Kendriya Vidyalaya Southern Command was established in 1967. The total no.of students is 2072 and staff of 80 members.
Library of KVSC, Pune total collection is 37, 216 books including CDs, DVDs other reading materials, etc.
पुस्तकालयध्यक्ष हेतु आंचलिक शिक्षा एवं प्रशिक्षण संस्थान, मुंबई में 2 दिवसीय कार्यशाला दिनांक :19.11.18 से 20.11.18 तक “इंटरनेट संसाधन एवं विद्यालय में साइबर सुरक्षा “(Internet Resources and Cyber Safety in School) आयोजित की गई और इस कार्यशाला के दौरान संसाधक के रूप में कार्य करने का मौका मिला।
This book is my love letter to all the little girls like me who need to see that they too can make it to the moon.
By
Sasha Beekman
19 OCT 2018 - 7:38 AM UPDATED 19 OCT 2018 - 7:39 AM
It was year one in primary school and I was sitting in class on the floor, cross-legged and wide-eyed as the teacher read us a story. Enid Blyton was the name of the author (you may have heard of her?) and there came a point in the story where all the children in the class began to laugh. I couldn’t figure out what all the snickering was about and I looked around, wishing to be let in on the joke.
Dick and Fanny were the names of the two main characters back then. It was the first time I’d ever heard those words and I didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. It was just their names. What’s wrong with that? I thought.
Sasha Beekman.
I’d only just moved to Australia from Thailand a couple of months before. I couldn’t speak any English, not even to my father who was Dutch and grew up in Australia. We spoke only Thai when we set foot on this land girt by sea, and it would only be a matter of time before I would urge my mum to ‘Stop speaking to me in Thai, it’s embarrassing!’ and I would soon forget my own language. But back in the classroom, I was still trying to wrap my head around English. I asked what was going on and the girl sitting next to me scoffed. ‘Don’t you get it? Dick and Fanny,’ she laughed. And this wouldn’t be the last time I felt on the outer reading a children’s book in this country.
When I recall the books I read as a child, I only remember padded books of fairy tales with blonde princesses in towers. I would see these pretty princesses and fairies and heroes and knights and find them so beautiful and brave, mostly because everyone else did. The beauty and heroism was bestowed by virtue of these qualities being the standard. I was growing up in a Western society that valued pretty blonde faces and fair skin, and when I realised that the way that I looked didn’t match up with the stars of these stories, I was not prepared.
As an Asian child, constantly seeing a white hero in the literature you are consuming may not have obvious repercussions from the outside, but the more you are exposed to it – the more that idea is drilled into you – the more it will become your own view of what a hero is.
Illustration: Vivienne To.
When writing my first book, When You’re Going to the Moon, I was finally in the privileged position of being able to decide what I wanted my character to look like. I could write the Asian girl, whose parents are divorced, who is the hero of her own story. I could do anything I wanted. And we are at a time now where people are hungry for this kind of change; they want different voices to be heard.
No one can say that representation doesn’t matter when I, as an adult, teared up when I first flipped through the final pages of my book and saw Vivienne To’s artwork of the mother cooking dinner. There was a rice cooker in the background. Yes, everyone eats rice, and a rice cooker is a standard appliance that most families probably have sitting on their kitchen counter too. But just how normal it felt to see it on the page was amazing. I get so emotional thinking about it even now. Can you imagine? Over a rice cooker?
Illustration: Vivienne To.
This is why diverse representation is sorely needed. There needs to be different reference points for what a family is, what a child looks like. There needs to be as many different characters in the literature we are reading to our children as there are in their lives.
When you’re reading a story about the moon, who is always the main character? Maybe a cow who jumps over it, or a little Caucasian boy goes up in a little spaceship to reach it. The world is not going to change with another story like that. But someone’s world might change when they see a little girl who looks like them climbing that ladder to the moon, because they’ll see that everything is within their reach.
When You’re Going to the Moon is an aspirational story – as aspirational as you can get. I want my book to reach the little girls out there who, like me, never before saw themselves as the hero. Who tried to forget what their own face looked like every time they saw another blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned princess on the page of their favourite bedtime story. This book is my love letter to all the little girls like me who need to see that they too can make it to the moon.
When You’re Going to the Moon by Sasha Beekman ($24.99, Affirm Press) is available now.
