Gandhi in Our Times

Speaker : ................It is my mission to educate the users on libraries with maximum ...... There are 16,000 people in the large campus. When it comes to the library our emphasis is on all the areas we have above 1,50,000 books and more than two lakhs and also we more 8 lakh scientific and technical reports. We have all the major reports and data basis and all kinds of data basis and ............. we have to keep in contact with many local organisations and international organisations. Whatever the research that is published in India we collect all the information and inputs in a standard format of INIS (International Nuclear Information System) and sent it to Vienna, the Central Secretariat of International Clearance Information System. So it is available in C.D. and also on internalise. This is the way we are relating t Democratization of Information. Whatever information is available we are inputting. There are hundred and fourteen participating countries to bring out this Nuclear Information System. So most of the countries including the international organisations like UNIDO, ILO, they are all participating in it. With this brief introduction, I thank you.

Next Speaker : Talking about libraries. What we are talking about is democratizing information and lot many things. We talked about the facts and conditions as India is taking in terms of education. In terms of libraries. What are the conditions of libraries here in different parts of India? And mainly rural India where nobody goes. Then we talked about past education because the medium was English and he knows one indigenous language called Marathi. Then he talked about party politics. Party politics which criminalises everything. How it operates in Public domain etc. etc. Therefore there are also major tentative factors for the bad shape of different libraries etc. Then he talked about people who want to go rural actually they do not get opportunities. They get marginalised basically, what he talked about. Initially he talked about education and practice. They are poles apart. They are two different worlds. Like different worlds. Like another world is possible what we are talking about. Actually another world is possible here is in another world. The practice is completely different. The education is completely different. The two important things he pointed out. First he could not continue with master of one reason because he does not have any expertise. Second thing he visualised was that work opportunity is very rare although he holds a bachelor degree in library science, he is not getting a job.

Next Speaker : I just happen to visit a library while going to my home place. I hail from Delhi and a premier institute called Jawaharlal Nehru University. I go to that library of Jawaharlal Nehru University. I mainly study social sciences and literature. What I was interested in here in this seminar, I wanted to know exactly the theoretical aspects of how the politics and how the different hegemonies tendencies of India. How they are facing the information particularly the information provided by libraries. Like, I talk about Jawaharlal Nehru University where the sixth floor was put was build by the Soviet erstwhile U.S.S.R. O.K. Sixth floor that part has a huge bulk of books from USSR, U.K. after the Soviet Russian relevance. Is of no use. Hardly anybody goes there. How do different ideologies different paths if they fail, how their information and whether propaganda gets diluted. The second thing that how different ideologies like ideology that builds fundamentalism in India. How they are enhancing the role of information to propagate their own ideology. Like what we are seeing in the libraries we say that growth of some book which might not interest me but it might interest us to get more literature. So how can we democratise libraries in true sense. Amid differences, hegemonic tendencies etc. etc. This was my main concern here.

Question : How do you find the librarian there ?

Speaker : If I have to tell about Jawaharlal Nehru University, then there is a very good person who is a very good manager of the library. He knows lots of books. He is Mr. Mallik. If I need any help, help to look for a book, I just go to Mr. Mallik and nobody else in the library knows where are those books. So in terms of you know people in J.N.U., I think they are not qualified enough, what I would say and the books are not properly catalogued. If I have to find a book I cannot find if the book is kept somewhere else not in the main place and the pages are torn in the book. Like in English literature, I am a student of English literature so I found 25% books pages were torn. 25% books basically. I saw one or two pages or twenty five pages with half of the book torn and nobody you know it is not a problem today but there are so many students witness. Ultimately it is the responsibility on the part of the literary to preserve new books and issue and release new books and to stock such practical ways. Now this is not happening, I find it very pathetic and I find it what should I say ? depressing and disturbing and can I reply or not now ?

