Uso de la lengua quechua por los padres y las madres de familia

We may briefly outline here the system of Library Co-operation in the British Isles. The starting point of this system is the Urban or the County Library. An Urban Library is established by a Municipal authority to serve the needs of the area under Its jurisdiction and a County Library is provided by the Education Committee of a

County Council to supply the reading needs of people dwelling in rural areas who have no access to Municipal collections. But the urban and county libraries are scattered units and if their resources are to be fully utilised by students throughout the country some co-ordination is necessary. That is how the Regional library system came into existence. Under this system the whole of England and Wales is divided into eight regional areas, each of which is administered by a regional library bureau with its headquarters at some convenient centre in the area. Thus, for instance, the Regional Library Bureau for the West Midland region is housed at the Birmingham Public Library. The most important work of the Regional Library Bureau is that of maintaining a Union Catalogue of all the non-fiction books in the libraries under its jurisdiction.

Besides the Urban and County Libraries there are other libraries of a highly specialised nature which do not come within the orbit of a regional library system. These are also willing to place their resources at the disposal of students all over the country. But they prefer to do so through the National Central Library. The National Central Library, as its name implies, is at the apex of the library system of the British Isles. The work of this library may be grouped under three heads : the lending of its own books; the tracing of books in other libraries and arranging for their loan; and the supply of books needed by students attending adult classes in England.

It will thus be seen that the National Central Library came into existence to co- ordinate the resources of the various existing libraries, including the special libraries, so that any ordinary student of any subject may know what books are available on his subject in other libraries in addition to what his own library has got, and may obtain the books if necessary. This kind of co-operation between different libraries would automatically increase the resources of even a small libary enormously, and save unnecessary duplication of the cost of purchasing costly books in particular by libraries; and the subscriber of a small library, which could not afford to buy a costly book or books on any special subject, was enabled to obtain a loan on suitable terms from another library which had the book. It can be easily seen that the first necessity for such agreed co-operation between libraries is that every co-operating library must be in a position to know what books the other libraries possess. But at the same time, it is not practicable for every library to obtain duplicates of all the Catalogues

of all the other libraries. If, however, such catalogues are brought together, at one Central place or Agency, and kept up-to-date, information can then be obtained by every library as to where a particular book is available, and in case it was available at many libraries at which nearest library. This collection of catalogues, in practice, usually takes the form of a consolidated card catalogue housed at one institution, and has always to be kept up-to-date by the continuous supply of cards of books that are being added to the co-operating libraries. Such a combined catalogue is called a Union Catalogue. It is with the help of this important tool that the National Central Library is able to do its work. To prepare and maintain such a catalogue and to act as an Exchange Bureau for libraries in a country or province is not a small task; and the difficulties in the problem are many. The estimates made in our own Province of Bombay by a previous committee on the Subject of a Central Library indicate the same fact. At a conference of representative libraries in Poona, we were told that it had been proposed to prepare a Union Catalogue of the contents of some of the important libraries in Poona for the .benefit of students, but the scheme had to be given up as the estimated cost ran up to seven thousand rupees. Even in a wealthy country like England, the National Central Library was given a grant of £3,000 to enable it to begin the work.

The National Central Library or the Regional Library is not expected to keep all the books that are required by the readers though the regional libraries are themselves generally very well equipped. Their main function is to obtain the book from some other library as a loan, but such books as may be in demand, and may not be available at other libraries, are very often obtained and kept in the National Central Library or the Regional Library. This does not mean however that any small library can supplement its collections of ordinary books by calling upon the Regional or Central library to supply their readers with all kinds of books that the small library can and should buy for itself; and with this object, books below a certain price are not generally interloaned in this way.

The function of the Central Library and the Regional libraries in India will have, however, to be different from the Central and Regional libraries of England in the present conditions in this country. In England, there are large reference libraries, efficient special libraries on different subjects, copyright libraries and generally a vast library system. In India, libraries are very few, and very small. It seems

therefore that as a matter of convenience and compromise, the Central and Regional libraries here will have also to take up the functions of all these classes of libraries mentioned above.

CHAPTER – 3