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Archives
Category Archives: Library
Librarians as teachers
By Zubeida Mustafa
AT the Children’s Literature Festival in Quetta last month, the provincial education secretary had promised to make provisions for a library in every government school in Balochistan.
If this actually materialises, the province will certainly have something to boast about. A school without a library is like a body without a soul. Can you expect students to love reading if they are not immersed in a world of books that a library creates? Continue reading
A century of bookselling
By Zubeida Mustafa
NOT many readers would have visited Juna Market, the commercial hub of Karachi where hardware and spices compete with halwa puri to find buyers.
In the ocean of commodities catering to hedonistic pleasures stands a lone modest-looking bookshop that seeks to nourish the mind. It has been doing that for 102 years, an anomaly among its worldly surroundings. Continue reading
Progress of library science
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
TOMORROW is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Library and Information Science Department of the University of Karachi. It was on August 10, 1956, that the department launched its post-graduate diploma programme – the first degree level course for librarians in Pakistan.
A programme in librarianship had been started in Lahore by Asa Don Dickenson, a student of the famous Melvil Dewey in 1915, but it was a certificate course. In 1957, the diploma programme was converted into a degree and a Master’s course. Nearly 3,143 students have graduated from the department in the last 50 years. Its faculty has grown from seven members – many of them part time – under the founding chairman Abdul Moid to nine full time staff members today.
Continue reading
Creating a library culture
By Zubeida Mustafa
Source: Dawn
THE news from the library front in Karachi will not cheer the bibliophiles. The plan for a library, that had been promised way back in 1991 by mayor Farooq Sattar who had earmarked for it a three-acre plot of land in Gulshan-i-Iqbal near the Nipa Chowrangi, has now been dropped.
A hospital is to be built there instead. Fifteen years ago, a lot of fanfare had attended the launching of this scheme that was to be designated a city library. Architects were invited to submit designs for this institution and three entries were selected for prizes worth Rs 100,000. The building plan was approved.
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ARTICLES: Ancient treasure of knowledge
By Zubeida Mustafa
London has a new landmark. The British Library. Opened to the public five years ago, it has emerged as a major crowd-puller in the British metropolis. That is not at all surprising for it combines on its premises the beauty of its architecture, the aesthetic delicacy of its decor and the wealth of its collected treasures to attract even the most ‘unliterary’ of people. You don’t have to be a bibliophile or a scholar looking for reference material to visit the library, though 431,000 of its visitors last year were readers who had come to consult its books. But nearly as many came just to have a look around and marvel at what they saw.
Continue reading