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Foundation of Library and Information Science

Notes conservation division. The administrative division is concerned with personnel, maintenance
of building and garden, security, etc. Except for the Laboratory division which is headed by a
chemist and the Reprography division under the joint supervision of an assistant librarian and
a micro photographer, all the other technical divisions are headed by assistant librarians.

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Caution The library is accommodated in four buildings, three of which are at the Belvedere
Campus and the fourth at Esplanade, with a total carpet area of nearly 3,45,696 sq. ft.

The Collection

The National Library has a collection of nearly 22 lakhs of books and other materials (1996). The
collection is built up through:
Books received through the Delivery of Books and Newspapers Act

Purchase
Gifts
Exchange
Depository privileges
The majority of books are in English and in the Indian languages and the rest in a few foreign
languages. The broad categories of publications acquired through purchase are as following:
Books and journals on India, in any language, published anywhere in the world.
Indian publications, published before 1954, and not available in the library.

Books by Indian authors, published abroad.
Standard reference works.
Books on library, documentation and information sciences; science and technology (general
histories, reference works); education, agriculture, planning and development; standard
works on history, geography, sociology, etc.; Biographies of eminent personalities of the
world; rare and out-of-print books in microforms; foreign language books as far as the
budget permits.
The National Library has some notable gift collections which have enriched its holdings
considerably. Some of the outstanding gifts have been the collections of Sir Asutosh Mukherji
(76,000 books), Ramdas Sen, Barid Baran, Jadunath Sarkar, Dr. S. N. Sen, Prof. Vaiyapuri Pillai
and the archival papers of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. The pride of place in these gifts goes to Sir
Asutosh collection which covers the whole gamut of subjects in the humanities and in the
sciences as far as knowledge extended up to the early decades of the 20th century.

Did u know? The National Library has exchange relations with 170 institutions in 56
countries all over the world, and with a number of institutions within the country. Through
this method of collection building, the National Library has enriched its collection by the
acquisition of valuable foreign documents, not normally available through trade channels
and Indian publications not obtained through the Delivery of Books and Newspapers
(Public Libraries) Act, 1954.

The library, being a repository for United Nations documents and its agencies, has built up a
rich collection of UN Publications. Besides the UN publications, The publication of the following

166 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY