Library Committee

One of the important assets in a student's life is a library. Libraries have a diverse array of resources. It develops an individual into a lifelong learner. Supplementary reading enhances the knowledge and provides critical, rational and practical insights into the creative writings of literary authors. Thousands of authors, writers, poets, critics communicate with the readers through their works at one place that is via the library.

The Library Committee operating at the Department of English, M K Bhavnagar University every year organizes a Library visit for the students. This year owing to the COVID19 crisis, and the lockdown in the universities, the Committee wasn’t able to carry out any such visits. But we are fortunate enough to be the students of Prof Dr Dilip Barad Sir that we always emerge ourselves enthusiastically ready with plan B. Hence, if it isn’t permissible to plan out a visit, my co-leader agreed to the idea of planning a virtual visit to the Central Library and the English Department Library of M K Bhavnagar University.

From journals, catalogues, books, fictions to Online Library that is OPAC (Open Public Access Catalogue) to RFID enabled facilities, we tried to provide every minute detail in our Virtual Library Visit. Additionally, it was an immense pleasure to have Prof Sir's insights on the Importance of a Library in a student's life, Online books(e-books, pdf) and Physical copies, and lastly Italian writer Umberto Eco's concept of Anti-Library.

“The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books) and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.”

Give a watch to our attempt here- (Don’t forget to watch the insights of Prof. Dilip Barad on Library and AntiLibrary