Editorial
Stealing books from public libraries
The management should be held to account
IT is a sickening picture that one gets from the report on book thefts from public libraries that appeared in this newspaper recently. More than 40,000 books, and that is a very conservative estimate since there is no mechanism to ascertain the exact number, have gone missing form public libraries all over the country in the last 41 years since 1968. And the list includes invaluable reference materials, rare magazines and articles. And five percent of the total books in the inventory of the 68 libraries in the country go missing every year; that amounts to as many as almost ten thousand books that go missing annually.
If a library is repository of knowledge, forced deprivation of books amounts to divesting the nation of the source of knowledge. Divesting the repository of knowledge is not just any other case of theft. We hardly realise that libraries are not made in a day or two or even months, they grow over ages. And as one sage had said, our libraries, being a disseminator of knowledge, become the cornerstone of civilisation. Thus, those who choose to enrich their personal collection, or may be just sell it for money at the cost of public interest do not realise the great damage they are wreaking on the nation.
The management of the public libraries must essentially be held responsible for the loss. Not all books and periodicals are property documented, the system of checking and counter checking is not strictly adhered to, and the means of unobtrusive oversight is lamentably lacking in the public libraries. For example, the 12 CCTV at the central library's reading room has been out of order since long. And the punishment for stealing books is a meagre Tk 250.
While no public library can stop totally books being pinched, the number in our case is far too much not to cause alarm. What is disconcerting is that it is not always the booklovers that illegally remove books from libraries. It is shocking to learn that the central public library is used as a rendezvous for drug takers who steal books to pay for drugs.
Such a situation is unacceptable. The management and oversight of the libraries must be beefed up. And those caught must be dished out exemplary punishments to deter future thefts. But at the end of the day, it is not laws and regulations but our moral compunction and social commitment that should prevent such acts from occurring.
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