It will be helpful if the system of rural libraries now started in Madhya Bharat is examined with these points in mind.
Simplicity
This primary virtue is being observed.
Coverage
The average number of Gram Panchayats in a Kendra is, I understand, about 15–18. From the enquiries I made at Bhitarwar, I find that for this Kendra Panchayt, there are 22 Gram Panchayats, and actually 75 villages, the total population of the area being 32,000. With five boxes in circulation, this means that at any one time, 16 Panchayats would not have a box. Allowing a period of one month for a box to stay at each Panchayat, it will take one year and ten months for a box to travel round the Kendra Panchayat. During that period, each Gram will have had a box of books for only five months, or less than one quarter of the total time. If the boxes are to be sent back to the Kendra Panchayat each time before they are moved on to the next Panchayat, the total period for complete circulation will be much longer. There is a very obvious and serious defect in the scheme here, which may be rectified in the
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course of time. In the last two years, 1250 boxes of 60 books have been provided. At the same rate of development, it will take approximately six years to arrive at a position where each Gram Panchayat has a box of books all the time. By that time it may be taken for granted that a large proportion of the original stock will be worn out. There will thus be little opportunity to build up stocks, and create a permanent library in any form.
Maintenance
But behind this problem is a much larger one. By the time the period of circulation is completed, the box of books will have suffered considerable loss and damage. I could not discover whether any provision had been made for inspection and checking, replacement of popular books, rebinding, repair, making good the losses. Inspection and some repair might be done at Kendra Panchayat level, but there must be facilities for maintenance and inspection at a higher level. If any sort of a library system is to be built up, rather than the provision of the boxes as a sort of expendable gift, this organisation will have to be on a much bigger scale than seems to be at present envisaged. Already 75,000 books are in circulation, a fairly large and expensive stock of books for any library to maintain. The fact that the books are widely scattered does not lessen the problem of maintenance, but rather increases the need for recognisation of the problem, and the requirement that some organisation should exist.
Variety
Although the decision to provide 250 sets of the same 300 books has simplified the problem of choice and distribution of books, and was probably desirable at the commencement of the scheme, if the intention is to provide a library service, a much wider view will have to be taken at a later stage. Taking the system as a whole, what is at present available is 250 copies of 300 books, and this is not a library. It will become obvious later on that certain books are not particularly popular, and will need to be withdrawn from the collections, when there will be in existence 250 copies of a book when a dozen would meet all the demands in the state conversely, of some popular books possibly more than 250 copies will be needed, and they
will have to be replaced often. It would also be remembered that at some stage in development, readers will expect something more than the fare in the box provided for them. In even small villages, there will be schoolmasters, persons retired to their homes, young people returned from the cities, who will require particular books and particular subjects. The whole basis of a rural library service rests on the assumption that behind the small stock of books at a particular point, there is an organisation which can supply any book or request, and which is able to look after the books in circulation.
It is very desirable, therefore, that the book selection committee should take a much wider view of their responsibilities in future section. It is not necessary that each collection should be identical. It is more important that each collection should be made up with regard to different levels of education, different tastes, and right proportion of subjects, including the relation of fiction to non-fiction. A box of books is not a library, it only becomes a library system; it only becomes part of a library system when it is appreciated as a small of a large and varied collection.
The organisation necessary for a library service has been eliminated by simply avoiding the organisational problems inherent in library service. But to avoid the problems now only means accumulating them later, if these libraries are intended as the start of a library service and not merely as a gesture. A lakh of rupees spent once may be regarded as an encouragement, but given over a period of year it must be an investment.
I, therefore, strongly recommend that in adding to the book collections, an endeavour should be made to make a representative collection of several thousand different books, and that in making up the boxes, some attempt should be made to obtain the reactions of the honorary librarians to the contents of the first boxes. It will inevitably be found that these views differ, and they should be considered in sending a new collection to each.
I realise that this entails more responsibilities and much more work at the centre. It entails, for instance, a catalogue and location index, so that if the village librarian at Harsole has a request for a particular book, it can be located and sent to him possibly from Hatod.
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books, but from my limited knowledge, would say that it appears quite representative. Perhaps it is a little overweighted with biography, and I would personally suggest from experience in Delhi, that it will be found the proportion of fiction is rather low.
Although the system has been barely started, it does not seem to me that sufficient thought has been given to the varying literacy rates in different Gram Panchayats, and the variation in population of different areas. It will be necessary in some areas to provide more books, and possibly books of a higher standards, than in others. It would obviously be unwise to regard all Gram Panchayats as containing approximately the same number of potential readers of the same tastes in reading. Neither readers of books, unfortunately fit happily into such administratively workable pigeonholes.