Dear Friends Please read the following article. Why are some us - librarians - so very irresponsible and insenstive? Can something be do to sensitize librarians to be more service oriented? Vyasamoorthy, P ================== What are your bonafides? The Hindu Sunday 9th April 2006 Magazine section RANJIT LAL SOME weeks back, while trying to do some research for a book I was working on, I went to the library of the National Museum in New Delhi. The first thing I am shown is a notice that said something to the effect that only scholars and suchlike heavies were allowed to use the library. I decided to wait for the librarian and when she arrived, told her what my area of interest was, and if she could help. She looked me up and down and said, `But what are your bonefides?' Excuse me? The very fact that I was in that library asking for assistance on a particular subject would in any civilised country (and especially one with 5,000 years of erudite civilisation backing it up) and library, be considered more than enough for assistance to be forthcoming. "What do you mean?" I asked, struggling to come to terms with this monumental insult and inadequately indicating my notebook. "You can see I have a notebook and pen... " (just in case she had mistook it for a petrol can and lighter). She was after bigger things, Ph.Ds, M.Phils, letters of recommendation from Vice-chancellors, stuff like that. I see absolutely no reason why a citizen of this country (democracy, democracy, democracy, remember?) pursuing a subject of his or her interest needs a degree in order to use a library to do so. I told her that I was a member of the Teen Murti library and British Council... "Ah, but you pay there... Sorry." Never bothering to pause and think that if I'm ready to pay to be a member of a library I must genuinely be interested in the books and not in how comfortable the chairs are for a catnap. Anyway big deal — if they had any sense they would also charge people for daily use to ensure that they didn't use the place to catnap in or any such anti-national thing. But make the place available to those who want to use it — otherwise you are failing in your mandate and might as well shut down. I normally lose my temper once in about 10 years, and didn't want to use up my decade's quota there, so I walked out quickly. But it is precisely this attitude that has strangled us as a nation and people. What the hell was that librarian so afraid of? That I might acquire some deadly knowledge in that library by which I would become dictator of the world, and she would lose her job? God knows she was probably only doing what was in her brief but this stinks and how. If you are so afraid that people will misuse something that you prevent them from using it at all what is the justification for your existence in the first place? And why do I need any academic degree to prop me up? If they doubt my veracity (and why must I prove that anyway?) all they needed to do is to ask a few questions about exactly what I was interested in and looking for. (And would I have been in that museum and library in the first place if I had not been interested?) This whole attitude is based on the assumption that your motives are suspect and malafide — that you are up to no good — and must have "verification" or "authentication" and soon possibly beatification to certify that you are not (in this case) a book ripper or library napper or something as reprehensible. Which, no government really has any right to assume of its citizens. And to blankly deny access to knowledge in a library — in my book that is cardinal sin — and any society that goes in for that sort of thing is plunging hotfoot down the drain. Or was it just a manifestation of petty power? You know, that colonial hangover thing? Where the answer to every question or request is and must always be an unequivocal "no". You cannot do this, you cannot go there, you cannot see this, you cannot, cannot, cannot! Not because anything earth-shattering will happen if you do, but because it gives the pipsqueak given the authority to say no, the kicks which are the perks of his or her job. They tend to forget that we pay their salaries and overtimes and D.As and for their endless cups of tea. So what's my next course of action then if I still decide that I need the research and to look at that library? Well, the obvious one. Pull wires. Which, in a sense defeats the whole purpose because then I might as well have a Ph.D. Perhaps I should just tag one on after my name anyway... Make that a double! -- Dr P Vyasamoorthy, SENIORS (Society for Enriched Information of Relevance to Seniors), 30, Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500018 Phone 27846631