Valuable books in varsity libraries lying unused

Hyderabad: Tens of thousands of books, worth lakhs of rupees, are gathering dust in the central libraries of State universities in Telangana State and Andhra Pradesh. According to sources, senior faculty members from some of the departments have come across books lying on shelves unused for years.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior librarian from the VS Krishna Library from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, said, “some books are not borrowed either by the students or faculty members for about five years. Some other books considered having reference value are not touched for more than 10 to 20 years," he added. The situation is no different in case of Acharya Nagarjuna University, Guntur and Osmania University, Hyderabad, and Kakatiya University in Warangal.

Prof R Sayanna, Vice-Chancellor of Kakatiya University, Warangal said, “earlier, I made a small experiment with my students when I was in Osmania University. Students were taken to the library every Saturday and explore what all books were there on the shelves. This made them at least to figure out what kind of books were there and understand what titles were to be picked up for their projects,” he said. Steps would be taken to create awareness among the teachers and students to get acquainted with the books at the library, he said.

When asked, officials from the Central library at Osmania University said that they are not sure about how many such books are gathering dust in the central library and wondered whether students and faculty are even aware of their presence in the library. However, "a majority of such books are not from the science and engineering fields. Because, most of the times the old editions in science and engineering are replaced with the latest editions, “they added.

Pitching in another faculty member from the computer sciences department said it is high time that the university made efforts to identify such books and put them on the website. "Flashing a list of books not issued for more than five years creating a separate library website would help," he said
Clarifying on the issue, OU Vice-Chancellor Prof S Ramachandram said, the university would look into the issue as there might be several valuable books which are of great use to the students, research scholars and the faculty. "If needed, it could also be taken up a small project to highlight the importance of each book and place them online to help the students to make use of the books in the library," he said.