Apostles of Culture

Like olden days, reading a book under a tree or by the lake has become a distant dream today for most of us. In today’s world where everyone is hankering after money, hobbies come as refuge to many plodding souls and reading is been considered a serious and passionate hobby since time immemorial. The history of library dates back to as early as 2000 BC and have constantly glorious to withstand its long journey unlike everything else and serves as a testament to man's thirst for knowledge.
The bibliotheque, the library or the “puthibhoral” represents a civilization’s diary. Why libraries exist? They exist to facilitate communication between two person in the present, or from someone in the past to someone in the present or from someone in the present to someone in future. Traditionally, public libraries are seen as being civilizing agencies within a society. All famous kings and philosophers gave a lot of importance in building and improving public libraries to encourage education in their kingdom. Underlying reason of the existence of a library is the faith accepted by our society that reading is a good thing, that it leads to desirable ends, and that it has the power to alter people for the better. The duty of Public library can be summarized as to “ provide the printed and non-printed materials to meet the individual and group needs of its constituency for information, education, self realization, recreation and cultural growth and for assistance in carrying out their duties as citizens and members of the community”.  

Another purpose of the library in a democratic society might be called the civic aim. The public library offers citizens of a democratic society the means by which they may become informed and intelligent citizens. Its not library’s aim to tell people what opinions to hold on current issues but to rather provide the range of views on this issues, so that people may makeup their own minds about where they stand on the issue. However one can argue that the results of this may not be measurable or seen in a specific period of time but it would be wrong to disregard the importance of its presence in the society if it functions in a desired way.


Today library should be considered as an establishment which requires an equally good  marketing team like any other institution. While the existing patrons and the library staff take pride in the library’s collection, it requires promotion to grow and thrive. Showing that library can be fun place is important specially for those community who don’t use the library and harbor unflattering images of library and librarians gathered from movies or peers. Contrary to popular perception, promotional activities are not always about convincing people to buy the latest and the greatest, it also includes changing the attitude and behavior for the benefit of individual and society.  
Making the public aware of the opportunities they can avail will draw people from all walks of life. The aim of the library staff is to kindle their interests, assist in their research, send them back enthusiastic of what they have found and encourage them to return again. The library programs should be such that it enables the new generation to spend time differently!
Involvement of the community, maintaining good relations with the alumni of prestigious schools and universities of the city, an outreach team to develop relations with NGOs working with children, senior citizens; various women empowerment and labor organizations, having provisions for adopting the library and become life members will attract more readers like never before.Summer activities for students and regular exhibitions and book releases in the library will keep the public engaged and help bond with the library. Literary initiatives like organizing reading marathons or writing contest for kids and adults will benefit the patrons as well as the library.   In addition to hosting community wide activities and events, hosting special programs at the library to highlight art, history or literature can bring in new patrons and show that the library is a central place for lifelong learning. Assamese history so rich and enthralling is dying in the closed books of history section of the library. The role of library has a bigger role to play today than any other period of time - to revive the good old days when reading was fun for the kids than watching Tv or playing video games. The influence of the library programs should be such that the new generation is willing to spend their holidays amidst the kings, queens, battlefields, beautiful courtyards or into the deep ocean and outer space. The programs should be a blend of history, new scientific discussions, art and poetry sessions depending on the interest of the patrons. A time to time statistical survey from the readers  should be conducted for the library to understand its user’s needs and interests.
In today’s world, when everything is weighed on its presence in the digital world, the city libraries are still faceless in this world and hence having a hard time surviving. Change is inevitable and growing with new age technologies is the only wise thing to do to keep in touch with society. Presence of technology in the library has all the advantages - starting from online catalog of books, circulation and also training in use of computers will attract many more readerships. Library is a place where people should be comfortable coming and spending their time, get their questions answered and find motivation to carry on with their quest of knowledge. Public libraries should have the best specialist for customer assistance in their research. Libraries can be the most dynamic and exciting place to work for an individual who wants variety. Public libraries  assist the most heterogeneous population of any type of library.
Again it is a wrong notion that library is only for educational purposes. Recreation should be also given utmost importance. There is no bigger aim than to entertain people. “Leisure” reading that does nothing more than delight the souls is always been deemed less worthy than that which raises lofty questions for discussions. Media libraries, sound recordings, collection of old assamese, bengali and bollywood movies also are wonderful ways for people to keep a continuous interest in their community libraries.
It is very exciting to see quite a few organizations and library associations, however their website gives limited information about ongoing events if any ? Some of them have never been updated from the date they have been created.
Library can be an important link between government and its citizens. Its is about time that library services have digital documentation of all government gazettes and reports to fulfill the demands of right to information. Public libraries should be archival repository of government documents as well as maintain an up to date database of all recent official publications.  A government document is defined as "informational matter which is published as an individual document at government expense, or as required by law". They can be the different types of documents published by government organizations such as administrative reports, gazettes, governmental notification, statistical reports, budget documents,committee and commission reports,research reports, bills, law reports, digest and parliamentary debates or reports of various parliamentary committees.. However the debate still continues as to what should be available to the public and to what extent. Measures have been taken by the Central secretariat library to digitize all government documents up till date, a project which started in 2002, however no regular updates on the progress of e-governance has been reported. India has made tremendous progress in the field of IT and has a prominent face in the global  IT senario, but it is sad that the public libraries in this country still follow the old convention of book keeping.
To evaluate the success of government programs, to be able to assert their rights, to debate the issues of the day, citizens must have access to current and historic sources of information generated by government.

Furthermore, adequate measures should be taken for the establishment and maintenance  public libraries in the villages and small towns of Assam and india.  India is the biggest nation of villages in the world. Development of india is incomplete without giving equal importance to improvisation of living standards of rural masses and fostering intellectual growth of the 70% population of india dwelling in villages. The condition of most village libraries is appalling. Due to lack of funds, or inefficiency of fund allocation, most of the libraries donot have the money to purchase daily newspapers. New books or monthly periodicals is a distant dream. The guidelines of the Planning commission suggest that there should be one village library for a population of 1000. But recent statistics (*study conducted in bihar) reveal that one village library is serving a population of 90,000 and more than 3,000 libraries have been shut down due to lack of funds in the past two decades. At this time of financial instability and lack of funds, there are more creative ways to keep the village libraries from closing their doors. The city public libraries should should adopt few neighbouring village libraries and initiate inter library loans, that is facilitating circulation of  books and periodicals within the library system. Organizing special educational programs in the village libraries will boost the reading culture in the kids and adults amid bringing many other good effects in the society.

Libraries are humbling places, because they remind us of the vast store of knowledge which we can approach but never really control. They are humanizing places because we are brought into contact with so many lives lived in the past as well as in the present. They are symbols of continuity of learning. They stand for such basic principles as freedom of expression and to recognize and respect diversity of views. Preserving the library culture and fueling its growth and expansion should be given utmost importance for a more well informed democratic society and a fast pace development of our country.