Page 31 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Library and Information Society

Notes The library should also transform its services to keep up with other changes in the world. The
library must not lag behind in adapting to new technologies. The library staff must be technology-
literate.
It can be bibliometrically proved that S R Ranganathan (hereinafter referred to as Ranganathan) is
the greatest thinker in the field of library science that the world has ever produced. The number of
original contributions he made in this field, fundamental ideas he gave birth to, and the philosophy
he advanced are all unmatched in the world. Years ago Chakraborty and Chakraboty showed that
Ranganathan was miles ahead of others in his field . It is rather unfortunate that most of his followers
chose to parrot him rather than delving deep into his ideas and philosophy and contribute
substantially to remove the shortcomings and extend the horizon of Ranganathan school of thought.
If a sincere effort is made today to quantify the extent of contributions made by his followers to his
school of thought, the sum total may not be very encouraging.
Recently a number of articles have appeared on Five Laws of Library Science as well as its components
but none has given anything that Ranganathan did not say or imply. Of course, many have tried to
put old wine in a new bottle. It may be noticed in these papers that none has quoted any reference
that has criticized these Laws. Possibly they are averse to the criticism of Ranganathan.

3.4.2 Five Laws in Many Forms

Ranganathan presented his five laws of library science for the first time in 1928 in a conference of
teachers held in the Meenakshi College, Annamalainagar. The Laws appeared in the book form in
1931. Originally the laws appeared in the following form:

Form I
Books are for Use
Every Reader His Book
Every Book its Reader
Save the Time of the Reader
A Library is a Growing Organism.
These laws are being quoted from Five laws of library science. According to Dasgupta ‘Later on
Ranganathan himself revised these laws as follows:

Form II
Documents are for use
Every reader his document
Every document its reader
Save the time of the reader
A library is a growing organism.
In some documents the second law appears as ‘Every reader his/her document’. Possibly this was
done to sink the gender difference.
The changeover from the words ‘book/s’ to ‘document/s’ in the laws indicates that Ranganathan
realized the mistakes in the original laws and later on tried to correct them. A question may arise in
the mind of an inquisitive scholar as to why Ranganathan used the term ‘book/s’ instead of
‘document/s’ in 1928 when libraries contained not only books but also other types of documents
such as periodicals, patents, standards, and so on.

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