Question : I have never visited Jawahar Lal Nehru University library but I have heard it is a very good library. And I am sure you must be maintaining some kind of reckoning. You say you don't find books. Now there might be particular instances where you may not be able to trace a particular book. But I am sure in such a big library they must be having some catalogue to maintain.

Reply : Catalogue is there. But they are not properly catalogued.

Intervention : They must be properly catalogued but they must not be present in the proper shelf.

Reply : Ya ! Ya ! you are right you are right, I am sorry ! Thank you !

New Speaker : I have already spoken briefly about the project our project. It is one of the major program of the Rajeev Gandhi Foundation. We have around twelve hundred libraries spread across seventeen states of our country. I would just briefly tell you what our model is. It is a tripod partnership what we cater to. The R.B.F., the community and the local implementing partner. Because we do not go and implement any project directly. See R.B.F. is just one and we have a limited staff strength. So we partner with a local N.G.O. in implementing a projects. Though the area, the agency are identified and short listed by us, there is no certain parameters. Right. The model which we follow is it is a very small library. It is not a big public library what one can forsee. Little furniture for a library. It is just one room in the village, which is given for a library. And as a matter of policy we are looking for a common place. Let it be a panchayat ghar premises, a primary school premises or a chaupal, what you have in a village and here everybody can access books and can come to that place. So that there is no politics, no confrontation, no residential premises. Then also a feeling of ownership comes within the community and if it can be accessed by all. And we give little furnitures like racks, table chairs, depending the area. Now Kerala people wanted racks to sit. The other like Ajmer people wanted 'Daris' to sit. So depending on the areas, different kind of furniture is given to the library. Little furniture. It is not tent, chairs we are targeting but two chairs, two 'daris' probably, three to four racks or shelf to keep books one table. Books are also around nine to ten thousand books for each library. And then we set up libraries in a cluster. Suppose there are five to ten close by and different books are given to different nearly libraries so that at some point of time may be six to eight months down the time they can exchange. Some kind of token money or honourarium to the librarian. Newspapers, magazines and the periodicals come to the library. Now technical training. It is not much but training comprises of the system for the library management. Sensitization and awareness about what our library is how we should we go about its resource mobilisation, other important stakeholders. The training program is a comprehensive training program. It is merely not a system of library. It has to cater to many other issues as well. The training is given by the Rajeev Gandhi Foundation and then the refresher training, additional books all that features in the third and second year. We have now started course material and all that catering to the needs of the community. Whatever is their need, based on that we are flexible with our Model areawise. Also we have tried to experiment with few of our libraries. We have tried to create a book bank with cluster of libraries. For e.g. we have ten libraries, in Uttaranchal with an organisation called 'Chirag'. So now they wanted more books. Now what we gave them was we had given them a book bank over a cluster of books and libraries. Book bank basically is a clearing house of books so that books can be exchanged from one library to the book bank and a set could be better located. Puppet show is an experiment we conducted at Jaipur. It was primarily for awareness of the need and importance of education and library and all that. In regular basis, puppet shows are carried out in villages. They have their own traditions and mimanic and they deliver the message whatsoever to those shows. Book exhibition was another way we tried out in Jaipur, Pushkar, Ajmer. You know at the time of setting up of a library and at the time of setting up of training program or may be during puppet shows and all that Book exhibition are held. It is a good way to feel the books by the community and they can also choose the books they wish to read and even those they want for their library. That is all we have tried out. Now we have also tied up Cyber Centers in our library, because anybody will agree a library needs to go beyond a reading room. And also it cannot exist in isolation. So we tried to set up a cyber center, a library as an information center in four villages in RenalLucknow which is in Uttar Pradesh, India. Now that experiment did not work out very well due many reasons. Shortage of electricity, power, maintenance at the village level, every second day a hardware and a technical problem. Now it did not work out very well. Few centers are running fine but we did not have a good experience. Of course we thought they, would access e-mails, they would access internet for Mandi 'Bhav' and all that. But it did not happen. Now we have also a big number of twelve hundred but they major challenge infront of us today is that we have to address sustainability. Sustainability is one thing which I don't know how you people work but though we take a nominal membership from the villagers and all that but it really does not work. So people who do not have anything to eat how will they shell out Rs. 2/- or Rs. 5/- for libraries. There are prosperous villages but there is a mix of all kinds sustainability and strengthening or upgrading the quality of existing libraries is the major challenge, so that is why we are looking for networking and collaborations to atleast maintain what we have build on and obviously to add on new libraries with a different agenda. We are also trying experiments with a London based organisation called E.V.A. They are funding us and we are trying to create a model in Andhra Pradesh. More book banks, more libraries, more training, more workshops on various other issues and then to see what the result are mainly more conputers and all that. Second important thing about what we are taking up is activity workshop for children. Now from a static entity it has to become a dynamic thing then only libraries are going to survive. So within an organisation in Bhopal called EKLAVYA we are trying up activity workshop for children. Wall paper, Newspaper/ Paper making , read about stories and different kinds of things can be done. These books for children and address as well. We are working and we have tied up with a world bank and elsewhere projects. It will be handled by W.C.D. department of Human and Resource Ministry. So we are giving them technical expertise for setting up libraries. I have also prepared and have written that handbook. Just a bullet points for the needs of the major stakeholders. What are their roles and responsibilities? These formal library community at the village level. What they have to do? So just a simple manual which is coming out very soon. So we are setting up libraries, giving them technical expertise and training and their training is starting at the fag end of the month i.e. 28th onwards. And now we are also looking for partnerships, networking and thank you !

