Types of Library Systems Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The answer is West Bengal.

The West Bengal Public Libraries Act, 1979 set up a state-wide library system under the State Government's own library services administration, and West Bengal created a separate ministerial portfolio for library services. Partha De, who took considerable trouble to get the Act passed, became the state's first Minister for Library Services.

Kerala, Manipur and Mizoram also have public library Acts (Kerala's of 1989, Mizoram's of 1993), but the separate minister for library services is the feature that marks out West Bengal, so they are the distractors.

Answer: B

The Foundation is located at Kolkata and works for public libraries.

The Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation was set up in 1972, the bicentenary year of Raja Rammohun Roy, as an autonomous body under the Government of India's Department of Culture, with its headquarters in Kolkata (Salt Lake). Its purpose is to promote and support the public library movement, through grants to public libraries made with the state governments.

It is not in Chennai, Mumbai or New Delhi, and university, college and school libraries are funded through other channels, such as the UGC and education departments.

Answer: B

The order of enactment is (iii), (ii), (i), (iv).

1. West Bengal Public Libraries Act: 1979.
2. Kerala Public Libraries Act: 1989.
3. Mizoram Public Libraries Act: 1993.
4. Rajasthan Public Libraries Act: 2006.

West Bengal is the earliest of the four and Rajasthan the latest, which leaves only one code. The other codes start with Mizoram, Kerala or Rajasthan, and so contradict at least one of these dates.

Answer: A

The draft was prepared by the Raja Rammohan Roy Library Foundation and ILA.

In the mid-1980s the Indian Library Association, working with the Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation, drew up a draft national policy for library and information systems and placed it before the Government of India. The Government then set up a committee under D.P. Chattopadhyaya, which submitted the National Policy on Library and Information System (NAPLIS) in 1986.

NISCAIR was formed only in 2002, and IFLA and UNESCO are international bodies that did not draft India's national policy, so the other options are wrong.

Answer: C

The correct matching is a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-iii.

• Madras Public Libraries Act: 1948, the first public library Act in India, drafted by S.R. Ranganathan.
• Andhra Pradesh Public Libraries Act: 1960.
• Karnataka (then Mysore) Public Libraries Act: 1965.
• Maharashtra Public Libraries Act: 1967.

Madras at 1948 is the anchor every candidate should know, and it fixes d-iii, which rules out the options pairing (d) with (ii) or (i). Both options left with d-iii also give Andhra Pradesh 1960, and they differ only on Karnataka and Maharashtra: the near miss swaps them, giving Karnataka 1967 and Maharashtra 1965.

Answer: B

The national libraries are the Library of Congress, the Bibliotheque nationale de France and the National Diet Library, so the answer is (ii), (iii), (iv) are correct.

The Library of Congress serves as the de facto national library of the United States, the Bibliotheque nationale de France is the national library of France, and the National Diet Library in Tokyo is Japan's national library and the library of its parliament.

There is no 'England Library': the national library of the United Kingdom is the British Library, formed in 1973. Item (i) is therefore not a national library, and every option that includes it is wrong.

Answer: D

The key is (ii) and (iii) are correct: the Bhore Committee and the Sankaran Committee.

The Bhore Committee is the Health Survey and Development Committee, appointed by the Government of India in 1943 and reporting in 1946, and it dealt with health and medical education in general. A quiz-site record, not an authoritative source, places a Sankaran Committee on health science libraries in 1959. Taken together they give the keyed pair, which is the only option that contains both names.

The Krishna Rao and Ekbote committees appear together in options A, B and C with one of the other names, and none of those pairings matches the key.

What could not be confirmed: that the Bhore Committee made recommendations specifically on medical libraries, and the Sankaran Committee's membership and findings. The answer follows the University's key.

Answer: D

The key identifies the Sir Asutosh Mukherji collection.

The library of Sir Asutosh Mukherjee, the jurist and Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, was donated by his family to the National Library, Kolkata. It is one of the largest gift collections there, running to tens of thousands of volumes, and because he read across law, mathematics, history, literature and science, it covers a very wide range of subjects.

The other named gift collections are smaller and more specialised; the collections of the historians Jadunath Sarkar and S.N. Sen, for example, are centred on history.

Answer: A

The correct matching is (a)-(iii), (b)-(ii), (c)-(iv), (d)-(i).

• The UGC Library Committee (1957) was chaired by S.R. Ranganathan.
• The University Education Commission (1948-49) was chaired by S. Radhakrishnan.
• The Education Commission of 1964-66 was chaired by D.S. Kothari.
• The Secondary Education Commission (1952-53) was chaired by A.L. Mudaliar.

Any code pairing Ranganathan with an education commission or Kothari with secondary education is wrong.

Answer: A

(A) is true but (R) is false.

Advances in ICT have indeed pushed university libraries to automate and to offer computerised and online services, so the assertion is true.

The reason is false: the UGC has funded library computerisation, notably through INFLIBNET, its inter-university centre, which supported automation with the SOUL software, union catalogues and the e-ShodhSindhu consortium for e-resources.