The Indian Library Review is being launched by the National Library, Kolkata, to serve the interests of Indian libraries and librarians. It is also designed to address the broader audience of policy makers and users as also information specialists, scholars and book-lovers. The idea of an electronic digest of library news was proposed by Professor Supriya Chaudhuri at a meeting of the Advisory Board of the library in August 2011. The National Library does not have in-house staff to look after IT operations: the National Informatics Centre and its corporate wing NICSI provide some hand-holding support. However, we are grateful to Dr Souvik Mukherjee of IIT, Delhi, Dr Soumitra Sarkar, University Librarian, Calcutta University, and Dr Arun Chakraborty, Bose Institute, Kolkata, for assisting Sri S. Siva Prasad, Assistant Library and Information Officer at the National Library, for creating the Review. Sri A. R. Bandyopadhyay, Chairperson of the Board, and Sri Jawhar Sircar, Secretary to the Government of India, Ministry of Culture, have provided support and advice. We hope that the Review will serve as a platform that will bring the community of librarians, users and policy-makers together, in addition to providing links to relevant news, events, reports, conferences, training workshops, exhibitions and cultural exchanges.
Swapan Chakravorty
Director General
National Library
Kolkata