to the Public” in 2014 for sustained development of Libraries in India. Also Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation under its matching and non-matching schemes provides financial assistance for development of public libraries for various purposes eg. Books, furniture & equipments, modernization, construction of library buildings, mobile library services, establishment of children corner, facilities for specially-abled readers, seminars/workshops etc. As library is a State subject, Government of India cannot enforce any National Level Policy on the States.
- The components of National Mission on Libraries are: –
- Creation of National Virtual Library of India (NVLI) to facilitate a comprehensive database on digital resources of India on information about India in an open access environment. NVLI will facilitate federated searching through multilingual user interfaces. The project had been entrusted to Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (in collaboration with C-DAC, Pune and IGNOU, Delhi) to be completed in a period of three years (2016-19). A Three Petabyte Datacloud has been established at IIT, Bombay for hosting of NVLI. Soft launch of NVLI has been done on 15th February, 2018.
- Setting up of NML Model Libraries. The NML will cover 35 State Central Libraries, 35 District Libraries and 6 Libraries under the Ministry of Culture. So far 41 proposals received from 22 States/UTs for State Central Library/District Library have been sanctioned with budget of Rs 42.42 cr.
- Quantitative and Qualitative Survey of Libraries to prepare baseline data of libraries in India through a survey of 5000 libraries. The work had been assigned to Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) which has conducted survey of 5140 Libraries across the States/UTs, 4082 users of public libraries, 1003 users of private libraries and 2035 non-users and submitted its report.
- Capacity Building to enhance the professional competence of library personnel. 18 training programmes have been conducted and 685 library professionals have been trained. IFLIBNET conducted 10 training programmes and Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation (RRRLF) has conducted 8 training programmes so far.
- National Knowledge Commission in its report on libraries had recommended “In order to facilitate the coordinated development of libraries across different sectors and to provide the legislative framework, required legal support and financial backing to the Library Sector, the Government could, in course of time, consider including libraries in the Concurrent List of the Constitution of India. This should be done without in any way abrogating the existing responsibilities of the States towards libraries”. No decision has been taken by the Government in this regard.
- National Virtual Library of India Portal under the aegis of National Mission on Libraries has been soft launched on 15th February, 2018. This will allow access to various organizations under Ministry of Culture to use it and provide feedback for further improvements in the functionality of NVLI Portal.
NVLI Portal includes data from ten (10) National Museums, ASI Site Museums, ASI Library, National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities (NMMA), National Cultural Audiovisual Archive (NCAA), NPTEL, Union Catalogue (bibliographic collections from National Libraries), Catalogues of National Archive of India, Open repositories, web crawling of government websites and newspapers, and sample data received from many organizations. Presently the total record count in NVLI is 69,95,669 records.
- Library is a State subject thus any Public Library Act has to be enacted by the respective State Governments.
This information was given by Minister of State (I/C) for Culture and Minister of State for Environment, Forest & Climate Change Dr. Mahesh Sharma in a written reply in Lok Sabha today.
