Sivanath Sastri College And Its Library
Sivanath Sastri College (South City College Women’s Branch) has a noble past and a great heritage. On 6 January 1879 a high class English institution called City School was opened chiefly through the endeavours of two great Brahmo leaders Ananda Mohan Bose and Sivanath Sastri. On 17 January 1881 the school was raised to First Arts (F. A.) standard. Thus City College was born. Within a couple of years it became a First Grade Degree college imparting secular knowledge in early twentieth century Bengal. South City College and its Women’s branch owe their origin to this City College. As an extended part of the nineteenth century Brahmo educational movement Sivanath Sastri College strives to provide quality education to women.
It is known that the City College had an extremely fine and rich collection of books as early as the beginning of the last century. It grew particularly under the careful eyes of its principal, Heramba Chandra Moitra. Much credit goes to Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay, who as librarian applied modern scientific methods to organize City College library. It is said that after the South City branch finally settled down at the present address, the authorities transferred about 25,000 books from City College library. Gradually South City College Library expanded. When in 1961 Sivanath Sastri College came into being its own library started its journey. The library of the college grew out of the great heritage and lives up to the ideal set forth in the teachings of the great pioneer of women’s emancipation Pandit Sivanath Sastri. Hard pressed for space the library works against all odds to see young minds bloom, to assist in igniting flames of knowledge. It grows to help the community to grow.
From a modest beginning, Sivanath Sastri college library expanded day by day. Now the library has a collection of more than 41000 books as per accession register. The library has a good collection of books on all subjects taught in the college as well as on related subjects. Books are procured under College grant and UGC grant. Apart from that there is a small collection of books donated by the users.
The library has five separate units: 1) Central library 2) Honours library 3) Staff-room library 4) Departmental library of Geography 5) Departmental library of Botany. All categories of users can borrow books from the Central library, but access to the Honours Seminar library is restricted to the Honours students and the teachers. Staff-room library is for class room reference and the departmental libraries are for the teachers and the students of the respective departments. .
Library Facilities Available:
Lending service : Central library for all categories of users and Honours library for honours students and teachers.
Reference service : The students can consult books and periodicals for reference purpose in the reading room.
Current Awareness Service : Personal initiatives are taken by the library staff to make the users aware of the library resources.
Reprographic service : Xerox facility is available for the users.
Internet facility : Students can avail of internet facility in the Central library.
Repository :
i) Question papers : Students will get university question papers of previous 4/5 years in the library page of the college website.
ii) Faculty publications
NLIST : Students can access e-books and e-journals through INFLIBNET NLIST programme of the UGC.
OPAC : Online Public Access Catalogue. Students can search library catalogue online through OPAC in the library page of the college
Future Plan :
In spite of some unavoidable hindrances the library aspires to look forward and to grow up as an automated open access modern library that will work for the betterment of the users. We have just introduced RFID technology in our library and tagging the books purchased in the last few years is complete. Now we are striving for moving a step forward and procuring a book drop box and a book scanner for the library so that we can provide distant library service to the users.