Job seekers use central public library most [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Job seekers use central public library most

Local May 07, 2017

The central public library has turned just into a reading room for job seekers who consider it a ‘solitary place’ to prepare for competitive examinations rather than a centre of learning.
Only six people on an average borrow books from the library a day, said officials of the country’s largest public library having more than two lakh books.
Although over 3,000 readers come to the library every day, it has only 876 registered members including 309 children and 112 staff.
‘For a central library in a city of about 20 million people, this number of library users is definitely too small,’ observed Dhaka University information science and library management department chairman Professor Muhammad Mezbah-ul-Islam.
‘The number of registered members is even smaller,’ said Mezbah.
From the figure, he deduces that the central library may have lacked extension service which could have motivated many to become registered library users.
‘Registered users are bona fide members of a library. They do not use the facility for reading only; they borrow books. A library finds its relevance to contemporary society by meeting the demand of the borrowers,’ Mezbah thinks.
Let alone borrowing from the library, the New Age met people there who have been going there for years but never took down a book out of the shelves.
Mithun Sarkar is one of them, going to the library for the past last one year and a half.
‘From my experience, from coming here for quite some time, I can tell you that 95 per cent of the readers daily visiting the library are just like me,’ said Mithun.
Over a dozen people New Age interviewed said they were all preparing for job examinations.
Masum Billah has been going there for two years. Throughout the time, he read guidebooks written for job seekers. He carried the guidebooks inside his shirt as it is prohibited to carry books into the library.
‘In this noisy city, we struggle to concentrate on study. The library offers us a solitary place,’ Masum points out.
Dhaka University teacher Professor Muntassir Mamun said he was not surprised by the situation as the library was not updating its materials and atmosphere considering the demand of the users.
‘What the library authorities keep in mind while buying books is budget,’ Mamun observes.
Mamun was a member of the committee that formulated the national library policy in 2001.
The policy aimed at extending library services to the level where an individual living in the remotest part of the country could be able to avail the service by travelling just a mile from his or her home.
‘Unfortunately, the library has become a traditional government office where only bureaucracy works,’ finds Muntassir.
The central library is the largest of the 70 government libraries run by the directorate of public library across the country.
It is found that the libraries spend almost nothing for motivating people to read more.
Last year, about 88 per cent of the annual budget allocated for all the 70 libraries was used for paying salaries and other benefits of the employees.
The annual spending on book purchase has been halved since 2011 too. Last year, it spent only 12 per cent of the budget for buying books. It had spent 21 per cent of the budget in 2011.
‘If this was the condition of government libraries, I wonder what can be the condition of non-government libraries,’ said prominent educationist Professor Emeritus Serajul Islam Chowdhury.