The American Library Association is observing National Library Week in the United States of America from April 8 to 14. India celebrates National Librarian’s Day on August 12, the birth anniversary of the great library science exponent, S.R. Ranganathan. The word ‘National’ in the latter instance simply means an occasion observed throughout the nation: there is no special reference to the National Library, still surviving far from the capital, in a beleagured Calcutta.
Perhaps this is just as well. The National Library remains a shockingly neglected institution even after seven decades of Independence. A line department of the Union ministry of culture, it currently runs on 50 per cent of its sanctioned staff strength, forcing librarians to double as accountants or security officers. The annual budget of a fraction above Rs 50 crore is short of what the institution, almost a stranger to electronic resources prior to 2011, needs for a respectable upgrade. The inhouse digitization and online catalogue have made reasonable progress, although delivery of manual, electronic and reprographic services remains tardy. Little has been done for users with disabilities. Stock-taking and stack-security are the first to be compromised when resources run low. In addition, positions first advertised in 2010 are still vacant.
Most important, compliance with the law demanding deposit of books and newspapers published in India is abysmally low. The Delivery of Books and Newspapers (Public Libraries) Act lies unrevised since 1956 in spite of a draft revision prepared at the National Library in 2012. Legal brains in government are known to favour punitive measures; the proposed amendment argued for incentives such as discounted postal charges. ‘Born digital’ material (including such government publications as census reports) do not reach the nation’s apex library because the law lags behind technology. And the weak trickle of state gazettes, other official documents and United Nations publications threatens to dry up when the communications infrastructure is unprepared to receive them.
Compare the official inertia to amend the depository law with the history of the Press and Registration of Books and Publications Act. Passed in 1867, the regulatory act has seen many revisions, the last bill being proposed in 2011. Publishers are only too ready to comply. Understandable. It makes sense to be more wary of the director general of the state police than the director general of the National Library.
The government is generously spending on laudable projects such as the National Digital Library and the National Virtual Library. The same authorities are taking forever to enforce publishers to provide cataloguing-in-publication data that would save time and money in a nation that speaks over 1,600 mother tongues. Spare a thought, reader, for the Alipore cataloguer and the harried Indian National Bibliography compiler on its premises the next time you feel like taking an anti-depressant after a visit to Calcutta’s National Library. (The Telegraph)