"EVERYDAY LIBRARIES OF ALL TYPES PROVES THAT THEY ARE POWERFUL AGENT OF COMMUNITY CHANGE" "ONE NATION READING TOGETHER PROGRAM 2018":in collaboration with Scholastic India on November 29, 2018 from 8.10 o 8:30 noon. Entire school community enjoyed the participation in the event including students, teachers, support staff as well as the Principal. The students Dropped Everything And Read on the scheduled date and time. Beautiful thoughts and expressions about books and reading were written on the ‘Graffiti Walls’ by different range of readers. The students also participated in Special Assembly Programme from Primary and Secondary classes. The endeavour was to encourage and inculcate the habit of reading in everyone.
26 November will be celebrated as "Constitution Day". Constitution Day (National Law Day), also known as Samvidhan Divas, is celebrated in India on 26 November every year to commemorate the adoption of Constitution of India. On 26 November 1949, the Constituent Assembly of India adopted the Constitution of India, and it came into effect on 26 January 1950. The Government of India declared 26 November as Constitution Day on 19 November 2015 by a gazette notification. The Prime...
Library 2.0: Delight for Book lovers, from access to books to a multitude of cultural events
By: Smitha Verma | Published: November 18, 2018 2:48 AM
A majority of public libraries in the country remain in a state of despair resulting in lack of access to good reading material for many. But now, a handful of individuals have come to readers’ rescue with an innovative solution in the form of private libraries. These are spaces that offer not just unhindered access to books, but also a multitude of cultural events, ensuring a rounded experience for readers.
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A wildlife photographer by profession, 37-year-old Meethil Momaya set up the library with his wife in 2014
They don’t have dilapidated buildings or battered books. There is no stern librarian demanding silence or looming bookshelves stacked close together. The membership is either free or nominal. They are neither run by the government nor large corporations. These private libraries are just spaces put together by book lovers for like-minded people, helping them explore books in a more relaxed manner.
The term ‘library’ is undergoing a makeover, with many different formats of the conventional space coming up across the country. Take, for instance, the ‘Library on Wheels’ programme of the Maharashtra state government launched recently in collaboration with Indian Railways. The programme allows passengers travelling on Deccan Queen and Panchavati Express trains to procure books, read and return them before alighting the trains.
The biggest gamechangers, however, have been private libraries, which are offering informal reading spaces without the single objective of lending. The curators of these libraries, in fact, are working towards fostering the reading habit among a generation fast becoming habitual to only 280-character lengths, offering them the benefits of convenience, choice and cost.
These private libraries source books directly from large distributors and publishers, ensuring better discounts and lower costs of inventory. Some also offer pickup and delivery services. What’s more, a few even function as part-bookstore and part-event space, organising art workshops, poetry projects and even regional film screenings from time to time. “There is a good market for private libraries… and there are a lot of people out there who want to foster the habit of reading. If libraries can address the pain points of a reader—commute, lack of good collection, time and membership cost—they will survive. The government should also exclude private libraries from GST,” says 40-year-old Hiten Turakhia, co-founder, CEO and managing director, Librarywala.com, an online library based in Mumbai.
Read on to know their stories…
For the love of books
An entirely free home library in Mumbai runs on the back of crowdsourcing.
Mumbai-based Pushpendra Pandya has worked at many odd jobs. From being a bartender and copywriter to working as a social media consultant and even a call centre executive, he has done it all. “I started working when I failed my class X boards for the first time in 1998. I have sold bangles at exhibitions, worked as an assistant at a dentist’s clinic, as a waiter for local caterers, etc,” the 36-year-old says.
Becoming a librarian, however, was a childhood dream. One that he realised in 2013 by starting the free of cost Crowdsourced Library, which is run entirely through crowdsourcing. Over the years, he built up a collection of over 10,000 titles—he had around 100 when he started—with the help of friends and strangers who donated books. The idea for the library, he says, came out of an informal discussion with friends on book-sharing arrangements.
Pandya (who also works at a mental health centre in Mumbai, handling its administration and communication) operates through a well-connected set of friends and strangers who have one thing in common: love for books. People contact him through SMS/WhatsApp, asking about the availability of a certain book. Readers can also get in touch with him on Facebook for the complete list of books available. Pandya then himself delivers (and later picks up) the selected book over the weekend. “Readers often donate books to me because they believe that, through Crowdsourced Library, their precious books will likely get a new home as opposed to ending up with a ragpicker,” he says.
The biggest challenge for this multitasker, naturally, remains finding the time and money to run his pet project. “It went well initially when I had time on hand. But it’s always been heavy on the pocket as, from delivery to pickup, it’s completely free. I did try the membership model, but it didn’t work out,” says Pandya.
Lack of space to store books is another constraint and that’s why, over the past few years, he has donated many books. “It was difficult to stay in a rented house and move every year with so many books. So I donated a lot of books to schools and other libraries. Currently, I have around 500 books (of the 10,000 he had collected),” he says.
