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                                                   Rabindra Bharati University                                                         

Department of Library and Information Science

56 A,  Barrackpore Trunk Road, Kolkata-700050 Phone : 557-1028,557-3028,Fax: 033-5568079

 

 

The two days national seminar on ‘libraries for all: exploring the role of public libraries and information centre for sustainable development was organized by the Department of Library & Information Science, Rabindra Bharati University, in association with Raja Rammohon Roy Library Foundation(RRRLF) during 7-8 March 2019.

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​​Report

The two days national seminar on ‘libraries for all: exploring the role of public libraries and information centre for sustainable development was organized by the Department of Library & Information Science, Rabindra Bharati University, in association with Raja Rammohon Roy Library Foundation during 7-8 March 2019. The seminar was started with the welcome address by Dr. Sudip Ranjan Hatua, the Seminar Director and the HOD of the Department of LIS, RBU. In his welcome address, he explained the background of the seminar theme, the definition of sustainable development and the IFLA’s 2030 vision and the present scenario of libraries in various sectors and set a mode of the seminar.  The Seminar was inaugurated by Professor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Choudhuri, Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University. In his inaugural speech, he emphasized mostly sustainable development, specially socio-economic and political sustainability and its future. He also tried to integrate the role of libraries in this context. The keynote speech was delivered by Professor Pushpanjali Jena of Utkal University. She has made a love presentation of the role of libraries in education, building a nation and shown how that can be beneficial for the sustainability of economic and cultural development. She also pointed out the lack of government initiatives to the spread and development of public libraries and various other burning issues. The guest of Honour Professor Sanjay Kumar Singh of Gauhati University explained the depression of libraries in various sectors and negligence of various State and Central Government roles in this context. He also questions the activities and role of the National Knowledge Commission and expresses his doubt of fulfillment of the objectives of  IFLA’s vision 2030 for sustainable development without the patronage of the Government to the libraries. The former Director of RRRLF and librarian of Bose Institute Dr. Arun Kumar Chakroborty and the Present Deputy Director of RRRLF Sri Soumen Sarkar have exhaustively explained the role of RRRLF and present national scenario of public libraries. The situation is not really impressive. The Inaugural session was ended by delivering the vote of thanks by one of the joint secretary Dr. Ziaur Rahman. The main technical session was organized by two parallel sessions.  All about Seventy papers were presented in two parallel sessions in both days. The seminar was ended by two hours panel discussion moderated by a former professor of Jadavpur University, Professor Krishnapada Majumder. The other panelist were Professor Durgashankar Rath of Vidyasagar University, Mr. Anirban Biswas of RRRLF, Ms. Anamika Das of Netaji Subhas Open University, Dr. Bapan Kumar Maity, District Library Officer, South 24 Parganas, Govt. of West Bengal. The main thrust area of all the panelists was the issues related to the very negligence of the public library system in West Bengal and India as a whole.

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