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of knowledge and ideas, teaching, research, publication, extension and service, and interpretation of results of research. The library exists not merely to help the instructional functions of the university, it does also a good deal in aid of research, which is another major function of the university. The library therefore performs a variety of functions, by way of helping students with textbooks, parallel studies, reference books and periodicals; by providing a large number of bibliographical tools and up-to-date literature on every subject for students, teachers and research worker; as well as by maintaining an efficient reference and information service. The objective ultimately reaches the noble height of helping produce leaders in the community-leaders in different fields of human activity, and it nurtures the inventor and discoverer-persons who create history。

The basic function of a library is educative. It is not merely store-house of reading material collected for preservation, but it also functions ‘as a dynamic instrument of education, to feed the intellect of the student, encourage the researches of the faculty and invite all who enter its house to partake fully of its intellectual and cultural contents. [1] 0The simple fact is that if a university library fails to perform its function of communicating its contents to those who are in need of them, it turns out to be a bad library and that a bad library in turn ‘tends to produce a bad university. [1] 1 A bad library is likely to effect the development of scholarship in its particular region or perhaps even compel its scholars to go elsewhere in search of what they need. It is for this reason, perhaps, that a university always need a great library, even if no student enters it, to meet the demands of the faculty; and as long as the library in a university is out-standing, it ‘will have an extremely valuable advantage over other institutions in holding the best of scholars and teachers within its fold. [1] 2

Realizing the importance of libraries in the fulfillment of the objectives of higher education, the University Education Commission says, ‘the library is the heart of all the university’s work, directly so, as regards its research work, and indirectly as regards its educational work, which derives its life from research work. Scientific research needs a library as well as its laboratories, while for humanistic research the library is both library and laboratory in one’. [1] 3As the dam stores millions of gallons of water to be distributed to individual fields through a well-knit irrigation system, the library stores reading material to be distributed to individual students, teachers and the research scholars through its various channels of communication. The phenomenon often referred to as the ‘information explosion’ and the ‘literature explosion’ has obvious repercussions on library provisions of universities. The sum of human knowledge is increasing at a much faster pace than anything that mankind has ever known. All over the world men are extending the traditional boundaries and lines of investigations and developing new ones, into all branches of learning, particularly in sciences. This has a bearing on the university library system in two ways viz., firstly university libraries must undertake the responsibility of collecting and supplying the right type of literature to the scholar at the appropriate time pin-pointedly, exhaustive