One free day as I was roaming in the lanes of south ex in New Delhi, I say a beautiful library I went to inquire about this library as soon as I went inside this library, I was awestruck with its beauty, grandness, well maintained books in shelves, complete peace and serenity..I was lost for a moment before I asked the person on desk about how to get books issued from there. Suddenly, I came to know that this library was shut down due to continuous loss and also due to lack of financial support for this library to grow up and “keep up” with this dynamic environment. I was thinking that this was the death of entire intellectual property.

Here some example how actually libraries are withering away:

1. The burning of the Jaffna library: was an important event in the Sri Lankan civil war. An organized mob of Sinhalese origin went on a rampage on the nights of May 31 to June 1, 1981, burning the Jaffna Public Library. It was one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century. At the time of its destruction, the library was one of the biggest in Asia, containing over 97,000 books and manuscripts.

2. The Burning of Alexandria: Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the great his successor as pharaoh, ptolomyll soter, founded the museum or royal library of Alexandria in 283 BC. The museum was place of study which included lecturer area of gardens, a zoo and shrines for each of the nine muses as well as the library itself. It has been estimated that at one time library of Alexandria held over half million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia ,Egypt, India and many other nations. Over 100 scholars lived at the museum full time to perform research, write, lecture or translate and copy documents. The library was so large it actually had not her branch or” daughter” library at the temple of Serapis.
The burning of the library of Alexandria by Preston Chesser the loss of the ancient worlds single greatest archives of knowledge the library of Alexandria has been lamented for ages. But how & why it was lost is still a mystery. The mystery exists not for lack of suspects but from an excess of them. The first person blamed for the destruction the libraries none other than Julius Ceasor himself. In 48 BC, Ceasor was pursuing pompey in to Egypt when he was suddenly cut off by an Egyptian fleet at Alexandria greatly.

3. Non compliance: 914 government: added libraries to shut down
[Express new service: Mumbai, Thursday march- 7-2013. ]
Readers who use public libraries in the state may be in for a round shock with Maharashtra government planning to shut down 914 government –aided libraries for flouting rules. The state government had recently commissioned a survey of government-aided public libraries across the state, “We found gross violations at nearly 914 libraries, which we will shut down. The violations include running the library only on paper without adequate facilities for patrons’ inspite of getting state grants,” Ministry for Higher & Technical Education Rajesh Tope said.
The state has 12500 government- founded public libraries for which the state ear marks a grant of Rs-60 crore. The state had decided to inspect the libraries last year. Public libraries are recognized & are given grant-in-aid by the directorate of libraries under the Maharashtra public libraries (recognition for grant-in-aid & building equipment grants) Rules,1970. They are grouped into 4 categories based on number of books & periodicals as well as facilities available for readers. As many 914 of them however, did not comply. The government announced that “we will save around 6-7 crore by shutting down these libraries. This money can be used to improve others,”

4. The Achievements of Automation: Considerable improvements in access to sources of scientific, technical & other information have already occurred through automation. It is reasonable to accept the MEDLARS data base of the national library of medicine. 1964 at the first such data base to be widely used in the provision of information services. It is now estimated that there are in excess of more 50,000 data bases / data banks used routinely in the provision of various types of information services, more and more of these are becoming readily accessible on-line

Here I personally observed some reasons why actually libraries are withering away??

• Nowadays users are reluctant and devote most of the time in goggling what we people call as “GOGGLING EFFECT”, before coming to the library as it may be a waste of their precious time in searching the books on the shelves in the library.
• Nowadays smart phones and GPRS enabled mobile phones replaced the so called traditional libraries as though m-libraries are on the way to provide a speedy service to users.
• Easy to access through online
• We can get information by sitting in home or on the way through internet.
• The ICT plays a vital role in our life too.. Day to day it is changing so rapidly that once we acquire one database or software, the next version is ready in the market with extra features and modules and I think we are unable to cope with this demanding technological skills
• There is no need of any membership card in online accession.

If you all have any other information related to this issue.. please share !!!