That, however, hasn’t stopped this book fairy from planning a physical library, which will also be crowdsourced. “It’s a crazy idea, considering I live in a rented house and will have to rent a commercial space for it. But I am sure I won’t be the first person to do that.” Pandya also intends to start an independent circulating library near his residence in Vasai. “I haven’t got any funding, so I am planning to spend on my own and see how it shapes up. For this one, I will have nominal subscription charges,” he says.
Literary haven
This Mumbai-based curated library, bookstore and event space puts the reader first.
Mumbai-based Meethil and Ahalya Momaya’s association with books goes back a long way. The husband-wife duo, in fact, would regularly provide book recommendations to friends and family. Soon, 37-year-old Meethil, a wildlife photographer by profession, and 35-year-old Ahalya, an independent book editor, realised the need to set up The Eternal Library, which they started in 2013 as a consultancy service for corporates and residential units, advising clients what books to stock, from where to source, how to catalogue, how to set up a library, among other things. “We realised that the motivation for a corporate or housing society to set up a well-stocked and regularly-refreshed library on their premises was nearly non-existent. We needed to show them how simple to set up and important a library can be,” says Meethil.
A year later, in December 2014, the duo set up Trilogy, a fully-functioning and curated library in the heart of Mumbai’s business and residential district of Lower Parel. The 2,100-sq-ft space, with wooden flooring and bright walls, soon became a favourite of the city’s residents—they buy books on readers’ recommendations. The library is also part-bookstore and regularly organises reading workshops, book club meets, book launches, author meetups, etc. “Our members today include expats, bankers, lawyers, architects, artists and children,” says Meethil, adding, “We planned it as a curated library, bookstore and event space with a heavier emphasis on the library.”
The duo believes that there exists a huge potential for private libraries, as the number of titles being released every month is huge and libraries have almost disappeared. “Buying books is much more easier now, but storing them isn’t. It’s not easy also to keep buying books in a long-running series… for example, those aimed at children. The economies are not wallet-friendly. A private library can, hence, step in to address this need,” Meethil explains.
Trilogy has seven membership plans of two-week and three-week durations, with rentals ranging between `300 and `800. Besides fiction, they are well-stocked in books on art, travel, economics and writing. “The strength of Trilogy lies in the curation and our personalised recommendations for members and bookstore patrons,” says Meethil, adding, “We also reach out to readers via pop-up bookshops and group memberships with corporates and housing societies.”
For the couple, the real challenge lies in marketing. “We have been relying on and benefitting from word-of-mouth publicity since we started. Social media has really helped us reach out to readers,” says Meethil.
Textbook solution
An IoT-enabled commercial library chain with over one million non-academic books .
Founded in 2008, JustBooks Solutions (a chain of rental libraries that works on the franchise model) was formerly part of Bengaluru-based services firm Strata Retail and Technology Services. In December 2016, however, CoCreate Ventures acquired stake and management control of JustBooks Solutions.
Today, JustBooks has grown to 80 centres across Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Mumbai. The commercial library chain has over one million non-academic books in English and regional languages, offering free pickup and delivery service, with mobile- and web-based access to classical, rare and recent books.
Most of the libraries of JustBooks are spread over 1,500-2,000 sq ft. To store their huge collection, the company has built warehouses for those libraries that have a book strength of over 50,000. “These warehouses cater to customers who want to use our services purely online. These warehouses also ensure that there is a larger inventory of books available for our members who visit our physical stores,” says 43-year-old Suresh Narasimha, chairman, JustBooks Solutions.
The library operates on different membership models—the most popular is one where a member can avail two books at a time under a monthly membership fee of `360. They can exchange books as many times as they want and there are no late charges. “Each year, we add 30% more members to our network of readers,” Narasimha adds.
On an average, the library gets around 100-200 readers across centres everyday, with young parents and children being frequent visitors. “Our centres also run as ‘culture places’ that offer exclusive curated programmes (such as storytelling and book club sessions, etc) for the audience,” says Narasimha.
Last year, the company tied up with Godrej Properties to launch a library in that company’s upcoming residential project, Godrej Platinum, in Hebbal, Bengaluru. As part of the agreement, JustBooks will be providing library management services and books for a library within the campus for residents.
There is also a great thrust on technology. “We have introduced the concept of IoT-enabled mobile vans, where a high-end experience van with the best of our collections is driven to residential localities,” says Narasimha. Readers can browse the physical books, as well as the online collection, using touchscreens inside the van.
