Salutations!

One of the assignments for INFO 5000 Introduction to Information Professions in Fall 2022 tasked me with researching an individual who was important in some way to the furtherance of librarianship. I initially wanted to research Henriette Arvam — she was nicknamed “the mother of MARC records,” and you can read here about her life and work on the LC blog around her death in 2006, reposing what The Washington Post published, likely as her obituary — yet I ended up choosing S. R. Ranganathan, named “India’s World Librarian.” Below is the TL;DR highlights of the essay I wrote.

S. R. Ranganathan was a self-made mathematics professor in India who became globally-renowned as “a library scientist par excellence” (Babu, 2011, p. 254); his vast contributions to the LIS theories and practices in our field included promoting library legislation in his home country, single-handedly developing the colon scheme of classification (Satyanarayana, 2015, p. 206), and penning numerous library science books and pamphlets, among which stand five pithy statements as the bedrock of librarianship (Mitchell, 2008, p. 2). In his seminal book, Ranganathan (1931) detailed exhaustively, through his inimitable linguistic style, his five laws of librarianship, namely: “Books are for use; Every reader should be served his or her book; Every book should be helped to find its reader; Save the time of the reader; A library is a growing organism” (pp. 336-337, 382). The book was so well-praised after its 1931 publication that one British contemporary openly confessed, “truthfully,” these laws “should be the guiding principles of librarians everywhere” (as cited in Sharma, 1979, p. 63).

The life and works of Ranganathan, as well as the research inspired by the Five Laws, were so interesting that my first draft of my paper was nine pages and needed significant editing and condensing to meet the seven-page maximum. Below are the top 4 things I found most interesting based on my research into a fascinating man; most are excerpts or abridgements of the text of my paper.  

1. At a Korean seminar internationally commemorating the 80th anniversary of the five laws, Dr. B. Ramesh Babu (2011) referenced the work of a researcher showing the Five Laws have been loosely transferred out of the world of library science and adapted, in homage apparently, into such categories as railways as public utilities, public administration, jurisprudence, religion, and society (pp. 264-265).
2. From the viewpoint of public librarianship, Holt (2010) spent a great deal of time ironically expounding upon the fourth law: saving the user’s time is “the most valuable gift that libraries could give to their constituents,” especially since time as a modern concept is “a precious commodity” (p. 75), and pointed out that the fourth law was written as a “service command, an imperative” (p. 66).
3. As an academic librarian, a professor of library science, and arguably an enthusiastic library aficionado, S. R. Ranganathan lived, worked, and taught with “only one goal in mind: to improve libraries and to extend library service to the public” (Sharma, 1979, p. 58).
4. Standing alongside many from 1931 onward, one reference librarian equated the timelessness of Ranganathan’s laws to the golden rule of mutual respect, enduring family traditions, the quintessential little black dress with sophisticated string of pearls (Rimland, 2007, p. 24). Neither the classic views and items of Rimland’s comparison, nor the five laws themselves, have lost their luster with the passing nine decades.

RLGing,

Sarah Hope

References

Babu, R. B. (2011). Relevance of five laws of library science in the contemporary library world. Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science, 45(4), 253-269. Retrieved from http://journal.kci.go.kr/kslis/archive/articleView?artiId=ART001605574

Holt, G. (2010). Saving time: Ranganathan and the librarian as teacher. Public Library Quarterly, 29(1), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616840903563024

Ranganathan, S. R. (1931). The five laws of library science [PDF]. Madras Library Association. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.$b99721 

Rimland, E. (2007). Ranganathan’s relevant rules. Reference & User Services Quarterly, 46(4), 24–26. Mitchell, W. B. (2008). Reflections on academic libraries in the 21st century. Journal of Access Services, 5(1–2), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367960802197509

Sharma, R. N. (1979). S. R. Ranganathan: A personal tribute. The Journal of Library History (1974-1987), 14(1), 58–72.

Satyanarayana, R. (2015). Library profession and Dr. Ranganathan. Annals of Library & Information Studies, 62(4), 203–207.