Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan

Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan (August 9th 1892, Shiyali, Tamil Nadu - September 27th 1972, Bangalore) was a Mathématicien and a Indian librarian . He is mainly known to have enacted the five laws of Ranganathan and to have invented the Facetted classification. He is regarded as the father of the Indian Bibliothéconomie.

Course and contributions

Ranganathan begins its career as teacher of mathematics. In 1923, the University of Madras creates the university post of librarian ( University Librarian ) to take care on his data bases organized evil. On the nine hundred candidates who present themselves for the station, none has necessary qualities to assume the station. However, Ranganathan, which then know the field of biblio-economics only by the reading of the article relating to it of the Encyclopædia Britannica , a few days before, leave the batch by the mathematical publications of which he is the author. With its great surprise, it is accepted for the station that it occupies as from January 1924. Suffering from the insulation implied by this position, he asks the university administration to give it in teaching position but he sees himself proposing the following market, one offers a stay to him to London to study the modern practices of biblio-economics and on its return in India, if the station still does not satisfy it, it will be authorized to take again a station of teaching.

Ranganathan integrates then the University College London , the only establishment of the time to offer a formation in this field. It hardly obtains results above the average, but its mathematical spirit is impassioned for the problems of classification which it approaches with a new spirit which enables him to perceive the faults of the decimal system of use, a new spirit which makes him conceive a new organisational method.

It starts to build its system of Facetted classification whereas it is in England and improves it on the boat which brings back it to India by putting it to the test on the library of the edge. Ranganathan, become impassioned by the field of biblio-economics, preserves finally its station at the University of Madras, a station which it occupies during twenty years. During this period, it helps with the foundation of the Madras Library Association , made countryside for the creation of a network of free public libraries like for that of one national library at the level of the country. It is during the first years of Ranganathan to Madras that it produces its major contributions to biblio-economics: its 5 laws (1931) and the finalization of its system of facetted classification (1933).

After these two decades as librarian in Madras, a station which it wished to preserve until its retirement, it is forced with the resignation when the conflicts which oppose it to the new vice-president of the university became intolerable. At the 54 years age, he thus resigns and, after a short depressive episode, he accepts, in August 1945, a post of professor in biblio-economics at the Hindu university of Vârânasî, his last university station. There, it personally makes, in four years, the rich cataloguing of the funds of one hundred thousand documents.

Ranganathan is with the head of Association librarian Indian ( Indian Library Association ) of 1944 with 1953, but he does not like this work of administrator and cannot prevent the choice of the Decimal system of Dewey, rather than its own system, by the public library of Delhi ( Delhi Public Library ). It occupies of 1949 at 1953 the honorary post of professor of the university of Delhi and takes part in the development of the programmes of biblio-economics of this University institution with one of its former students, S. Das Gupta. It briefly remains with Zurich of 1955 with 1957, where his/her son married Western, which enables him to extend its network of relations in its field of work.

Its last great task is creation, in 1962, of the Documentation Research and Training Centers Bangalore, center where it occupies the honorary position of director during five years. In 1965, the Indian government decrees the title of " to him; National Research Professor" for its contributions in the field of biblio-economics. Its health is degraded during the last years of its life and confines it in its room.

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