Library in my Pocket
On a recent visit to Jaffna, I was eager to visit the library with my
family, to show them where I had spent many hours, 43 years ago. It had
been rebuilt and reborn, but there was a gate and a policeman at the
gate. We were not allowed to go in. ‘Visitors’ are allowed only from
4.30 pm to 5.30 pm. We had to turn back, after gazing at the building
through the gate.
We could not blame them, because a library is not for sight-seeing,
the students and young people using the library are not caged animals in
a zoo. Probably such a decision had to be taken to discourage the
curious and the uncultured, who saw it only as the place which had been
once burnt down, and now resurrected.
There could also be people who could not understand the value of a
library, or realize that a library should also be revered the same way
we revere a temple or a church. It is a holy place, where we have to
hold the books as sacred and where we should behave as we would in our
own place of worship.
However as I wrote a few weeks back, what is sacred to one person
could be profane to another.
If a library is considered as a repository of recorded knowledge,
then the oldest library was the collection of 30,000 clay tablets found
in Mesopotamia dating back 5000 years. When books were written on ola
leaves, the library was a different concept, as we could see from what
is remaining of the 12th century library in Polonnaruwa, 'Potgul
Vehera', and the smaller library at Tantirimale. The books, which had to
be handled carefully and stored carefully, were housed in a central
building. Reading was done outside the building, in separate rooms or
cubicles.
 The users of the ancient libraries had to be very careful with the
books, because they were handwritten manuscripts, sometimes the only
books available, without any copies. The books in the Jaffna library
could be replaced, because there were copies available of most of them
which were destroyed. But most of the books in the libraries of
Alexandria or Nalanda were lost for ever.
Today it is nearly impossible to destroy a book completely, or
prevent it's circulation. Banning or burning a book has no effect,
because it could always be reprinted, or soft copies made available
through the electronic media.
The first pubic library in England had been established in 1425, and
now there are millions of libraries all over the world, where knowledge
and creative writing was available almost free or for a very nominal
membership fee. It was all made possible by Johannes Gutenberg who
introduced the printing press with movable type printing, which enabled
the spread of learning to the masses, disrupting the monopoly held by
the elite, and the religious organizations.
Mass production of books took the next great step with the
Print-on-Demand (POD) technology introduced in 1997 by Xlibris, followed
by iUniverse in 1999, made possible after the invention of digital
printing. The advantage of POD is it brings down the cost of production,
and hence the cost of a book to the reader, which further spreads
learning to the masses. The biggest advantages are the easy setting up
of the book at very little cost, investment in printing large number of
copies and the cost and transport of such stocks are eliminated, and a
publisher does not have to suffer losses from unsold books. The cost of
printing just one book or one thousand would remain almost the same,
which has made it possible for universities and academic publishers to
make available all their writings to anyone interested, and at
affordable prices.
In our country POD has not become popular yet, and only the concept
of 'Duplo' printing has come into use, which already has a bad name,
that the print quality is poor and would not last long, but I published
a book using POD through iUniverse in the year 2000, and copies printed
eleven years ago are still as good as the day they were printed.
The first pocket sized book came out in 1939 and since then pocket
books became the rage, and we could have our own little libraries at
home. Today a library with several thousand books can be carried in our
pocket, and some day we would not have to go to a library even for
reference material or archived documents, for research, because they
would all be available ‘in the clouds’. And we can carry in our pocket,
all the books we could ever read in our life time. The present day
libraries would turn into museums.
The eLibrarian has already stepped in to cope with the changing
electronic landscape of eLibraries. Already most public libraries offer
ebooks. The British Council Colombo offers over 50,000 books free
on-line for members. To my knowledge, www.pothpath.com is the first
Sinhala eLibrary, offering books for free reading. The government too is
planning eLibraries through the Nanasala programme, and for a country
like Sri Lanka, where the cost of books is often beyond the reach of
most people, and where library facilities are also limited, the
electronic library would be a most suitable solution, because already
most households have a computer. It is just a matter of getting used to
reading on the screen, what we used to read on a printed page, holding a
book. Even for people who still like to read printed matter, the e-book
readers like Kindle, Nook and other such hand held e-book readers would
be the answer.
Looking forward to the day we can all carry our personal library in
our pocket or handbag.
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