Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Space crunch at varsity library

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The plight of the U.N. and World Bank publications section at the Kerala University Library is a classic case study of how the University of Kerala has shown scant interest in maintaining and offering for public use a priceless collection of books and other reading material.

What should otherwise have occupied a position of pride in the library is today relegated to a corner of the first floor, hardly able to display a fraction of the U.N./World Bank publications the library has.

It was in 1972 that the library signed an agreement with the UN for being a ‘full depository’ of the latter’s publications and pamphlets. The annual fee that the library paid for being depository number 246 was $200. Now that fee is $500.

The U.N. has certain requirements of a depository; the institution should not restrict access to the collection, no user fee should be charged, the collection should be made available to the general public for the maximum time a day.

The library is a defaulter on almost all these counts. The U.N. section can now be accessed only by members of the library. (It falls to the incumbent head of the U.N. section to instruct security staff not to detain those wishing to enter the section.) Moreover this access is granted only from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. due to shortage of staff. The library remains open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The shortage of staff also means that the books in the U.N.-World Bank section are available only for reference; that too only those books that are on display. There is no provision in the section to allow a visitor to take photocopies.

Though there is facility in the library to browse the Net, there is no such facility in the section itself. If a visitor does want to go to a web site after reading a U.N. publication he or she would have to pay a fee for that.

According to sources in the library, the U.N. section can still be an attraction if it were relocated, say, to the ground floor of the library and enough space made available to display the entire collection of books.

This, in turn, requires that the University take measures to free up space inside the library - including space that is now being used for non-library purposes.

The plight of the U.N. section had come up for discussion at a recent meeting of the vice chancellors of universities in the State, chaired by the Education Minister.

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