Connemara Public Library and Chennai Urban Elites:Roles of Tamil Nadu State Central Library for the Social Upliftment

摘要

The state Central library is one of the famous library in the Indian subcontinent it has been named as Connemara Public Library by the name of its founder and located at the heart of the Chennai city. The City is the fourth largest city in India has rich social and cultural segments, though the New Delhi is the capital city of India but Chennai city is considered as the Capital city of the Indian Higher education and it is located in the southern tip of the Indian peninsula. It has the longest, world beautiful Marina beach and rich architectural heritage monuments. The city life has many folds ranging from poor strata on the platforms to the royal pose garden bungalows and high rise middle class residential buildings. It is also to note that it has many world renewed educational institutions and Libraries such as Madras University Library which had been used as research laboratory by Dr. S. R. Ranganthan the father of Library Science and Cannemara Public Library. The then Governor of Madras Lord Connemara established the first ever public Library in Tamil Nadu during his tenure 1886-1890. Since from its inceptions, the Library contributed in many ways for the educational and social upliftment of the Chennai urban elites. The Library has been growing in many dimensions such as collection services and user etc. Connemara Public Library constitutes of more than a lakh members as on today. The members vary form school goers to research scholars. Even a child and any individual above 17 years of age residing at Chennai or close to it can become a member. In this context, this particular paper intend to study the contribution of this urban library for the educational and social developments from the angle of the users point of view. For this purpose a questionnaire has been designed and administered among 200 selected users of the library on the basis of purposive sampling technique. The results of the study reveals that most of the users are over whelmingly appreciating the social and educational roles of the library and as well as lacuna in the Library Collections and services and the modalities to rectify the lacuna.