The long-term goal of this web space is to serve as a portal and clearinghouse for information on Indian library development. India suffers from a range of social inequities and a lack of adequate public services for a vast amount of its population. Education and information services are in need of major development. With India’s growing economy, the national government is making new efforts to re-invest in public services, including libraries.

This space brings together scholarship, ideas, and debates surrounding India’s library system, with a focus on public and community libraries. A need for serious discussion around these issues exists, as stakeholders from different areas – academics in various disciplines, library professionals, activists, and concerned citizens – have contributions to make. Libraries have the potential to make contributions to human capacity development, the spread of knowledge, preservation of local culture and indigenous traditions, literacy development, and so on. Realizing this potential is an important task.

This portal provides a space to explore and think creatively about possibilities and directions for Indian library revitalization. A range of public and community library models will apply to the Indian context but it is important to begin this conversation about possible futures for Indian libraries. The discourse of India’s information economy and knowledge society is often related to furthering the neo-liberal agenda of dominant economic and political classes, and does not often affect the masses of India’s poor in a significant way. A focus on public library development can serve as one possible way to reorient this discourse of the knowledge society towards the service of India’s most marginalized populations. I welcome you to this information and research portal and offer it as an introduction to issues surrounding Indian libraries and social development, as well as a space to generate continued discussion around this important issue.

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Private libraries and public perceptions: The role of NGO-led libraries in Bangalore communities

Status: Funded; Fieldwork from January to February 2011
Supported by the following grant: Academic Development Fund (ADF) Major Grant, University of Western Ontario

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Community information and public libraries: An analysis of the democratic public sphere in Bangalore, India

Status: Funded; Fieldwork from January to February 2010
Supported by the following grant: Academic Development Fund (ADF) Major Grant, University of Western Ontario

Project Overview:

This research project brings together a wide range of scholarship on India’s public library revitalization movement, focusing on connections between community information services and community-driven social change, as well as the roles public libraries play in the Indian public sphere.  The objectives of this project are to:

1) Understand how public libraries can enhance the urban Indian public sphere through community information provision.  This area of inquiry focuses on the role of libraries in meeting community information needs.

2) Contextualize the public library within the framework of Indian social movements, grassroots democratic engagement, and the democratic public sphere.  It will be useful to understand the connections that can be made between Indian grassroots social mobilization and public library revitalization in order to contextualize library issues in broader issues of social justice and democratic participation.

3) Develop a network of individuals and activist organizations interested in Indian public libraries, community information access, and public sphere issues.  This focus area is an action step towards creating a broad alliance of concerned citizens, professionals, and activists in linking Indian public library issues with concerns about social change and development.

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Libraries as Community Technology Centres in India: Towards a New Vision

Status: Fieldwork completed January – March 2008
Supported by the following grants: University of Western Ontario International Research Award; University of Western Ontario, Faculty of Information and Media Studies Internal Grant

Project Overview:

This research project aims to study the emerging national plan to transform Indian public libraries into community technology centres, and analyze its intellectual territory and relationships to other community technology projects in the country. The Government of India has recently established a National Knowledge Commission (NKC), a high-level advisory board to the Prime Minister of India, with the objective of transforming India into a knowledge society. It has a set of focus areas in this endeavour, and one of these areas is the nation’s long-neglected public library system. India’s information revolution has yet to have a significant impact on large sections of the urban and rural poor, and has not translated into the improvement of public institutions such as libraries. Through interviews with key participants in the NKC Working Group on Libraries and with prominent Indian community technology leaders, I plan to analyze the terrain of India’s public library revitalization movement. I also want to examine the implications of this movement for the development of better publicly-funded ICT services in India. Another goal is to begin creating a network of scholars, practitioners, and activists with an interest in the development of India’s public library system for long-term collaborative projects.

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Government Bodies, Commissions, and Library Organizations:

National Knowledge Commission – Government of India

• Working Group on Libraries

Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation

National Library, Kolkata

Common Services Centre (CSC) – Department of Information Technology, Government of India

Akshaya – Government of Kerala, India

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Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs):

Hippocampus

Maraa: A Media Collective

IT for Change

M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation

Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy

READ Global

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Articles:

Dasupta, K. Libraries and librarians in India on the threshold of the 3rd millennium: challenges and risks. 66th Annual IFLA Conference, Jerusalem, 13-18 August, 2000 Available: [Link]

Bhattacharjee, R. Public library services in India: Systems and deficiencies. Available: [Link]

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