PROBLEMS AND CHALLENGES OF COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OF INDIAN LIBRARIES IN DIGITAL ERA-AN ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The primitive idea of ‘library’ connoted a storehouse of written document mainly based
on clay tablets, palm leaves, waved wooden boards, papyrus role, etc. but with the
advancement of knowledge in the human civilizations, the library has become the nerve
centre of the civilized society. It becomes the sign and symbol of incentive to become
dynamic and regarded the rich springs from which knowledge flows out to irrigate the
wide fields of education and culture. It becomes an important medium of continuing selfeducation. With the increase in the demand for libraries, there arose the concept of
collection development. Collection as defined by the Webster Dictionary is a “publication
containing a variety of works”. However, in the connotations of library science, the term
collection refers to book selection, library acquisition, building the collection and
developing it (i.e. collection development). All these terms are used to describe the
process of building a collection in the library, following certain canons and principles and
to add library materials to the existing holdings of the library annually or periodically.
But, there has been a metamorphosis in the terminology and ‘collection development’ that
has replaced the other terms in general. An in-depth study of the varied nuances of
meaning of the concept is, therefore, imperative before the real study takes off. In earliest
times, there was no distinction between a record room (or archive) and a library, and in
this sense libraries can be said to have existed for almost as long as records have been
kept. A temple in a Babylonian town of Nippur, dating the first half of the 3rd millennium
BC, was found to have a number of rooms filled with clay tablets, suggesting a well
stocked archive or library. Similar collections of Assyrian clay tablets of the 2nd
millennium BC were also found in Egypt. Ashurbanipal (reigned 668-c. 627 BC), the last
of the great kings of Assyria, maintained an archive of some 25,000 tablets, comprising
transcripts and texts systematically collected from temples throughout his kingdom
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004; CD-ROM, p.2291).Above this background, the article
has to emphasized over the problems and challenges of Collection development of Indian
libraries in digital era