Author: Sujata Noronha

​Sujata loves books, loves libraries and is learning to love how technology can bring her loves together to celebrate and affirm the power of reading and learning.
<strong>Exploring Partition in the </strong><i>Library</i>
Chiaroscuro, Issue 12 – February 2020

Exploring Partition in the Library

Foreword by the Editors For those of us who went to conventional schools that had library spaces, we may (often )think of the library as a place that perhaps smelt of old books, where the main activities involved being quiet, returning or borrowing a book and occasionally, if we were lucky, listening to a story read aloud. We feature this article in this issue for a few special reasons. Not only does it make us question our assumptions of what a school library should be like and what it should do, it also surprises us with its definition of a different kind of school. This study documents an intensive exploration of a difficult theme- that of India's Partition- by a Goa-based  library educator working with a small group of home-schooling/schooled students. It is a compelling account of wh...
<strong>Diverse Questions</strong> <i>around</i> <strong>Diversity</strong>
Chiaroscuro, Issue 10 – July 2019

Diverse Questions around Diversity

Illustration by Rhea de Souza The squawking - whirring of my 2007 modem indicated I was connected to the World Wide Web. Those days still fresh in my memory despite the cataclysmic advancement of technology playing out vividly as I try and recall my first sighting of Ismat’s Eid (Fawzia Gilani Williams; Proiti Roy -Illustrator)- a picture book that showed up on a favourite bookmarked site, www.tulikabooks.in. I immediately put it on my task list to order, drawn to the book for two reasons. First, I have been drawn to the marginal, enough to explore the cultural history of our homeland to recognise that we had Islamic influences for years before the Portuguese. Enough to want to identify with that cultural past and give my sons Arabic names. Sufficient to warrant active looking for pictu...
<i>On The </i><strong>Same Page</strong>
Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

On The Same Page

Being able to criss-cross the globe on the strength of the Internet has made it possible to engage with creative ideas, conversations, and experiences which otherwise would be beyond our reach—and at times, even beyond our imagination.  On The Same Page will bring to the reader of Torchlight, a combination of textual-audio-visual curated content, about and around libraries and bookish love. Think libraries and one does think about rules, about silence. about overdue fines. Here, we look at libraries and rules, to see if there are rules we must keep but maybe - just maybe -there are a few that are quite unnecessary! Cookie Monster in the Library - Really ? The Library brings to mind books, but it also brings to mind rules. Here is how Mike Thaler imagines them in The Librarian From B...
<strong>Collections </strong>- <i>Who is responsible?</i>
Chiaroscuro, Issue 8 – January 2019

Collections - Who is responsible?

“Librarians are turning to the police to recover borrowed books”  This was the headline in a national newspaper. The article went on to talk about how users in the public library treat borrowing as taking and that more than half the collection does not come back to the public library.  We really need to pause to think about unreturned books. Does that constitute theft to necessitate police action? In what nature of relationships do we turn to the police?  This really is the over riding question that we feel the library - the public library needs to consider. Relationships are at the stronghold of public services, it is why institutions like the public library were imagined in the 18th Century. In India, it was in the Princely State of Baroda where Maharaj Sayajirao III Gaekwad introduced...
<strong>Bookish</strong><i> Love? </i><strong>Bah!</strong>
Issue 5 – April 2018, Spotlight

Bookish Love? Bah!

Love Books! Books are Lovely! We Must Love Books! And now… Bookish love! Where is this stream of ideas about love and books being birthed? And how do these ideas flow into dominant talk? Who dare says, “Bookish love - huh?! Humbug!” And who is brave enough to cast this stone as naysayers? What has bookish love done for humanity and what has bookish love or love for books or any combination of the words ‘love and books’ done for those who do not read and declare that they do not like the act of reading? Where is the space for those of us who struggle with the written word in languages we barely understand?  For those of us who have never seen anyone with their heads buried in a book, unless within the classroom and closely watched? Can any of us raise our heads and hands and say, 'we con...
Fitting In: <i>Technology and Children’s Library Practice</i>
Axis, Issue 4 – January 2018

Fitting In: Technology and Children’s Library Practice

A reflective essay Photo: Nijugrapher Libraries used to be the record keepers of the past. They were expected to be slightly antiquated because they were meant to enable us to retreat, to discover something recorded and make sense of it in the present. The atmosphere was a collusion of many lives and millions of ideas living in a confined space. There was the air of expectancy but also of the need to linger, to seek at length and to dwell on what was discovered.   Today there is a subtle pressure on libraries to be spaces of the future.  Open, bright, airy. Chrome and glass are considered fitting materials and an absence of clutter is modernist. Time is critical and the faster you find something the seemingly more efficient the library system appears to be.   S...
Preface to Torchlight
Axis, Issue 1 - March 2017

Preface to Torchlight

"The light they give is insufficient and unceasing,"  writes Jorge Luis Borges in his short story, "The Library of Babel", when referring to bulbs in the Library.  Torchlight, a Journal of Libraries and Bookish Love finds its context in a similar  half-lit  place and time of light and shadows. There is so much to know yet, and so much to share that even in our assuming that we know the library, we find we do not and so we are driven to go on searching. "When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy" (ibid., 69)1 and this is akin to the feeling of birthing Torchlight. What began as an idea amongst a few of us spread joyfully to include others and we find ourselves sharing our first issue of Torchlight with all of you. Watch ‘Bookseller o...