Libraries plays a vital role in the development of our country. S. R. Ranganathan, who is known as “Father of Library Science in India”, was the first person one who identified the real need of libraries and library science education in our country.
India celebrates August 12 as Librarians Day in his honour.
Dr S.R.R. was born on August 9, 1892, to Ramamirtam Iyer and Sita Lakshmi Ammal at Shiyali (present Sirkazhi). His primary education started at Sabhanayaka Mudaliar’s Hindu High School in Shiyali. He took up his B.A. in 1913 at Madras Christian College and later M.A. (Mathematics) at Presidency College, Madras in 1916. His teaching career started with the Government Arts College, Mangalore in 1917 and then he joined Presidency College in 1921. He taught Mathematics and Physics.
In January 1924, Dr S.R.R. left Presidency College and took charge of the Madras University Library as University Librarian. He left for England in September 1925, to get trained in librarianship and completed a six month certificate course in library science. During this time, he visited many libraries and he found that the system of classification, cataloguing etc., was not scientific and there was a tremendous scope for the improvement in Library Science.
On his return from London in 1925, he took immediate steps to reorganize the University Library to attract more readers and classified its contents on scientific basis. Dr S.R.R. has written on almost all aspects of Library Science, such as Library Administration, Classification, Cataloguing etc., He published Colon Classification in the year 1933, which is based on Hindu Philosophy. He developed the concept of Librametry that is application of statistics to Library Science.