Around the corner from the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the National Library is home to a collection of around 400,000 texts, including manuscripts and rare historical books.

The National Library was established in 1986, although a skeleton of the library – later named the Liaquat National Library – was first set up in Karachi in 1951. When the National Library moved to Islamabad, the collection from Karachi came too.

Among those books was the Ain-i-Akbari (Administration of Akbar), a 16th century text written by Mughal emperor Akbar’s court historian Abu’l Fazl, and a rare copy of Kooliyat Meer Taqee, which was published under the patronage of the College of Fort William and edited by munshis attached to the college in Calcutta in 1981.

National Library Director Syed Ghyour Hussain said: “This library is the topmost knowledge resource centre on the nation, which receives, maintains and preserves all the published literature of the country under the provision of the Copyright Ordinance 1961.

“Our mandate includes serving as a legal depository for all Pakistani publications, the maintenance of an international collection on all disciplines of human knowledge, national bibliographic control and the preservation of literary heritage of the country for the use of present at well as future generations.”

The library is open seven days a week, he added, and has become a focal point for researchers and curious readers.

Around 400 people visit the library every day, and its services have been extended to remote users in the country as well as abroad, he said. Library facilities are used by more than 30,000 people every year, in addition to online services.

“We also publish annual volumes of THE Pakistan National Bibliography, a directory of periodicals and newspapers, a directory of libraries and directory of ISBN publishers,” Mr Hussain said, adding that the library has collections of books in various halls and there is a huge stack area on one entire floor where readers can find books by their favourite authors as well as newspapers, magazines and periodicals.

The library also has international collections, such as the Lincoln Reading Lounge collection, a Chinese collection, an Azerbaijani collection, a Turkish collection, a Korean collection and a Belarussian collection.

Mohammad Riaz, the head of the reader service at the library, said that the United Arab Emirates is also going to place books in the National Library in the next few months.

As part of a digitisation project, the National Library has begun preserving historical books and newspapers. So far, 3,942 book titles have been scanned, and national newspapers are also being digitised.

“So far, we have scanned Dawn Karachi from 1963 to 2015. Currently, the Daily Jang is being scanned,” an officer from the computer section, Zahir Khan, said.

Mr Riaz said that most of the visitors to the library are scholars, researchers and CSS aspirants looking to take advantage of the collection.

But some CSS aspirants told Dawn that while the library has a large collection of reference books, it does not have books specific to the CSS or its syllabus.

“You will find a huge collection of reference books here, but the CSS syllabus is not available, which is unfortunate,” said aspiring candidate Zeeshan Jamal.

Other visitors said there is no online system in place to check the availability of books from home, as the online public access catalogue (OPAC) has been out of order for years.

Fazila Naz, however, said she was satisfied with the reference books available. “I have no idea about CSS related books; I am here to read some novels and I got a good collection,” she said, adding that there environment of the library is nice and calm, with a separate reading room for women.

When asked, the library director confirmed that the library does not have the CSS syllabus and the OPAC has been inactive for two years because of budgetary constraints, but added: “We are focusing to fix these problems.”

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2019