IMPHAL, March 15: Library and Information Science Students`™ Association, Manipur, LISSAM, demanded the Manipur University authorities to upgrade the MU Library and make befitting facilities available to the students and the rest of the university community.
In a press release, the LISSAM said although the Manipur University library claims to possess 1,60,000 books, few of them pertain to the syllabus of the 30 departments of the university.
It said if this is the condition of the central library, the department libraries are even worse.
It lamented that the attitude seems to be to encourage students to purchase their own books, and this is unfair for most students in the university do not have the resources to make these purchases.
It also said the culture of reading books in the library reading rooms is also on the wane because relevant books are unavailable and also because of lack of space.
The new culture in the university is to avoid the library and instead depend on the class notes teachers distribute, it said. These notes are then mugged by heart and reproduced to get through the semester examinations.
Instead of books, the students are increasingly beginning to depend on Xerox copies of class notes distributed by the teachers, the release further said.
The LISSAM release said numerous representations have been made in the regard to MU authorities, but all of them have so far fallen on deaf ears.
It therefore called upon the authorities once again to upgrade library facilities in the University, and to introduce new technologies such as e-book reading facilities, subscribing more journals, increasing the number of reference books etc.
It also demanded for more reading rooms to be introduced in the central and departmental library rooms.