In modern societies all activities of people are organised and conducted through institutions.

A social
institution is an integrated pattern of human relationship established by the common will and serving
some vital need. The pattern is caused through the interaction among people as a vital social need. In
modern societies special emphasis is being given to the aspects of literacy, adult education, formal
education, lifelong education, health care and dissemination of information and knowledge. Educational
institutions promote knowledge, skills and socialisation processes of the society. Many of these
institutions incorporate a body of formal rules and regulations through which activities of the society are
Types of Libraries carried out and regulated. Of the many institutions formed by the society, library and
its modern cognates are the most potent ones in meeting multiple needs of users in a modern society. It
was during the middle of the 19th century that social forces came into play and revolutionised the
character of library making it more and more a public institution. The industrial revolution had a great
impact on the concept of library transforming it from private and personal institution into a democratic
institution and benefiting people at large. “Libraries are hugely complex organisations which need to
operate across many boundaries but have few, if any, unique services.

TYPES OF LIBRARIES

1. National Libraries

The concept of national library is a recent development dating back to a few centuries. This
development has been a feature of socio-economic, cultural and scientific advancements in the Western
industrially advanced nations. Although national libraries existed in the past in some form in many
countries, the growth of national libraries as we understand them today has been an outcome of the
Renaissance Movement in Europe. Their growth has been further accelerated by the advances in science
and technology and their applications in industry, trade, transportation and communication. Their
objectives, functions and activities have been discussed in many national and international conferences.
A) Definition and Functions of a National Library
“A national library is a library specially established by the government of a country to serve as the pre-
eminent repository of information for that country” (Wikipedia). Unlike public libraries, national libraries
rarely allow citizens to borrow books. Often, they include numerous rare, valuable, or significant works.
The 6th edition of Harold’s Librarians Glossary (1987) defines a National Library as:
• A library maintained out of government funds;
• Serving the nation as a whole;
• Books in it being for reference only;
• Usually copyright libraries;
• The function of such a library is to collect and preserve for posterity, the books, periodicals,
newspapers and other documents published in the country;
• This is best done by a law requiring the publishers to deposit copies of all publications issued by them;
and
• Books purchased being published in other countries.
The National Library of India
B) Collection: It may be emphasised here that the National Library of India located in Kolkata has
more than 2.2+ million books and other materials. The collection is built through the following
means:
• Books received through Delivery of Books and Newspapers Act 1956;
• Purchase;
• Gifts;
• Exchange; and
• Other depository privileges.
The majority of collection is in English and Indian languages, though there are some books in
few foreign languages. The broad categories of publications acquired through purchase are:
• 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; and
• Books on library, documentation, and information science, science and technology, education,
planning and development and standard works on history, sociology, and biographies of
eminent people, rare and out of print books on microfilms and other standard works within the
limits of budget provision.
The National Library has some gifts which enrich its holdings considerably. The famous of such
collections happens to be that of Sir Asutosh Mukhopadhyay collection gifted by his family. It
covers the whole gamut of subjects in the humanities and sciences as far as published
knowledge up to the early decades of the 20th century. Of course, the library possesses the
enviable collections of historians like Sir J.N. Sirkar and S.N. Sen. Archival papers of Sir Tej
Bahadur Sapru and other rare manuscripts greatly attracts research scholars.
The National Library has exchange relations with 170 institutions in 56 countries all over the
world. As result of such relations, the library has been able to acquire valuable foreign
documents, not normally available through trade channels.
Besides U.N. publications, the publications of American, British, Canadian governments as also
publications of OECD are deposited in the National Library according to the agreements made
with Government of India. These documents add a new dimension to the importance of the
National Library. All these documents, as also the other holdings of the library are processed,
organised and serviced to the patrons of the library.
A) Services
The National Library of India provides the following services:
• Lending service including inter - library loan;
• Reading facilities;
• Bibliography and reference services; and
• Reprography services.
The lending function is rather peculiar for a national library. However, for historical reasons, the
National Library of India has continued its lending facilities to the members of the library in and
around Kolkata. Inter - library loan facilities are offered to members and institutions with the
cooperation of other libraries, both at national and international levels. This service obtains loan
of books from Russian State Library, Moscow, British Library, London, and libraries in Australia,
Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and a few other countries.