Next Speaker : Good morning ! everybody wanted me to speak up. I am actually Finnish but at present in Brazil working there with global community. Let me start with information which is of critical importance to a domestic society and rightful information in time with human rights. The current available information in a capitalist society. At moment we are trying to access information for the marginalised and secondly the practical experience I had in Finland is about free information and free public libraries. There is also tendency in Finland is to cut resources of public libraries. But then experiences of Mozambic, Nambia and such countries there is lack of such libraries and this is the reason for their underdevelopment. In that sense the Nordic model, I think such a model should be promoted. So we also a strong information for public information...... not audible.......................... At present I am working with 32 people. So those people who live in forest are dependent. Government does not have the means to protect the forest and people need to be involved and that is why they continue living in a forest and are displaced from remote villages where they had been living. And that is quite a challenge. Then these is a national council of ................... ? ........... They have a model called extractive research. So have a very modest experiment with a library called Centre for Environmental Education. Because there is no new technology to bring internet access. In Brazil there is a civil democratisation of information and democratic initiative and forms of library. Anyway such libraries are government by people themselves and such associations. Through access to internet and libraries we feel we can help people gain information and continue living. Thank You !

Answer : Thank you very much. We just had a little discussion and we will introduce our speakers for today who have just come in and then we will formalise the meeting.

Speaker : I am Prof. Lovnitin from Austria. I have been involved in setting up data bases in S.E. Asia from 1995, I had been working on setting up data bases collecting documents, developing biographical information and technologists identity the peasants and people in need, graves and the genocide program. Then from the last years of government on the legal side. I had been working since 1987, working in a international library and last year was involved in publishing in Combodia, which was a study of the whole chain from writing about the writers, their experiences about writing, printers publishers, book fellows, libraries and looking for change. I think some of the points already made by others and speakers like Rashid and Mita were very well. The issue of politics of information is what we saw in Combodia is the latest case and ofcourse it was an extreme case from 1975-1979 when all the schools, publishing libraries were suspended you can say. In most cases, the physical buildding were not destroyed but the people were destroyed. In the last part many flud the country and the system was destoryed. Some of the pages of books taken off. So the mechanism from the information system was completely shottered. Your story about.........? So this point about changing ideology and some very known Americans and French said Oh ! No ! No! You have to have a jury. So during the 80s there were very important steps. There were newspapers, radio stations, public services schools, education systems and health systems were of very low level but they were consistent through the country. Now this is completely overturned because of the privatization and government services. All these have completely closed. The national library is in a very bad shape. No public library system is there basically except now some N.G.Os have come in and are contributing some of the things our colleagues were saying about village library program system. Efforts were done by some Japanese N.G.Os. But there is a real contradiction where people are trying to say ............

