You wouldn’t be inaccurate to picture 45-year-old writer Nita Deb typing away feverishly at her keyboard. Her recent mails to her friends had sentences like, “must do something now”, “please act fast, we have no time” and “can we at least spread the word?” She signs off as “Desperate, Nita”. And yet, this is not her usual style.
The reason for her desperation?
A few months ago, when the British Council Library (BCL) asked its members to fill in a customer feedback form, Deb had eagerly suggested a few changes. A member of the BCL since her school days, Deb enthusiastically proposed how they could also go online to reach out to more members. Instead, last week, she received a mail from the British Council announcing the closure of their Nariman Point library.
For good.
“I can’t believe I will never live my Saturday ritual again. Commuting from Bandra to South Mumbai with my 10-year-old son in tow, spending the day at the BCL browsing through books, picking up good music and then a treat at Colaba’s Theobroma to celebrate time well- spent…its all gone now,” says Deb, the dejection in her voice apparent.
Members like Deb add that they understand BCL’s economic constraints which may have led to this decision. But that, in no way, nullifies their loss. “I may discontinue my membership because this system feels cold and mechanical — the opposite of what reading must feel like,” says Deb. Trisha Salvi, Deb’s 13-year-old neighbour is afraid her mother might do the same.
“To me, a library is more about having a space where there’s the feel and smell of books around me, where I stroll around, pick up a book, read the outline and spend a moment contemplating whether it’s worth my while,” says Mario Poppen, a BCL member for 28 years. There are many criteria Poppen considers before picking a book: she compares different editions, editors, and revisions of a book, and makes sure the size of the print suits his weak eyesight.
“Then there’s that element of surprise only a walk-in library can throw at a book lover — that feeling of stumbling upon an obscure book you would never consider picking otherwise,” he explains.
“The loss of a reading space may alienate a few members, but the number of those who benefit from this move will be more than those who lose out. This is a global trend, doesn’t all change require letting go?” reasons Simon Gammell, director of British Council, West India.
As a matter of fact, a member of MyLibrary, the BCL’s online avatar, will have access to 22,000 books, 3500 DVDs and 40, 000 newly introduced e-books. The idea, says Gammell, arose from Mumbai’s decentralisation — the action is no longer in South Mumbai. Not many from the suburbs, he adds, can travel to Nariman Point. “This is our way of taking the library to them.”
And there are takers for Gammell’s argument. 83-year-old Dr Hansraj Kathuria has been a member of the BCL for the past 50 years, and he’s thrilled with the new arrangement. “Everything at my doorstep,” he points out. “I’ve spent the better part of my life at the BCL studying medicine and books for leisure. Imagine reliving my time at the click of a button. Heard folks my age whine about the ‘good ol’ days’… well, these are my old good days!” he chuckles.
Does this quest for change spell a new trend in Mumbai, where the quiet of a reading room will make way for online libraries?
If you were to believe Hiten Turakhia, co-founder of Librarywala, an online library that operates in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, Mumbai can sustain walk-in libraries for another decade at the most, no more. “Given the real estate and money constraints, how many libraries can sustain or improve their collection? Being a library member is also about being able to access unknown authors and complete volumes; not all libraries can manage such standards,” says Turakhia. “Besides, do people from North Mumbai have the time to spend hours commuting to their libraries that mainly lie at the southern end of the city?” he asks. “The city has to keep up with its demands.” Your browser may not support display of this image.
Old libraries may or may not keep up, but it seems the University of Mumbai is keen to do so. With this digital makeover, the average librarian may be in for a skill makeover, too. “We are prepared for that,” says Professor Vijaya Rajhans, who teaches library science at the university. The course, she says, is upgraded regularly with these trends in mind. Internships at libraries across the city and detailed courses in digitisation and online services ensure that students are geared up for these changes, she adds.
At the other end of this ongoing debate stand the likes of Aroon Tikekar, president of the Asiatic Library. Though acutely aware of this shift towards the virtual, Tikekar does not believe that age-old walk-in libraries will ever become extinct. The Asiatic Library too has started digitising books. And Tikekar, too, wants to offer their senior members the option of ordering books online, but not by diddling them out of their reading rooms.
“Instead of devising ways to go online, I would rather concentrate on acquiring antiquarian books, old research cards (used by research scholars), and making the library more user-friendly for research scholars,” Tikekar explains. The Asiatic library, he adds, will never disappear because their members and other trusts are regularly pouring in funds or adopting books (adopting a book includes maintaining and digitising it) Recently, he says, some Italian businessmen from a literary club adopted eight Italian books. “A library, after all, is meant to be a place where people can exchange ideas, something that will never be out of vogue.”
Vivekanand Ajgaonkar, president emeritus, David Sassoon Library, echoes the sentiment. “For us, maintaining our library is synonymous with maintaining a slice of heritage. Old libraries are not oblivious to change and modernisation, mind you. But what we can’t imagine is the walk-in library dying,” explains Ajgaonkar.
For Kavita Anand, educator and a 6-year-old member of the BCL, the death of the BCL walk-in library means that her children, 6 and 11, may not grow up feeling the spines of books and making a choice based on what catches their curious eyes. “I can’t imagine asking my children to log online and click through volumes of books,” she laments. “What will their choices be based on now?”
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