Public Libraries
Public libraries have a proud heritage. They are now acknowledged to be an integral part of
community life as promoters of literacy, providers of a wide range of reading for all ages, and
centres for community information services. Yet, although the practice of opening libraries to
public has been known since ancient times, it was not without considerable opposition that the
idea became accepted, in the 19th century, that a library provision was a legitimate charge on
public funds. It required legislation to enable local authorities to devote funds to this cause.
By the second half of the 20th century, there was general agreement around the position that
the public library fulfiled three interconnected roles: education, information and entertainment.
It enabled its users to undertake informal learning as well as providing a place for study, it
provided access to organised sources of information on all subjects, and it provided
entertainment, primarily through lending fiction. Within these roles all libraries developed all
manner of services. However, as budgetary cuts started in UK, it became apparent that public
libraries were struggling to define what this tripartite role really meant in an age of mass
communication and mass formal education.
• The public library which being the local gateway to knowledge, provides a basic condition for
lifelong learning, independent decision-making and cultural development of the individual and
social groups;
• A living force for education, culture and information, and essential agent for the fostering of
peace and spiritual welfare through the minds of men and women;
• The local centre of information, making all kinds of knowledge and information readily and
freely available to its users;
• Accessible for all, regardless of age, sex, religion, nationality, language or social status;
• And lastly, the libraries which have collections and services, all types of appropriate media and
modern technologies, as well as materials with high quality and have relevance to local needs
and conditions. Materials must reflect current trends and the evolution of the society, as well as
the memory of human endeavour and imagination.
The above aspects cover all facets of public library services. The manifesto also spelt out key
missions, which relate to information literacy, education and culture which are at the core of
public library services.
Special Libraries
The national, university and public libraries form the network of general libraries more or less
accessible to the general public. There are a large number of libraries beyond this network. They
are established by special groups of users to meet their own needs. Many of these originated
with learned societies and especially with the great scientific and engineering societies founded
during the 19th century to provide specialist material for their members. Thus some special
libraries were founded. With the coming of Industrial Revolution arose the need for working
class educated in technology, and industrialists and philanthropists provided facilities and books
necessary for technical instruction. Special libraries are attached to official institutions, such as
government departments, hospitals and the like. For the most part, however they came into
being in order to meet specific needs in commercial and industrial organisations. Special
libraries are planned strictly on practical lines, with activities and collections carefully controlled
in size and scope. They are largely concerned with communicating information to specialist
users in response to –or preferably in anticipation of – their specific needs. Special libraries have
therefore been much concerned with theoretical investigation of information techniques
including the use of computers for information retrieval.
A) Definition and Meaning
In the expression special libraries the word special has to be interpreted to mean specialist
to get closer to the concept. As a matter of fact, these are libraries that serve a particular
institution that has a specific role to play, and they will therefore tend to be one subject
oriented libraries. For example, they could serve a hospital, or an industrial organisation or a
scientific institution, etc. They also vary in size depending in part of the size of the institution
they serve whose information needs are defined. Special libraries, some times referred to as
information centres, are located in multitude of settings including international
organisations.
B) Functions and Services
o Special libraries organise the resources they collect in ways that best suit local needs;
o Analyse, synthesise and evaluate information and data;
o Provide critical reviews, reports and compilations;
o Provide abstracts, indexes and extracts;
o Perform literature searches and compile bibliographies;
o Disseminate current information and SDI which stimulate research; and
o Establish a monitoring system for the evaluation of performance.
The above stated functions of special libraries make them more user centred engaged in the
provision of need-based services.
C) Services
Special librarians have become adept at reading the runes (to try to guess what is going to
happen in the future by examining what is happening now) of the environment in which
their parent organisations operate. Therefore they scan information sources to find material
that they know will interest their clientele. They master the ways and means of presenting
information that will save the time of their busy customers. Special libraries generally
provide the following services to their user community:
• Reference Service;
• Awareness Services such as Current Awareness and routing, news letters and other
bulletin services;
• Personalised and customised information services such as SDI;
• Specialised services like consolidation and repackaging of information; and
• Analysis, synthesis and evaluation of information and data and preparation of critical
reports as and when required.
In all these activities they use information technology available to them. For this purpose
the staff need to be specially trained in modern information technology, particularly in
practical usage aspects. Only then, the staff will be in a position to deliver the type of
services expected of them. It goes with out saying that they should be qualified in the
subjects in which the parent organisations operate.

