2,700 rare books ‘vanish’ from SRS Library in 10 yrs

Tribune News Service

Jammu, June 26

As many as 2,700 rare books have “vanished” from historic Shri Ranbir Singh (SRS) Library in the past one decade with no efforts being made to recover them from some of the “elite members”.

As per information collected by RTI activist Raman Sharma under the J&K Right to Information Act-2009, at least five books go missing in a week from SRS Library, which is in the heart of the winter capital. Information obtained by the RTI activist from the office of the Deputy Director, Libraries, Jammu, discloses that during the last 10 years 2,400 books have been damaged in SRS Library and 327 books borrowed by its members have not been returned yet.

“The lost books include very rare ones on different subjects, including legal, spiritual, religious, academic, historic, health, political, culture and art, written by local, national and international authors like George Morrow, Khushwant Singh and Jawaharlal Nehru. The defaulters have also taken away Hindi, Urdu, Dogri and Kashmiri poetry books of famous poets of Jammu and Kashmir. Many books on the religious history of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh regions have also gone missing from this old Library,” said Raman Sharma.

The information gathered by the RTI activist has revealed that though the estimated cost of these 327 books, as told by the department, is Rs 70,510, but in fact many books still in the possession of defaulters are priceless as there are some books whose copy or edition is not available in the market.

As per the rule book of SRS Library, a member has to return a borrowed book to the library within 14 days. In another point of query the department has informed to the applicant that SRS Library has a stock of 57, 341 books as on date and in the year 2014-15 the library did not receive any book, whereas the total expenditure during the last 10 years on purchasing books is over Rs 50 lakh.