Public Libraries in India: Problems And Prospects With Special Reference To Uttar Pradesh

The history of the development of the public library may be said to be as old as that of education in India. Public library is largely regarded as the People’s University. It has tremendous developments in India from the early period to till date at various stages. But district public libraries have failed to serve the people as expected due to number of reasons. Information explosion and increasing knowledge resources & materials for every bit of minutes, development of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and the change in the approaches and information seeking behavior of the people have compelled to modernize the district public libraries so as to serve users in the most effective way according to the taste of the them. Present study focuses on the problems and prospects of district public library services in the Uttar Pradesh. The study finds out the prevailing problems and their prospects for which district public libraries are unable to reach to the common people in the state. The study also highlights the challenges of public libraries in the present day context of modern technology and points out the present status of services given by the public libraries in reality in the state. Keywords : Public library, Libraries in India, RRRLF’s