It was full of boxes!

19 km north-west from its present location, the building in Mogappair where the library was functioning in 1994 was full of boxes. It had a single computer and was manned by a staff of two apart from Sankaralingam. I could see the pride in his face when Sankaralingam took me around. The special boxes, kept one over the other in several rows were treasures, just brought in from Kottaiyur. This was supposed to be my interview. I was asked only one question - Do you have patience? I answered in the affirmative, very hesitatingly. I was initially hired to set up and take care of the preservation unit at the Roja Muthiah Research Library (RMRL). Recalling what Sankaralingam asked, now, after 17 years, I understand what he meant. 

RMRL a brief profile

Today, RMRL is a resource centre for south Indian studies covering diverse fields from humanities and social sciences to popular culture. RMRL holds a unique collection and is widely recognized as a model library in India. With its beginnings as a small private collection by Roja Muthiah, the library has expanded its collection through gifts and donations and now holds an impressive collection of more than 200,000 items. The library aims at continually preserving and further expanding this historic archive. RMRL presents itself as a significant institution in the world of research and scholarship. RMRL Trust now maintains this rare private collection of Tamil imprints in collaboration with the University of Chicago. RMRL has expanded its scope of collecting material such as Documentaries, Film DVDs/CDs and Gramophone records. 

A Visionary

P. Sankaralingam, one of the key architects of the RMRL was a multi faceted personality. A fine teacher and administrator he led the project for three full years. It was under his guidance that the core team of the Library grew. Actually, he believed in "work without supervision" . It was this attitude that gave us a free hand to put our creativity together. His entire family worked for RMRL. His sons, who were software whiz kids even when they were at school, developed interesting packages for the Library catalogue at a time when Tamil was just beginning to be put to use in computers. His wife sent soft idlys, not just for her husband, but for the entire Library staff! Sankaralingam breathed RMRL all the time; he probably shared the same kind of passion for the collection as Roja Muthiah did. He not only felt passionate, but also injected it into some of his passion into us. He was quite excited by the prospect of setting up RMRL and we drew inspiration from him. Despite the failure of the New Library Movement in India, Sankaralingam was optimistic about its feasibility and sustainability. He would talk about Dravidian Movement and the great impact it had on the State. We would be listening to him spellbound. Very quickly, he would theorize any situation. He was deeply influenced by western philosophies and western medicine, and had contempt for their Indian counterparts. In October 1997, when we had just begun the project, he succumbed to a massive heart attack… but left a legacy behind. 

Institutionalizing the Roja Muthiah collection - what it means?

The birth of RMRL represents a significant juncture in the preservation of national artifacts and knowledge. Hitherto books were purchased and taken by Universities abroad. After 1994 there has been a paradigm shift. Now the trend is to engage in cooperative programmes. Collections are kept in the country and they are preserved through archival microfilm programmes and these resources are shared. In fact several scholars and institutions approach RMRL for copies of imprints and only the content is shared whereas the originals are preserved in the Library. This appears to be the trend for other languages as well. For instance, a similar approach has been taken with the Urdu and Marathi collections in Hyderabad and Pune. But the starting point for this trend was the RMRL. For the British Library and several institutional repositories in Europe, America and the Far East, RMRL is now a well known entity.

Users have a democratic access to the collection. The well documented collection is available for public access. One of the most important aspects of a library is retrieval. The retrieval mechanism in RMRL is simple and efficient, be it for books, periodicals, microfilms or digital documents. The bibliographic control over the information adhering to international protocols is strictly followed and that makes the job simple for both the users and service providers. 

RMRL a Repository Library

Alongside the repository libraries in India, individuals and publishing institutions have felt the importance of recognizing RMRL's preservation capabilities and its policy of sharing resources. So much so, a number of them have donated material to the library considering this, one of the repository libraries. Over a period, the library has expanded to host two hundred thousand items in its collection… and at no extra cost! In fact a number of collections which belonged to scholars abroad have been acquired by the RMRL this way. For instance, the personal collections of A. K. Ramanujan, Robert Hardgrave (who had collected a number of DMK pamphlets), the Rudolphs and Edward Montgomery (worked on the Reddy's of Vellore) have been donated to RMRL. Very recently, the Dennis Hudson's legal heirs have contacted RMRL for the donation of his collection. 

