Karnataka - Gulbarga   

Unhindered access to libraries across all universities favoured

Holistic approach: N.V. Satyanarayana delivering a lecture after inaugurating a five-day training programme for college librarians in Gulbarga on Monday.

GULBARGA: N.V. Satyanarayana, chairman of the Working Group on Libraries and Networking in the Karnataka Knowledge Commission has said that it is high time the authorities allow students access to books across universities in the country.

Speaking after inaugurating a five-day training programme for college librarians here on Monday, he said students should be in a position to access any book in any university in the country.

Mr. Satyanarayana, who is also the Chairman and Managing Director of Informatics India Ltd., said students should be given access to libraries in all universities irrespective of region, through a common identity card.

He said that India needed to emulate the U.S. model where 80 to 90 million books can be shared across libraries in that country due to professional networking systems that were in place.

Referring to the tasks given to the working group by the State Government, he said five sub-groups had been formed under the working group, and they would offer recommendations and suggestions on the functioning of community libraries, libraries in higher educational institutions, those in schools, as well as on promotion of intellectual property rights, among other issues.

“The major area of our work pertains to devising effective ways to network all libraries in the State, so as to share books and information across the spectrum,” he added.

Another major area of work that the group had been assigned was to create a database of all textbooks prescribed by universities in the State and have them digitised for better accessibility. “At present, textbooks are not available electronically. The Government has accepted one of our major recommendations on creating a Kannada portal on the lines of Wikipedia,” he added.

A few other recommendations that have been accepted are that libraries be established in all schools at the block level and that a children’s library be set up in Bangalore. Mr. Satyanarayana said the working group had also decided to conduct a census of all libraries in the State.

This work would be entrusted to Gulbarga University, he added.

“This is the first time any such census is being taken up in the entire country,” he added.

University librarian Ravi Gaddagimath delivered the welcome address and spoke about the need for librarians to upgrade their skills through the use of information technology. University Vice-Chancellor B.G. Mulimani presided over the function. Librarian of Mangalore University M.K. Bhandi delivered a special lecture on the occasion and president of the Karnataka State College Librarians’ Association S.L. Kadadevarmath proposed a vote of thanks.

More than 65 librarians are undergoing training in this five-day session. Four more batches of librarians will be trained as part of the programme.

The training programme was jointly organised by Gulbarga University, the Department of Collegiate Education and the Karnataka State College Librarians’ Association.

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