........... for more analysis here in India because of its different shape of problems. And when we think of our languages and soft information. How do we put down in the public domain in a such a way which is acceptable to many people. And issue of sort of understanding those levels is one and then issue of languages of economic is another one, which we need to look at while seeing the libraries and then when we get into the issue of purchase of libraries, I think that one issue about how, what can be used to the best of capacity to encourage the upsurge information for everybody. I like the idea that come from someone who says that libraries are a public resort and surely if they are the public resort they should be acceptable to everybody rather than the schools or groups of people. That is an issue that I urge and I think I would like to put on the table and see one of those things and issues we want to look at basically and Number 2) The issue how do we sustain the good efforts sustained by the N.G.Os. by groups, by community. Because they recognise as community that they need information. But as person says if the person cannot read then what is the use of contribution his to information structure ? But we should also be looking to say what is an information structure ? But we should also be thinking about prices of information in villages then it is important. To we those structures are equally important. Should we be looking at the way of information access in villages and the new infrastructure available in villages. So I also thought that it is very good that environment has also thought of recognising the importance of indegenous people in preserving their identity and how they would be doing it through N.G.Os rather than just rely on information from the internet. Because I am sure they have passed on the information on who is there ? How are they ? What are their and create some sort of alternative to communal ways of information. Those are just my comments that come to me immediately and I am inviting people who have to share information with all of us.

New Speaker : I would like to make one general comment based on library system today. See what is a library ? A library is a place where there must be a librarian. Without a librarian there cannot be a library........ not audible....................... You were telling about how to be a good librarian. I would like to formulate this on a general scale. Because if you are speaking about democratizing information at global level you should be able to see the road forward in solving these problems and what is a librarian. What are the requirements of a librarian of today ? ................. not audible....................

I want to tell everybody and we can't get around this fact that all of these are compact situation. Their holistic system of opportunities, then charges, then there is almost any breach or hole in a system them unfortunately we can have a whole library system set up but if you go down but somebody puts the whole system which is complex. Now it is not simple. Now we all need to have a fire inside our belly to want to do these things. So we need to have intelligence. Now if we see thesis of this then if somebody is working at the village level and they need some material then somebody else is producing that material, I hope to see put together because if the pieces of these eco-system are coming together then they are not coming together. So we can reliably build this intelligent system. We need to be a thread to co modification of information, of construction and reinforcing. Now that is not about slowing down.

Intervention : A brief comment on the role of N.G.O. with the focus on an N.G.O. is probably mistaken particularly in this committee. If the focus to information, profit from information is low then using a state can provide a pocket library about everywhere. An N.G.O. can handle only few libraries in very few villages while you need millions of libraries at different places in order to ensure access for everybody.

Next Speaker : Think how close you ideally are communicated with the very idea of the whole democratic system. I would like to continue to probe as done on this subject by speaking widely and there has to be a wider area. Now think of a situation in which somebody nearly wants to change something. You need information to carry on to make improvements in his surroundings. So there must be an office in the library. And one who goes there to get information, to get books, to get the guidance, but before you can really do that to start asking that question, we must have some process in the system. That system is really workings that is worthwhile finding that law book where you can get that help and with the help of others with the help of lots of communities and lots of structure to make it work. So such a library and even very small one not very well equipped. So the whole democratic system empowers the local structure to fulfill their requirements of information.

