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Spotlight

Library: Sea of resource

Tazmia Islam Nion

Dhaka University central library is located at a convenient point between the main academic buildings and the residential halls. The library is an elegant piece of modern architecture having a collection of over 5,500,000 books and magazines.

Dhaka University Library was incorporated with Dhaka University on the 1st of July 1921.
It began with 18,000 books inherited from the libraries of former Dhaka College and Dhaka Law College. F.C. Turner, the former principal of Dhaka
College was the first librarian of the
Dhaka University Library and Fakhruddin Ahmed succeeded him in the post in 1922.

At present the collection of this library is richer than many other world famous universities. Dhaka University Library has 5,500,000 books and magazines. Besides that the Library has 30,000 rare manuscripts and a large number of Tracts (booklets, leaflets, pamphlets, and puthis) which are preserved in microfilmed copies along with some rare books and documents. Most of the rare books, reports, puthis, Bengali Tracts and private collection of Buchanan on Bengal have been acquired from the British museum.

Dhaka University Library Buildings:
Library Administration Building: Administration branch, Book collection, Book binding, Old Magazines and United Nations publications collection branch manuscript department, Seminar branch.

Central Library Building: Rare book department, Reference department, Periodical department, Daily magazine, Computer room, Current journal, books and magazines of Arts faculty, Social science faculty, Commerce faculty and Law faculty also can be found here.

Science Library Building: Science related books, magazines, reference materials, journals and periodicals are available in this section.

Dhaka University Library Services:
The services offered by the library include reading rooms, photocopy, and readers' guidance facilities. Faculty members can borrow general textbooks for home reading for a stipulated period.

Students of the faculties and departments located in the main campus (known as the Arts campus) can borrow books for home reading only from the seminar section. They offer reading room facility for other materials such as books, journals, periodicals etc with access to photocopy services.

The current catalogue is maintained in traditional card format and can be browsed by author, title and subject. There are also an historical 'sheaf catalogue' for older materials.

Some problems:
Unfortunately this remarkable collection of books are in jeopardy due to lack of maintenance from the university authorities, many valuable and rare books are in a dilapidating condition.

Furniture in the reading rooms is in a shabby condition. The number of chairs and tables is not sufficient for the students attending the library.
When we asked the officials about renovation they informed that they do not have any plans in hand for updating the library.

"During examinations the library is occupied way above its current capacity and sometimes reading rooms become a place for gossiping. The authorities should take measures to stop unnecessary "adda" and increase the sitting capacity," said Rifat, a student of management department.

When asked about the 'adda' problem the officials looked reluctant. "It's not possible for us to find out who are reading and who are having “adda”, it is the students' responsibility to create reading environment inside the library," said one official.

Students have to go through a long process only to know whether the book they are looking for is available in the library or not. Often students have to go back without any success.

“The procedures of finding books are too lengthy, which is very time consuming and as a result we are losing interest in doing library works,” said Buppy.
"Students of many private universities now can see the list of the books in their university library by logging into the net. We should be provided with such facilities," he added.

Latest technical facilities like internet, bibliographic data bases, controlling acquisition, cataloguing and serials, effecting bar-coded circulation, reservation and recall systems, current awareness services (CAS), selective dissemination of information (SDI) services and online literature searches of the national and international data bases through CD-ROMs and also via internet have been launched in 1998. However, these facilities are only available for the research works.