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Libraries at Ludhiana government colleges reel under staff crunch
At Satish Chandra Dhawan (SCD)Government College, there is only one librarian against the sanctioned strength of four
The libraries at the city’s prominent government colleges have been facing acute shortage of staff, with various posts, including those of librarians, restorers and attendees lying vacant.
Despite having three sanctioned posts for librarians, the library at the Government College for Girls (GCG) has not had a person appointed on these posts since 2015.
At Satish Chandra Dhawan (SCD)Government College, there is only one librarian against the sanctioned strength of four. The posts of two restorers and two attendees are also lying vacant.
The Government College East, which welcomed its first batch of BCom and BA students, at its newly built 4.86-acre campus near Chandigarh road has does not have a staff for the Library, including librarian, restorer and attendees since its establishment in August 2018.
The librarian at the SCD college has been assigned the task to perform the duties at the GCG and visits the GCG library for two days a week. After retirement of the last librarian in 2015, no permanent librarian was deployed here.
The library at GCG has over 70,000 books, while the one SCD college, which also house some rare collection, including books from the pre-independence period, has a total of around 1.75 lakh books.
In the absence of staff, routine tasks at the library, including cataloguing, classifying, and preservation of old books, purchase of new books and conducting activities to generate interest among the students have been affected.
A lecturer at SCD government college, requesting anonymity, said that to handle the tasks related to the entry of visitors, cataloguing and issuing books, the college management has hired an employee on a contractual basis with college funds.
Along with creating an online database, the process to make the whole process paperless was also underway, but without any dedicated staff, it has been also derailed, the lecturer said.
A lecturer at the GCG college said that in order to increase the footfall of students at the libraries, it is important to have regular exhibitions and sessions on important days marking the birth anniversary of prominent personalities, which is not possible without proper staff.
With the decline in reading habits among students because of social media and OTT platforms, the number of books that are borrowed by students has also seen a sharp dip, he said. The students visit the libraries only before exams to study textbooks and exam-related material.
Suman Lata, principal of Government College for Girls, said that we have demanded a full-time librarian for the college several times in the last few years, as the new recruitments are pending due to legal hurdles, the staff has not been recruited by the government.
Deputy director, public instructions (colleges) Pardeep Singh Walia did not respond to HT’s text messages/phone calls for a version on the staff crunch in government college libraries in the city.