Next Speaker : N.G.O. cannot solve this problem. I will agree with this. They can open ten libraries but India is a big country. Almost as big as whole of Europe and we have lakhs might be one million villages. We have such a large country so we have to create the awareness through education among the masses that they can strengthen the society by working in the area and its information which they need. Two, he was talking about J.N.U's library he has visited number of times. Library is fully catalogued library but so far system that is more proper. There are two ways to work. One is B.P.L. If you want work you get work. There is lot of trade unionism. If you ask somebody to do it he will go to the union and union immediately comes. There are no library law. Mr. Mallik, I know him personally. He is a very conscious person. So to create the awareness should be the work culture of representations among the masses that you need a center where you can have a formation which you need in day to day life. Otherwise you need a library to be establish a library, run for some time. After some time it closes down. Government cannot support because government is always in deficit budgeting and it is managing and you should always concentrate on education, literacy among the masses as well as information literacy telling them what you need and if you have this information this is the impact. That is the only way out. And so far utilisation is concerned it is a world wide problem. Somewhere it is 90% somewhere it is 10% but it is there. Unemployment in library profession in India is large. Apart from library professionals, engineers, technocrats, computer engineer, software engineers, many people are out of jobs in India. So it depends on the government policy how we can influence them to create a mass scale and a large scale employment. That is one of the things. Only awareness among the masses is the solution for employment.

Intervention : It is difficult to hear, I am going to raise a complain with organisers as to why this seminar is organised near the construction with so much noise pollution.........

