Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (Lalitpur, Nepal)

Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya (MPP) is a non-profit and non-government institution which is run by the trust. MPP was established as a library from the personal collection of founder and chairman of the library, Kamal Mani Dixit. The library archives books, periodicals, ephemera, and several other collections that are in Nepali language. The library also manages two most prestigious literary prizes: the Madan Puraskar and Jagadamba Shree Puraskar. From the five decades of establishment, the library currently holds around 27,069 monographs, 5,133 periodicals, and several other collections as well. Collections comprise different materials such as newsletters, posters, pamphlets, banners, calendars, manuscripts, reports, manifestos, letters, sketches, photographs, negatives, film-footages, speeches, press releases, images of wall paintings, invitations, audio-records, etc. Hence, the library holds unique and rare collections of different materials that are in Nepali language.The main objectives of the library are to collect, preserve, catalogue, and provide access to the library materials to the researchers and the scholars. Cataloguing of monographs and periodicals, and preservation of rare and endangered materials using microfilming and digitization are regular activities of the library. Thus, this institution stands as a library as well as an archive.

This library can be said as a reference library unlike other public library where people can join as a member. Scholars and researchers find this library significant as this library not only holds books and materials about Nepali language and literature, but also collect and preserve different materials related to politics, health, science, economy, agriculture, history, geography, Nepali culture, educational, religion, etc. Apart from the materials that are in Nepali language, this library holds non-literary materials that are in foreign languages which not only represents the Nepal but also helps readers to find the information about Nepali society as well.Regarding the human resources, there are 30 employees working on the library. There are 6 cataloguers who are trained to catalogue the holdings of library using in-house cataloguing software, and they are dedicated to cataloguing the monographs. Library personnel update their knowledge from the different trainings and workshops that are relevant to library house-keeping operations. Thus, library personnel are aware of emerging MARC 21 cataloguing standard. In order to convert the bibliographic information and validate them, cataloguers use different library tools. There are 3 IT personnel who support the library by assisting on different technical tasks by developing and deploying different software required for the library.The library possesses a good physical and technological infrastructure required for the library. Monographs are shelved according to the accession number. All the computers are also accessible from the network, and the in-house cataloguing system can be accessed from the centralized server. Internet is also made available to every computer of the organization.MPP is currently converting its records into MARC 21 standard. Thus, the records of monographs are being converted into MARC 21 format and being validated using different library software. Catalogs of periodicals are yet to be converted into MARC 21 format. Catalogs of monographs and journals are available on the website of MPP (http://madanpuraskar.org). Newsletters, posters, pamphlets, banners, calendars, manuscripts, reports, manifestos, letters, sketches, photographs, negatives, film-footages, speeches, press releases, images of wall paintings, invitations, and audio-records are awaiting to be catalogued. The library is planning to test and use Dspace, free open source software, in the near future to preserve and manage digital contents and to create digital repositories. And, the library is also planning to use Free and Open Source (FOSS) Integrated Library System (ILS) in the near future to automate all its manual operations.