JustBooks also enables readers to use technology in the form of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification technology used in stores like Walmart or other supply chain management systems) tags to issue, return, search for and request books. By using RFID, the company can also check the availability of several books at a time and route them to those libraries where these books are in demand. “There is more than `30 crore capital invested in the network (setting up of the entire infrastructure) and roughly `10 crore is invested in managing the library network,” Narasimha says.
The challenges, he says, exist in the several regulatory norms such as taxes and lack of incentives. “We strongly feel that this is one industry where government subsidies are a must,” he feels.
Virtual reading corner
A Netflix-like online library offering everything, from fiction and children’s books to self-help.
This is a library whose business model is inspired by the subscription-based streaming media service Netflix. Not surprisingly then, Mumbai-based Librarywala.com has around 5,000 registered users in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune.
Librarywala.com took shape after an initial research was carried out by the two founders (Hiten Dedhia, who is no longer with the company, and Hiten Turakhia) where they stood outside several bookshops with a brief questionnaire for readers. The idea was to figure out the feasibility of a venture like an online library. In 2007, the founders launched Librarywala.com.
Talking about the genesis of the online library, Mumbai-based Hiten Turakhia, co-founder, CEO and managing director, Librarywala.com, says, “Reading is an expensive hobby and there were hardly any libraries with a good collection of books… There was this vacuum. Good books were not easily available and local libraries mostly had just famous titles. We started in 2007 with a collection of 8,000 books, which, at that time, was the highest number of books for a private library in India. Today, we have everything, from children’s books and the best in business management to fiction and even a great self-help collection.”
On an average, the library, which has a pickup and delivery service, gets around 970 unique visitors everyday—around 1,300-1,400 books are delivered to homes daily. There are several subscription plans, ranging from availing one book a month at `110 to 12 books a month at `750. “Almost 77% of our audience is in the age group of 22-45 years and 21% of them are above 45 years of age,” 40-year-old Turakhia adds.
When they started, logistics, however, was a key challenge. “We spoke with several courier companies, but some didn’t have reverse logistics options, while others were downright expensive. So we decided to have our own inhouse logistics team, making deliveries and pickups affordable,” Turakhia says. In the past 11 years, members have borrowed around 32,28,409 books, which comes to an average of around 2,93,491 books a year.
In 2009, a corporate approached them to set up a library in their office and they decided to venture in the corporate segment as well, offering customised solutions to corporate clients, ranging from loaning them books to customisation of reading plans for them. Today, Librarywala.com caters to 80 corporate clients. “We offer multiple options, allowing our corporate clients to not only fund their libraries with our books, but also offer their employees a best-in-class library service without them having to open a library at their office. The company pays only if their employees read and there is no minimum billing,” Turakhia says. For corporate members, the library also offers profession-wise reading recommendations and even training workshops at the client’s office.
Yale University School of Public Health, Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health, 60 College Street, New Haven, CT 06510, USA
Received 20 October 2015, Revised 11 July 2016, Accepted 15 July 2016, Available online 18 July 2016.
Highlights
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Book reading provides a survival advantage among the elderly (HR = 0.80,p < 0.0001).
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Books are more advantageous for survival than newspapers/magazines.
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The survival advantage of reading books works through a cognitive mediator.
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Books are protective regardless of gender, wealth, education, or health.
Abstract
Although books can expose people to new people and places, whether books also have health benefits beyond other types of reading materials is not known. This study examined whether those who read books have a survival advantage over those who do not read books and over those who read other types of materials, and if so, whether cognition mediates this book reading effect. The cohort consisted of 3635 participants in the nationally representative Health and Retirement Study who provided information about their reading patterns at baseline. Cox proportional hazards models were based on survival information up to 12 years after baseline. A dose-response survival advantage was found for book reading by tertile (HRT2 = 0.83,p < 0.001, HRT3 = 0.77,p < 0.001), after adjusting for relevant covariates including age, sex, race, education, comorbidities, self-rated health, wealth, marital status, and depression. Book reading contributed to a survival advantage that was significantly greater than that observed for reading newspapers or magazines (tT2 = 90.6,p < 0.001; tT3 = 67.9,p < 0.001). Compared to non-book readers, book readers had a 23-month survival advantage at the point of 80% survival in the unadjusted model. A survival advantage persisted after adjustment for all covariates (HR = .80, p < .01), indicating book readers experienced a 20% reduction in risk of mortality over the 12 years of follow up compared to non-book readers. Cognition mediated the book reading-survival advantage (p = 0.04). These findings suggest that the benefits of reading books include a longer life in which to read them.