Digital Libraries
The idea of easy, finger-tip access to information – what we conceptualise as digital libraries
today has its origin in Vannevar Bush’s Memex Machine and has continued to evolve with
each advance in information technology. When computers were connected into large
networks forming the Internet, the concept evolved again, and research turned to creating
libraries of digital information that could be accessed by any one from any where in the
world. The fundamental reason for building digital libraries is a belief that they will provide
better delivery of information than was possible in the past with traditional libraries.
Therefore, phrases like electronic library, virtual library, library without walls, and digital
library have sprung up and all have been used interchangeably to describe this broad
concept. But, what does this phrase mean? What is a digital library? And what are the issues
and challenges in creating digital libraries? Also what are the issues involved in creating a
coordinated scheme of digital libraries? This section is intended to provide a overview of
digital libraries and briefly discuss answers to some of the above questions.
A) Definition
“Digital libraries are a set of electronic resources and associated technical capabilities
for creating searching and using information. In this sense, they are an extension and
enhancement of information storage and retrieval systems that manipulate digital data
in any medium (text, images, sounds, statistic and dynamic images) and exist in
distributed networks. The content of digital libraries includes data, metadata; they
describe various aspects of the data (i.e. representation, creator, owner, reproduction
rights) and metadata that consists of links or relationships to other data or metadata
whether internal or external to the digital library.
Digital Libraries are constructed – collected and organised – by [and for] a community
of users and their functional capabilities support the information needs and uses of that
community. They are a component of communities in which individuals and groups
interact with each other, using data, information and knowledge resources and systems.
In this sense, they are an extension, enhancement, and integration of a variety of
 information institutions as physical places where resources are selected, collected,
organised, preserved, and accessed in support of a user community. These information
institutions include among others, libraries, museums, archives, etc. Digital Libraries also
extend and serve other community settings, including classrooms, offices, laboratories,
homes and public spaces”.
B) Characteristics
It is to be noted that characteristics mentioned below have been gleaned from various
discussions about digital libraries, both online and imprint.
• Digital libraries are the digital face of traditional libraries that include both digital
collections and traditional, fixed media collections. So they encompass both electronic
and paper materials.
• Digital libraries will also include digital materials that exist outside the physical and
administrative bounds of any one digital library.
• They include the processes and services that are the backbone and nervous system of
libraries. However, such traditional processes though forming the basis of digital library
work will have to be revised and extended to accommodate the differences between
new digital media and traditional fixed media.
• Digital libraries provide a coherent view of all of the information contained within a
library, no matter its form or format.
• They will serve particular communities or constituencies, as traditional libraries do
now, though those communities may be widely dispersed throughout the network.
• Digital libraries will require both the skills of librarians and as well as those of
computer scientists to be viable.

Academic Libraries
Use of libraries for reading and reference is an integral part of learning, teaching and
research. Libraries in schools and colleges provide facilities for students and teachers to
read books or consult them for reference, thus widening the scope of class room
learning and teaching. University libraries provide additional facilities for higher
learning, research and dissemination of knowledge.
The massification of higher education has led in recent years to much greater
prominence being given to the role of academic library in supporting learning and
teaching. In the U.K., The Robbins’s Report (Committee on Higher Education, 1963) set
the stage with its famous statement of principle: “higher education opportunities should
be available to all those who are qualified by ability and attainment to pursue them and
who wish to do so”.
The Follett Report (1993) set in train strategic thinking which has enabled libraries to
take an institutional lead in some areas, for example, in the development of broad
cross-organisational information strategies.
The effects of information and communication technologies on the changes and
developments taking place in academic libraries cannot be undermined. However, it has
to be recognised that there are other drivers of change. These include the role of library
staff in the direct delivery of teaching, especially in relation to information literacies,
accountability and pressure on resources with consequent requirement for robust
performance and the whole question of the design of the physical library in an age of
electronic communications.
The academic libraries comprise: school libraries, college libraries and the university
libraries. Performance of each of these types of libraries is important in promoting the
objectives of their parent organisations to which they are attached.
A) School Libraries
The librarian of the school library has responsibilities of not only maintaining the
library but also getting involved in activities that would compliment and supplement
classroom teaching. It is necessary for her/him to possess teaching skills. Story-
telling, book talks, demonstrating the lives of birds and animals through audio-visual
aids, etc. are some of other desirable skills that a school librarian should possess.
Most of these activities call for imagination both in design and presentation. S/he
should develop a participative approach with the teachers and play a supportive
role in improving the performance of the school as a whole.
A school library should offer some of these services to its clientele:
• Lending,
• Information and reference services,
• Guidance and advisory services,
• Preparation of reading lists both on anticipatory and responsive basis,
• Service on current events, activities, personalities, etc. and
• Other routine services.
It may be pointed out that the situation relating to school libraries in India presents
a dismal picture and needs considerable improvement. In this connection, it is worth
pursuing the recommendations of the Secondary Education Commission and the
Directorate of Extension Programme for Secondary Education of the NCERT to
vitalise school libraries.

