Ranganathan, Shiyali Ramamrita (1892-1972)

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RANGANATHAN, SHIYALI RAMAMRITA (1892-1972)

S. R. Ranganathan is considered by many to be the foremost theorist in the field of classification because of his contributions to the theory of facet analysis. In addition to being known as the "Father of Library Science" in India, his accomplishments include founding the Documentation Research and Training Centre in Bangalore, India; developing his Five Laws of Library Science (1931) and Colon Classification (1933); and authoring more than sixty books and two thousand articles.

Ranganathan was born in Shiyali in the Tanjavoor District of Tamil Nadu in southern India. His father, a learned and cultured man, was Ramamrita Ayyar, a landlord of a medium-sized rice-growing property. His mother was Seethalakshmi, a simple and very pious lady. Ranganathan attended school in his village and then went to Madras Christian College in 1909, where he earned B.S. and M.A. degrees in mathematics, studying with Edward B. Ross, who remained his favorite guru throughout his life.

As a teacher of mathematics at various institutions between 1917 and 1921, Ranganathan kept his students engaged and attentive by adopting the technique of assigning a new topic to students, having them gather data from books, and allowing them to learn from discussions among themselves and their teachers. From 1921 to 1923, he served as secretary of the Mathematics and Science Section of the Madras Teacher's Guild.

In January 1924, Ranganathan took the appointment as the first librarian of Madras University. In September of that same year, he left for England to spend nine months on a study-observation tour, during which he came into close contact with W. C. Berwick Sayers, Chief Librarian of Croydon Public Library and lecturer in the University School of Librarianship, London. Here Ranganathan discovered a social mission for the library profession and for himself. When he returned to Madras, he began to reorganize the university library in an attempt to attract more readers to the library and provide facilities for them. He took it upon himself to educate the public on the benefits of reading. Within the library he introduced the open shelf system and the active reference service. He designed a functional library building and developed principles of library management that expressed his philosophy of service. He shared his ideas with others by writing articles and books while active as a librarian and inspired them with his Five Laws of Library Science:

Books are for use.
Every reader, his book.
Every book, its reader.
Save the time of the reader (and the staff).
A library is a growing organism.

He helped form the Madras Library Association in 1928 and pushed the library movement to all corners of the Madras Presidency, which at that time covered almost two-thirds of South India. In 1929, Ranganathan initiated a school of library science (which is now at Madras University) and served as director for nearly fifteen years. In 1957, he donated his life's savings to endow a chair known as the Sarada Ranganathan Professorship in Library Science, to honor his second wife. Instead of retiring in 1945, he accepted an invitation to develop the library system of the Banaras Hindu University, where he single-handedly classified and cataloged 100,000 books between 1945 and 1947. He moved over to Delhi University in 1947 to teach and do research in library science, and from that time his international contacts began to grow. He served as chairman of the Classification Research Group of the International Federation for Documentation between 1950 and 1962.

While Ranganathan was in Delhi, he drafted a comprehensive thirty-year plan for the development of a library system for India as a whole, and he promoted the Madras Public Library Act. Earlier, he had delivered books to the prison where future leaders of an independent India were incarcerated. When they asked him what they should do about libraries in the new India, he had his plans ready.

In 1950, at age 58, Ranganathan visited the United States for the first time and wrote the book Classification and Communication. The second edition of his Prolegomena to Library Classification was published by The Library Association in London in 1957, and his lectures on classification in England were published in a book entitled Elements of Library Classification, which was edited by Bernard Palmer for The Library Association. The crowning achievement during the latter part of Ranganathan's life was the establishment of the Documentation Research and Training Centre in Bangalore, where young students and teachers from India and abroad could benefit from the atmosphere of academic excellence and simplicity that he created there. In 1965, Ranganathan was recognized by the Government of India, which made him the National Research Professor in Library Science. At that time, there were only four other National Research Professors: in Physics (C. V. Raman and S. N. Bose); Law (P. V. Kane); and in Literature and Linguistics (S. K. Chatterjee).

Ranganathan is called the "Father of Library Science" in India because he catalyzed a human movement of endeavor that is witnessed even to this day in the libraries and information centers of India. Through his writings, he awakened librarians around the world to the underlying theories and principles that govern their work as catalogers and classifiers of knowledge and to the tenets of service that ensure that the Five Laws will be observed.

The words delivered by Ranganathan in his opening address at an international study conference on classification research at Elsinore, Denmark, in 1964 probably best express the significance of library science and his role in its development:

Man has been reaching for one ideal for a long, long time—the ideal of "One World." Our discipline [of library science] brings us nearer to that much desired and much sought concept of "One World." In other contexts, that concept is very, very distant from the stage of realization. It is particularly so in the economic context.… In the political context, the resistance to "One World" idea is notorious.… In the technological context the profit motive obstructs us from a free sharing of ideas.… The whole idea of copyright itself is a barrier… [but] in our own subject, we come as near as possible to the idea of "One World." There is no secrecy. We know no cultural boundaries, no political boundaries, and no economic boundaries. We freely share ideas with one another. We believe that we find in everybody an identity.… The barriers melt away. We are prepared to think together without any reserve.… Our research can follow the relay method. That will lead to many technological achievements. [Our work] can lead to the elimination of all barriers except for the ego in man, the disturbance of which can be localized [Atherton, 1965, pp. 7-8].