Thursday, October 21, 2010

Our very own 'MAIN' library.

By Syeda Nadia Zareef.

This is the age of technology.Every bit of information is provided all the time, you just "CLICK" and get what you want. But still with all these advancements the joy that people feel in book reading is indescribable. In fact in my opinion, NATIONS NEED GOOD THINKERS TO PROSPER AND THINKING COULD ONLY BE ENHANCED BY MORE AND MORE READING.
Keeping this in mind "Libraries" are must in every educational institution similarly K.u is also provided with libraries in almost every department and one CENTRAL LIBRARY i.e MEHMOOD HUSSAIN LIBRARY.


Let’s talk something about this enormous structure, it was established in1952 when KU itself came into being, it is a 3 storied building with a staff of 25 library specialists, 10 assistant librarians and 90 to 95 non professional staff and most importantly with the availability of more than 350,000 books used not only for general purposes but for research work as well(as mention in ku’s official website) and nowadays also provided with a beautiful DIGITAL LIBRARY with the availability of all kinds of information.

These are what we can call its characteristics, but there are many things which you find ANNOYING. First of all when you step in to the library you have a feeling of some horror place so much darkness (I wonder how evening students could manage there)with walls being painted perhaps at the time of its creation.

Then layers and layers of dust on every thing.(may be its because of all the time open windows, which let every thing come in, be it scorching beam of sun or lots of dust) if you want to settle down somewhere you have to clean the place by yourself, now the question arises what 90 to 95 people of non professional staff are doing over there.

Now another interesting thing which can only be the characteristic of this particular library is  suddenly during your studies you smell something and look around, you find many busy in SMOKING ACTIVITY in the corridor which is an evidence of poor management of the library.

In the end I just want to say that by mentioning all this I don’t mean that the library is of no use for us but only that as environment has lot of effects on people’s mind so students should not be tortured in the library rather they should be provided with nice n cool environment so that they could more properly concentrate on their studies.