The Fifth Law

1. Gaur, R. C., Jeyaraj, V., & Kumar, K. (2009). India: Libraries, archives and museums. Encyclopedia of library and information sciences, third edition (pp. 2291-2329) Taylor & Francis. doi:doi:10.1081/E-ELIS3-120044942


I wanted to include others listed, but getting the acquisitions data on libraries is not easy.


It is interesting, though, that it appears that Ranganathan’s attempt to associate publication rates with library collection size has broken down over time. It is interesting that the LoC acquisitions was only two & a quarter times the number of over 80 years before, while the number of items published is 28 times. This indicates that libraries have ceased being the storehouses (even the LoC) of all information. That merely changes the relationship of the publication rates with the collection growth rates.


But Ranganathan moves on to describe how libraries should be able to accommodate the natural growth (which R. assumed would continue unabated). After addressing how to make the physical building and furniture flexible for this growth in size, he then addresses the need for the classification system to accommodate growth. Not unsurprisingly, he laments the Library of Congress Classification System for using a “primitive method of leaving gaps int he ordinary serial use of numbers,” while promoting Dewey’s system as “a demonstration of the immense potentiality of the decimal fraction.” But most of all, he admonishes libraries to use standard classifications rather than tweaking systems or making their own.. He does mention the Colon Classification system he was then developing (at the time of the second edition), in that its mixed alphanumeric format and use of decimal formats are able to apply the three aspects of analytico-synthetic scheme: phase, facet and zone.


Next, Ranganathan turns his attention to the growth in number of readers that will inevitably occur as both the population increases and the Second Law brings about changes to that population (greater availability of reading material, increased literacy, “open access” shelves). I worry a bit, though, that with the decreasing emphasis on reading print books, libraries have been moving their books into long-term storage. While there have been improvements that decrease the amount of time it takes to retrieve a book, this policy effectively closes the stacks again, reversing the efforts made over a century ago. As electronic books can eventually replace print books, the print-to-electronic ratio may take a while to reach 1:1. Will the shift of collections reduce the availability of materials to such an extent that it has a detrimental effect on access to information?


Finally, he addresses not only the growth in size of the library, but also in form. Here, however, his foresight is limited and he focuses the progress that has already occurred. He discusses the gradual shift from keeping books chained like prisoners to “stock-taking” to limited “stock-use” to the “highly differentiated and complicated character of the organisation of the library to-day”. He returns to the “growing organism” metaphor by celebrating the variety of libraries as “species” with their own “problems and peculiarities” but also with “common features”.  


He ends this chapter on his final law detailing “the vital principle of the library” –

“it [the library] is an instrument of universal education, and assembles together and freely distributes all the tools of education and disseminates knowledge with their aid.”

There would be no better way for S.R. Ranganathan to end his treatise on library science and librarianship.