Microfilming as a means of preservation - the early years

As the RMRL collection was rich in Classical literature, folk literature and indigenous medicine, three major agencies were approached for funds for preservation, namely the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation (both in the U.S.A.) and the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in England (as mentioned in part I of this article). In 1994, when digitization was still in its infant stages, microfilming was a well known technology. It was tested by time and was a proven technology for preserving print material. Very few institutions in India were engaged in this activity; fewer institutions were engaged in Archival/Preservation microfilming. At this juncture, our gaze was on the Field Office of the Library of Congress (LoC) in New Delhi. LoC was involved in preservation microfilming and followed international standards. Interestingly, they were also involved in a project called the "Microfilming of Indian Publications Project (MIPP) " which was a joint project of the Government of India and the US Government. This model was useful for the RMRL project. In 1995 an "archival microfilming workshop" was organized in the RMRL. Mr. Julios Berrios, the then head of the Micrographics unit in the Library of Congress Office, Washington D.C. was invited to run the workshop and it was attended by people involved with microfilming projects in India. With this workshop as the starting point and the experience of the MIPP staff archival microfilming in RMRL was launched.

Micrographic equipment and films are not made in India and therefore have to be imported. Microfilms were sourced through the Kodak regional offices in Chennai and Bombay. Anything that has the label microfilm attracts a customs duty of nearly 55% of the cost price. Even preservation projects that preserve the country's literary heritage for posterity have to bear this burden. Suddenly, Kodak decided to outsource their sale to some private party. This took its toll on our projects. Placing orders and receiving material resulted in a time delay of three months. The project staff who would have microfilmed, ended up waiting for chemicals. To the stake holders' good fortune, after some frustrating moments during the project Kodak resumed its services directly.

As early as 2000, Micrographic equipment suppliers started moving into digital equipment and claimed that digital technology would swap the microfilm technology. Digitization leaped forward in full throttle. Scholars were already tired of using microfilms as they could not take the research material home. As far as Microfilms are concerned they have to be duplicated and only one person can actually have them at a time. Digitization, on the other hand, offered a 'one time conversion-serve all' solution. Thus, digitization revolutionized issues around access. The scholars were more comfortable with this, and showed their preference for digital images which offered better mobility and access. This caused the archivists, who were microfilming, to be criticized for not being current with the technology. The companies that offer the document digitizing equipment have a major role in changing the mindset of the users. The companies which discouraged microfilming have taken a u-turn and are now advocating microfilming. Now they are advocating the use of microfilm as the best way to preserve but recommend creating the microfilm as an output of the digitization process. Apart from the claim of making the archival microfilms available for 500 years, microfilming offers several advantages such as: efficient handing of brittle material; very quick and efficient microfilming process - a thousand pages can be microfilmed in 8 hours; easy conversion of microfilm to digital images with appropriate equipment, thereby not damaging the paper material. 

Storage Facility

In South India, RMRL is probably the only library which has storage facilities to maintain its microfilms at a relative humidity of 35% and temperature of 18º C. This facility is crucial as the microfilms are best preserved under these conditions. It is also important to maintain these conditions round the clock. Therefore it brings an additional problem of continuous availability of electricity. So a backup generator was important. With the little funds available to purchase generators/UPS, RMRL faced the situation of funding organizations questioning the necessity of archiving on microfilms, and preaching about the need for modernization. One donor namely, the Chennai Wellingdon Corporate Foundation understood the situation and made a magnanimous donation for the purchase of the generator. 

Expanding the collection - Library Surveys, preservation programmes: On the trail of U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer

Who can provide better motivation to RMRL than the great U. Ve. Swaminatha Iyer, who traveled to the interiors of Tamil Nadu in search of manuscripts. RMRL went in search of printed material and identified numerous libraries and private collections, small and big. RMRL visited a number of Mutts and old institutions and has been collecting data on the availability of resources in such places. It is quite interesting to note that there has been a strong library movement in Tamil Nadu, but over a period, there has been a decline in this, due to various factors such as funding, tropical weather, inability to establish a legacy, lack of appreciation of the younger generations for the value of the material and so on. When RMRL went on library surveys, it was always welcomed and provided with support to preserve the rare gems.

The government of India pumped millions of rupees in, to protect the manuscript wealth of the country through the National Manuscript Mission. Print material still does not attract similar funding for preservation. The National Archives of India provides some funding for preservation projects for non-governmental organizations. The request for funding has to be routed through the respective State governments. A lot of paper work is required for a modest amount of two hundred thousand rupees. It is high time that the National Archives, the Raja Ram Mohun Roy Foundation Library and the Ministry of Culture, Government of India become aware of this and take a more generous approach towards funding cultural institutions involved in print material preservation programmes. The State Government may also see the role of non-governmental preservation efforts and provide assistance.