Next Speaker : I am a Social Scientist. We had been organising ourselves together since 1st W.S.F. on the issue of democratization of information. This is the piece of our background. Official research on libraries from the start you know needs solutions because it is problematic. Now I have also been told that libraries are one of the models of Socialism. Ya ! and therefore we have certain dialogue. Actually one more question could be mentioned. May be as a librarian we are seeking to defines........... ? Yesterday we had a leading example of a speaker from Bangalore. He spoke about the role of libraries and librarian in the democratisation not only of information but as a whole for sure. First of all I had to apologies because I had to be at your seminar yesterday and I just had a tamable headache and I was just not able to prove myself to come so I had to apologies. And second point is of course I am not a librarian. I am infact a library user as any normal Social Scientist. I can handly measure myself without a library and books because that is the end of my function which destroys the way as they were destroyed say in Campuchia. And of course I can say if you allow what happened in Russia. Because as a user I also have some experience which I can share with you. Of course you should know that Soviet Union had a very expanded system of library. We had a socalled a Lenin library. There was a central library and at a Certain point of history it become the biggest library of the world. Atleast that was what was were taught in Soviet Union or that was what we learnt. And I imagine that even if it was not the biggest it was close to be the biggest in the whole world. Now this is only the top level of its big construction. Now really it was done in a very systematic and planned way. One good thing which you can have in a planned economy you can create a top down system which more or less works especially it is up to you. That was not into the production. See one of the problems of the centralised system you don't really how well your players work on ground. But in case of more simple task the approach works like you establish a library in even single village bigger than a certain size. That is basically a very simple criteria. And that means that we have got huge number of survivors all over the country. Another question is how good are these libraries in terms of contact because this is exactly where you counter the problem. Because ofcourse you have lots of libraries but in many such libraries you have lots of books that are absolutely useless. Like volumes of speeches of communist party elite or volumes and volumes of reprint of Marxism-Leninism. Now there is no problem here because I am myself a Marxist. I have read lot of these stuff. But within these books in surplus which they kept printing and printing and printing, you know. So that is what happened in a communist world with any over centralised system of similar kind. Another problem with all library system was that not all literature new but same in extra supply not needed but they kept producing it for some political reason. There were also contain documents which we needed but we were not allowed to read it for political reasons as well. Though, you must understand the important point is that it is not that these books were not in the library they were. At that time, books kept coming. This is how a little library because Big. Now they kept everything just everything and kept buying everything. In that respect we got everything but not for everybody. So that was the system of Restricted Access. They called it special collection. For some libraries special collection is comparable in terms of size which was open to the public. Ofcourse it was always smaller. In any case it was comparable in sizes. For books there was a big problem actually to get these books issued. There required a guarantee. For instance if you need a book on philosophy you gotta fill a paper from the department of philosophy or from the University where you work. You need to submit it in one of these libraries where you get it. Then there was this funny thing. They kept translating some of these restricted material and produced a summary or digest of some of these restricted material. But if you go there you get a digest/summary of restricted books you can't read. But not everyone can do so. So that is a whole system of access that you need to go through. I would also give one example as to how we use this system. There are only holes in the system because there are only holes in the system. In every system there are holes but there were much poor holes. For e.g. there is hopefully a big library called Institute of Information and Simple Sciences. This shall follow the biggest collection of restricted access material. And there was just one act controlling the system. They have readers card which had no .......?..................... not audible................................. What happened in 90s was dismantling of old and formation of new system. A new libreral system and the library staff was quite dramatically ofcourse they did not behave as if they were ruled. So they did not just come and destroy the libraries. They did not threw the libraries, they did not destroy the catalogues. Fortunately No ! but I think in a way, the new liberal were not so different from the those who had long time acknowledged. Because they could stop funding them but rather they give it a new work? So if they could have stopped funding the libraries all together that could have been an enormous gesture. What they have done is that they have started financing them at new information level. O.K. we were not closing they say. Anyway not a single library was officially closed. They just had and needed enough money to feel superior. Now the library which could one or two books each every year, the supply of 400 books collapsed because there was no currency. All convertible money went somewhere. Then ofcourse were permit issue of 'published' in Russia. So the demand side was followed by the supply side. So there was throwing away of Marxist Leninist stuff and bringing in of piles of new liberal stuff which was even of less use. Then second there were no new books published domestically. No foreign books. So now they saw situation is improving. But it is improving in a very odd way. Because now Russia has no money. We are now in the fourth year of economic growth after a long decline. So the country has no money. The government has no money. And the government staff spending some money on libraries, on education, less on health care but some still some money moves in. So those libraries which could not buy one book per year could now buy more. Also the publishing industry is recovering and has applied for Russian books which are very cheap because people are very poor. The point is the cost of quality you just cannot compare the Russian quality with Indian quality. So have plenty for quality and wages. So they have a different type of poverty or measures which allows people to read books and keep book shelves. Books are very cheap specially intellectual are poor. Wages for intellectuals, there are no higher wages under new liberal system they are very low. Also workers in bookshop work for very low wages. So you can produce cheap books without going out of business. Like 300 dollars for an editor in a publishing house is a normal wage. I can say that because my wife is working in a publishing house. So this is a normal wage. But Russian books still have a problem. The distribution