Immerse and lose yourself in the world of books

In my early teens I developed a special liking for books like Dana Girls, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, after graduating from Enid Blyton. My favourite place during those school years was the library that housed neatly arranged rows of books, placed on orderly wooden shelves. Over the years, as I moved from school to Stella Maris College in Chennai, I again found the library there as one of my favourite joints, and Sidney Sheldon, Arthur Hailey and Jeffery Archer were my pet books.

The Lal Bahadur Shastri National academy of administration (LBSNAA) library, during my days as an IAS probationer again gave a refreshing opportunity to again to rediscover this passion of diving into books, immersing oneself and enjoying biographies and stories of nations, phenomena, relationships or metaphysics. Some months later, afternoons of the summer as hot as now were spent in the air conditioned library of the Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration ( SPIPA) at ahmedabad. I recall guzzling up books on Indian economics, history and culture, and the Bhagavad Gita. O. Henry, Anton Chekov, Tolstoy and Gandhi were my preferred authors now.

Much later, when my older and seasoned self went to study at the London school of Economics and then at Harvard University, I again found the comforting warmth of the library very inviting, with the unbelievably diverse and huge choice of books, journals and magazines. Almost every possible point of view or perspective, whether in a miniscule minority or whopping majority, of varying antiquities and ideologies, from different geographies, could be found there with a thread bare analysis.

The world of books and the uncanny ability of the librarian to fish out a rare, loan book that one asked for would often fascinate me as a child, as I also stared at the cards arranged in wooden drawers with stracodes of alphabets and numbers, separated by colons. Some years ago, I was pleasantly surprised and astonished to know that this system of classification which is in vogue across the world from New York to Oxford to Mumbai or Tokyo is attributed to a great India, Dr SR Ranganathan. Acclaimed as the father of library science, documentation, and information science across India and the world, he was a mathematician who went on to become a great librarian.

Dr. Ranganathan actually propounded five laws of libraries. which is quite relevant even today. These five laws, which are basic principles of library science today and are stated as 'Books are for use, every reader his/her book, every book its reader, save the time of the reader, the library is a growing organism. These laws are equally applicable for e-books, audio/video material, films and movies and for a host of online material. The trend worldwide is to go for blended or hybrid libraries, with both physical and e-books perched together on the shelves. While we may partake of all these, research shows that reading physical books yield better results from the attention span, distraction, physical retention as also the touch , feel, texture and smell- take a deep breath and recall the book smells with a smile- of books that give a wholesome experience of reading.

Over the years, libraries spaces have also undergone a lot of changes. They have reading spaces, learning and discussion spaces as well as spaces for showcasing technologies. For example, Dr Anil kumar, the librarian of the World Class Library of IIM, Ahmedabad shares that they have 3D-printers placed in their library creating makers' spaces. This allows readers or visitors to the library to actually key in their creative designs or ideas and have the 3D printers actually create fascinating objects and models. Isn't this range of choices and options of such a world-class library mind-boggling?!

The 2nd National Conference on Emerging Trends and Technologies and library and Informational Science was held yesterday at Rajkot. Presiding over the function, Pujya Bhaishri Ramesh Oza of Sandipani Ashram at Porbandar spoke of his immense love for books and how he can't be without books. Let's make a conscious decision to get some books and build a library at home and work, even if this is small or modest.

The author is a Harvard-educated civil servant & writer, and has worked in the education sector 
jayanti.ravi.dna@gmail.com