The not so SEMINAR libraries…

By Sameen Meher

The University of Karachi was built in June 1951. It consists of different faculties with several departments. More or less twenty one departments are administered in the faculty of Arts at K.U., each having five to eight classrooms in an old building including a spacious hall (as compared to the other classrooms) named as the “SEMINAR LIBRARY”.

                                               

The purpose of these libraries is to provide suitable research material for the students, relating to their subjects, in their respective departments. Though all departments of the arts faculty have a seminar library but only 10% of them are properly administered.

Here in the following article I am going to share some bitter but true facts about these libraries.

 Usually, a library is known to be a place where rich, informative and knowledgeable resources are provided, along with a librarian, to control that particular ‘pin drop’ silence and guide the students how to use the reading material and take care of the books and assemble them properly. But the librarians of these seminar libraries are irresponsible and do not perform their job efficiently. They are not punctual and not even guide you in search of any material. Once you enter the room, you find a mess all around.

Most of the seminar libraries are used as substitutes for classrooms. While there are students who want to utilize their time by studying in the library, the teachers ask such students to leave in order to conduct their classes. This is an inappropriate practice since the library is not for these purposes. The administration ought to plan the development of the rickety old buildings and accommodate more classrooms instead of gardens.

While on the other hand the most pitiable situation is that there is not enough library material such as books or research papers, for this very reason, students prefer the digital libraries for their studies.

The seminar libraries of department of economics, Persian, Bengali, philosophy, social work, women studies, English literature, education, and political science look like ancient ruins. Not a single librarian is present there and if luckily they show up then they do nothing but sleep or groan at students. Resources are not arranged as they ought to be and a situation of chaos is found all over.

Though there are some of the managements that look after the library assets properly, they remain exceptions, for mostly these seminar libraries are slowly turning into mid-day chit chat rooms. Something must be done immediately to improve the situation.