India celebrates August 12th as Librarians Day in his honour.
Libraries plays a vital role in the development of our
country. S.R.Ranganathan, who is known as “Father of Library Science
in India”, was the first person one who identified the real need of
libraries and library science education in our country.
Dr
S.R.Ranganathan was born on August 12, 1892, to Ramamirtam Iyer and Sita Lakshmi
Ammal at Shiyali (present Sirkazhi). His primary education started at
Sabhanayaka Mudaliar’s Hindu High School in Shiyali. He took up his B.A.
in 1913 at Madras Christian College and later M.A. (Mathematics) at
Presidency College, Madras in 1916. His teaching career started with the
Government Arts College, Mangalore in 1917 and then he joined
Presidency College in 1921. He taught Mathematics and Physics.
In
January 1924, Dr S.R.R. left Presidency College and took charge of the
Madras University Library as University Librarian. He left for England
in September 1925, to get trained in librarianship and completed a six
month certificate course in library science. During this time, he
visited many libraries and he found that the system of classification,
cataloguing etc., was not scientific and there was a tremendous scope
for the improvement in Library Science.
On his return
from London in 1925, he took immediate steps to reorganize the
University Library to attract more readers and classified its contents
on scientific basis. Dr S.R.R. has written on almost all aspects of
Library Science, such as Library Administration, Classification,
Cataloguing etc., He published Colon Classification in the year 1933,
which is based on Hindu Philosophy. He developed the concept of
Librametry that is application of statistics to Library Science.
He
started the Library Science Department in the year 1931 at Madras
University. Because of Dr S.R.R’s interest, Madras became the first
state in our country to enact the Madras Public Library Act (1957) and
he persuaded the UNESCO to establish the Documentation Centre in New
Delhi.
Dr S.R.R. was later invited to Banaras
University and Delhi University. He was a Professor of Library Science
in Delhi University from 1947 to 1955. He was Chairman of the UGC
Library Commission and started DRTC (Documentation Research and Training
Centre) at Bangalore to promote the research activities in the field of
Library and Information Science. He died on Sept. 28, 1972. The best
way to remember Dr S.R. Ranganathan is to publish good books, start
well-equipped libraries in schools and also popularise the library
movement in rural areas.
Dr S.R. Ranganathan formulated “Five Laws of Library Science”. They are:
1. Books are for use
2. Every reader his/her book
3. Every book, its reader
4. Save the time of the reader
5. Library is a growing organism
Dr.
Ranganathan received D. Litt Degree from the Delhi and Pisttsburg
Universities, in recognition of unique service to Library Science and
was also the recipient of Rao Sahib and Padmashri awards from the
Government of India. He founded the Sarada Ranganathan Endownment for
Library Science in 1963. He was also nominated as National Research
Professor of Library Science in 1965.