B) College Libraries
College education provides a completely different environment to students. Here,
the teachers will not be in a position to provide individual attention to students.
Students have to depend more on self-learning. Therefore, college library plays
important role in supplementing class room teaching. In this section we shall briefly
discuss the objective functions, nature of collection that needs to be built up and
the services to be rendered to the different categories of users. The major functions
of a college library may be summed as under:
• Giving the young minds (boys and girls) a wider and deeper understanding of
different disciplines;
• Preparing the students for advanced studies in various disciplines;
• Preparing the girls and boys for shouldering higher responsibilities in life;
• Providing adequate reading facilities; and
 • Introducing special materials to faculty necessary for their research.
For translating the above functions into practice the college library needs certain
key components. They are:
• A collection of books and other learning material;
• The identification of user community which comprises students, teachers and the
college management
Physical facilities like building, furniture and other equipment;
Professional staff for the library; and
• Finance and budget.
In order to meet the varied academic and extra curricular needs of both students
and the teachers, a college library should acquire a wide range of learning and
teaching materials. The quality of the collection has to be determined on the basis
of a well thought out policy laid down by the library advisory committee. The
librarian and her/his staff using the global selection tools should bring to the
attention of experts worth while titles on different subjects to build a collection
adequate to meet the learning and teaching requirements. The collection thus
acquired must be processed and properly organised to facilitate its maximum use.
The important services to be provided by a college library comprise the following:
• Textbook Services;
• Lending and interlibrary loan service;
• Reading room services;
• Information and reference services;
• Documentation services on a specific request;
• Display of current journals and new acquisitions to the library;
• Assistance in the use of the library;
• Audio-visual services – such as tape slide demonstrations; and
• Reprographic facilities (on liberal basis).
It goes without saying that use of modern technology in services will facilitate better
performance and efficacy of the library. Voluntary help and service should be the
real motto of the library staff. They should be active partners in playing supportive
role in teaching and learning process and help the library user community to the
maximum extent. Last but not the least aspect is the funding policy to be followed
by the management. They should do well to follow the accepted norms and
standard practices. Modernisation of the library facilities is the need of the times.

C) University Libraries
An enduring metaphor for the university library is that it is the heart of the
university. The exact origins of this phrase are not clear. However, Grimes (1998)
suggests that it was first used by William Eliot (who was president of Harvard
University, Chicago during the period 1869-1909). Subsequently the image was
picked up in U.K. and appeared in various reports like Parry Report 1967. The
metaphor implies that the academic library is of unparalleled importance. The
objectives and functions of a university library are derived from the functions of a
university which are:
• Learning and teaching;
• Research and generation of new knowledge;
• Dissemination and publication of research results;
• Conservation of knowledge and ideas; and
• Extension and services
Functions
As stated above the major functions of a university library are derived from the
objectives of the university. They comprise:
• Development of a collection in a wide range of subjects for learning, teaching,
research, publication, etc.;
• Getting the stock of knowledge materials organised and maintained for use;
• Organising and providing a variety of library, documentation and information
services, both responsive and anticipatory.
The user community of university library generally falls under the following
categories:
• Students at different levels of study in different subjects;
• Teachers imparting instructions and guiding students at different levels and in
different subjects;
• Research students working for M.Phil and Ph.D. degrees;
• Post-doctoral research scholars working on specific projects;
• Professors and experts guiding research projects and managing research activities
of the university;
• Members of various academic and executive bodies of the university;
• Scholars in general, who get special privileges of using the university library; and
• Others.