August
12th is being celebrated as National Librarian’s Day in India, in
remembrance of national professor of library science, Dr S R Ranganathan (12
August 1892 – 27 September 1972), who had spearheaded library development in
India. Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan came from a moderate background in British-ruled
India. He was born in the small town of Shiyali (now known as Sirkazhi), in the
state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. Ranganathan began his professional life
as a mathematician and continued for five years. He left Presidency College in
January 1924 where he taught Physics and Mathematics to take appointment as the
first librarian of Madras University. He is considered to be the father of
library science, documentation and information science in India and is widely
known throughout the rest of the world for his fundamental thinking in the
field. His most notable contributions to the field were his five laws of
library science and the development of the first major analytic-synthetic
classification system, the colon classification. The Government of India
awarded Padmashri to Dr. S.R. Ranganathan for valuable contributions to Library
Science.
To
commemorate his contribution in the field of Library Science in India Lets bring
a change in the society with a movement called “Read and Let’s Read”.