A few years ago, the Endangered Archives Programme was launched by the British Library. In the year 2008, RMRL proposed to preserve early print literature on the history of Tamil Nadu. This was to cover areas such as the Self Respect Movement, Dravidian Movement, Bhakti movement and other social and cultural histories of the 19th and early 20th century Tamil Nadu. Books and periodicals lying in different locations in Tamil Nadu were targeted. RMRL used its experience in the library surveys to identify material. What was observed was that with a minimum of resources and knowledge related to preservation, collection managers have been struggling to save their collections. The original material was safely transported by RMRL team from different locations on loan to RMRL for microfilming and digitization. Nearly 300,000 pages have been exposed. Approximately 63 periodical titles from 19th and early 20th century were preserved on microfilms during the project .

The RMRL now has 118,312 book volumes, 94,124 issues in 3,254 periodical titles, 2,500 gramophone records, nearly 100,000 items under the ephemera collection, 400 Tamil film CD/DVDs and 2,042 microfilm reels. 

RMRL, a Public Archive

The notion of Public and Private and its understanding needs to be revisited. The common perception is that anything that was set up by and comes under the State is considered to be public. Any non-governmental effort, even though they exist wholly for the public is considered private. Institutions such as RMRL are considered private. It is important to note that institutions such as Maraimali Adkikal Library, U.Ve. Swaminatha Iyer Library or the Roja Muthiah Research Library are notionally 'private' but for 'public' good with less bureaucratic constraints. They are simply institutions supporting scholars and the public at large. The understanding of public versus private needs to be viewed through the objectives of the institutions. By all means these humble institutions are complementary to all the efforts taken by the State.

Conclusion

Two institutions have been critical in providing RMRL its service models - The French Insitute of Pondicherry (Prof. Fancois Gros was the then Director) and the Library of Congress Field Office in New Delhi (Ms. Lygia Ballantyne was then the Field Director). Mr. Subhas C. Biswas, director of MIPP programme is another key dynamic person, who spearheaded the MIPP programme across India. It is not easy to cover the States of India as we are aware of the issues involved in just engaging with one State. MIPP office was part of the LoC office. Mr. Sankaralingam and Dr. Raghavan (the then head of Library Science Department, University of Madras) had just taken up a project of cataloguing the French Institute's Indology collection. The work was done at the University of Madras and the RMRL. This model was very useful to RMRL as the challenges were already known. This paved way for RMRL to create direct electronic catalogue records (called Machine readable catalogue) from the imprints.

RMRL is not just a library; it is also an archive. Though the collection policy of RMRL is quite comprehensive in nature, funding issues constrain RMRL to collect only those items which are donated to it for free. However, it is quite a phenomenon to note that since it started expanding on its collections in 1999, it has added an equal number of items to what Roja Muthiah had amassed in his lifetime. RMRL has absorbed his collection practices and still collects all genres of material.

Given all the odds - tropical climate and lack of funds - institutions have lost a lot of material so far. In many cases the paper has turned brittle and brown in colour. The newsprint items are made of cheap paper with high acid content thereby shortening their life. So it becomes imperative to preserve them on a priority basis. In a few years it will become impossible to preserve them as they will turn completely brittle. In our experience, Microfilming or digitizing using over-head scanners seem to be the options for copying such material without damaging them further. RMRL will continue to follow a two pronged approach at least for the immediate future - microfilm to preserve and digitize the films for access. This also depends on the conditions funding agencies impose. What has been preserved so far is just a fraction of what needs to be saved. Concerted effort in searching, listing and receiving patronage for such projects would have to be on a priority basis. In the history of systematic cooperative preservation of the literary heritage of India, RMRL has a major role to play. 

1 Sankaralingam often talked about work without supervision. He would not ask what has been done but the work went on. We were lucky. S. Theodore Baskaran, the person who succeeded Sankaralingam as the Director of RMRL believed in the same philosophy. We had the best learning opportunities and time under these two stalwarts.

2 Documentation practices is dealt in an exclusive article contributed by R. Prakash, Assistant Director, RMRL

3 The publishing institutions that provide the library with their publications are Kalachuvadu Trust, Parisil book Centre, Kilakku ppathippakam, Tamilman Pathippakam and Bharathi Puthakalayam.

4 MIPP was set up to microfilm and catalog all the books listed in The National Bibliography of Indian Literature: 1901-1953 (NBIL). For more information seehttp://dsal.uchicago.edu/bibliographic/nbil/aboutmipp.html

5 Selection process of the titles is beyond the scope of this article.

6    The credit for the organized preservation project in India goes to MIPP (Microfilming of Indian Publications Project) a joint project of Governments of India and the US. Books that were listed on the National Bibliography for Indian literature was taken up and libraries across India were identified and microfilmed. The Tamilnadu State Archives, Maraimalai Adikal Library and the Roja Muthiah Research Library were the only three libraries in Tamilnadu that were used. RMRL used this model to preserve the Tamil resources in Tamilnadu. 

(G. Sundar is the present Director of the Roja Muthiah Research Library.)

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