is very uneven. The information about books coming out is not easily available. The librarian says that they are ready to buy books but they do not know how and from where. For e.g. I have got my book in the library which I use. Then if they wanted to buy the next copy they fail to buy it. There is no system of distribution. If did not collapse it decayed. They did not have the permission available for purchase. So even to have a Central library was one of the most important point. So they did not have enough money t buy anything. So they had to make choices. So even if they had the information they did not have enough money especially to buy foreign books. So there was a tremendous gap to buy Russian books and foreign books especially English language books. So they can buy upto ten Russian books to one English books. And finally how one can get out of it. Ofcourse there are some very simple things to do which can be easily done if we come out of the current situation. What is required is political will. Ofcourse the government does not have it. But also the problem is about priorities. So one good and easy thing is to increase funding. You don't have to incrase funding many times but maximum but you have to increase funding somewhat especially in the field of infrastructure. So you don't have to pay more money to librarian backed by Trade Union but infact you need to invest more to force physical and practical infrastructure to get access to books. To get linkages between publishers and their libraries. To get proper distribution. To get proper information. So you have to fix someone and if state had to do it. It was local state which has to do it. But again there is another problem. As most northern cities of Russia like most northern countries of the world have limited resources. There they have a debate they have a very limited resources. It was the finest trade union which came in power with 200,000 people. It was a real fight with company for two years. There was a big struggle. Now they have a new Mayor from Trade Union. Now one of the issue of the debate was to spend the amount of money they get whether you have to spend the money on increasing ? or building a new library Now you believe me or not but I advised them to spend on ? and not on library. Because there was a library there anyhow and where am I wrong I don't know but you see if you have ? system falling apart you can postpone the building of a library by another year. So there are priorities. Now you have a U.S. kind of a constraint for the whole set of priorities and you cannot do things on different time at the same time with true factors. To increase Private Planning you have to have money for military planning. Not to make choices before because this is a wrong choice. If a wrong choice is imposed then you need to do is to care of mental health as well as physical health. And finally I think a library is just more than an institution. Library is a principal of universal access. It is not just knowledge. So knowledge is power, as you know. Information is very important as a part of power structure. So if you have a ? society like in Egypt as you mentioned there was no way for cyber to run the country. Because you don't know how to read or write. Now it is very easy to rule a society, which has a big majority, which is unable to get Net information, which is unable to read or write and lastly explore it from the political side. And that means that if you did prioritise, the priority of knowledge. That seems natural, in that sense it seems reasonable and just. So this problem of Universal Access to knowledge is much more than the problem of libraries as an institution. So this is the problem of society. So I think library is a model of some kind of social democratic society. A society where everybody has access to both to normal and material goods. Because goods are material after all. They are not immaterial but have a material structure. And it is not about saying libraries not have a fee. You can have a library with a fee and enter some kind of fee. Why not, you can have some now commercialisation, if you charge some minimal entrance fee. Now you can have a different approach. Because you see the system will be available if we use it to minutes a day or may be 20 minutes a day or two hours a day. But why are they charging per minute. Is it to commercialise time. It is not just services they are commercialising time. So it is not about commercialising knowledge or information they are commercialising not just the answer but they are commercialising the usage. And in that respect I think we must see the living form of libraries as March for growth. So it is not just about access to books it is about creating a system of Public access to knowledge including software including all sorts of information which is on hard disc. And you need a new corporate legislation. Because a new corporate legislation which allows, authors to be rewarded. As an author myself I would rather like to be rewarded for my work than not. On other hand if my book is published and is on shelf, I kind of feel happy because I know U.K. atleast people are going to read it. Otherwise many of you don't have access to............?.................... So we must compromise with authors' right or lets put it the consumer's right or user's right is much word than the consumer's right because of the user's knowledge. They have certain compromise. So let us have a produce of knowledge. Say indirect produce of knowledge. Now it should not explicit the user. That is the point. So they should see that those compromises are easily achievable through this library principal, which can be founded to general use of software. Then again quite number of people would like to establish software libraries for e.g. They can't because it is against the law because then Micro Software will come and kill you. This is exactly what is happening. A situation where you can't do something and the whole system will fall apart so that is what we need to do about libraries. So thank you very much.

Anchor : If someone has a comment on this and then we can start on the next phase.

Question : O.K. I just want to touch upon one problem. A very important problem of correlation between I.T. (Technology) and traditional libraries. It is very important because in Russia we had a gap between the development of traditional libraries and the development of high technologies. With justification where higher technologies and information technologies are been used for the development of traditional libraries. And what was the result? First the traditional libraries were spread among all the countries, even in backward regions, in small villages. They were positioned in accordance with the communist ideas of equality and that is why these traditional libraries started declining. These equality concept also information equality also started declining and information technology created the information library, the computer libraries which could not be used by all those people who live in small villages and so on. So from these period to the period where there is a gap between information technology and traditional libraries there appears a gap between system of information and those people who were compelled to deal with the declining libraries. Now this is first thing. The second thing is also the result of this gap where most of youth and most of representatives of young generation, they do not have access to ordinary libraries..........

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