By Farwah Arif, Mahnoor
Societies become civilized only by education and libraries are for those who deeply fall in love with books. And for readaholics, Diyal Singh libarary was established in l908, in Lahore according to the will of Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia. This library was initially established in the residence of Diyal Singh but it was shifted in 1928 to its current location, Nisbat Road Lahore, near Lashmi Chowk. Diyal was born in 1848 and by profession he was a banker but his dedication for education is appreciable. The library was originally opened at his residence as a reading room and housed his personal collection of one thousand books but now number of books has been increased to 200,000 that is a treasure trove for book lovers.
During the partition library suffered a great tragedy. A large number of books and furniture were damaged and library was closed down. After 12 years in 1964, library was revived under the Evacuee Trust Property Board, Government of Pakistan.
Diyal Singh library has been divided in 19 different sections such as newspaper reading section, Hindi/Gurumukhi and Sanskrit section, history section, children section, text book section/ main reading hall, ladies reading room, reference section, general section, photocopying section, donation/collection section, old periodicals and newspaper section, oriental section, accounts section, audio and video section, publication section, computer section, manuscript section, Arabic and Persian Section, old books/ Kh. Salah-ud-din section. Diyal Singh library has published 108 books also and won Presidential Awards on two books named “Gharibon kay Wali” and “Nabi -e- Kareem ki Moashi Zindagi.”
According to current librarian Faqeer Ullah, in this library number of books and periodicals are 182,673, total manuscripts 679, microfilming reels records 377, number of registered newspaper are 2,773. Numbers of total members of this library are 10,098 and number of children members are 518.
Fakeer Ullah said, “The digitalisation of this library is under processing, government is also corporate with us and providing funds for this purpose as well. Library is doing a pretty good job by providing public access to computing in upcoming days and because public internet access is a valuable service, library management is also working on it. In future readers can use library to access the internet and doing it for all manner of reason like research, doing home works, and all other activities we engage on internet. Estimated annual budget (2014-2015) of library is almost 2 billion.”
But if we look around us in society, number of people who visit libraries is declining especially our young nation do not visit libraries in their daily routine. Today most of the people are taking interest in watching movies instead of reading books, said a visitor of library. There is another reason why people did not visit library is that people prefer to read books online instead of going there. On the school level teachers and parents should develop a habit in students or children to go to library and read the books in libraries. Libraries put up discipline in our lives and help to make our generation civilized as well. A very passionate book reader said very sorrowfully that now a day’s people do not go to libraries and see lots of dust on books because people were not taking books off the shelves. Resultantly, the libraries are becoming graveyard of books.
Diyal Singh library is the best place to visit for those who have love and passion of reading. It is treasure of old and historically valuable books.
