Issue 4 – January 2018

30Jan

By Torchlight TeamNo Comments

Issue 10 – July 2019, Issue 11 – October 2019, Issue 12 – February 2020, Issue 2 - June 2017, Issue 3 - September 2017, Issue 4 – January 2018, Issue 5 – April 2018, Issue 6 – July 2018, Issue 7 – October 2018, Issue 8 – January 2019, Issue 9 – April 2019

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Call for Contributions to Torchlight Issue 13, April 2020: Libraries, Reading and Resistance The year 2020 is seeing catastrophes unfold across the world- with violent political instability, economic collapse, and unprecedented environmental crises unfolding everywhere, while a new-media driven frenzy of dystopian narratives are shaping public discourse. Yet history has shown us- as much as contemporary times are doing- that libraries, books, and communities of story-tellers and story-keepers everywhere, have persisted in the face of dire odds to preserve alternative narratives – of solidarity, hopefulness, critical thought, emotional fulfilment - and resisted oppression in myriad ways. In this context, Torchlight: A Journal of Libraries and Bookish Love invites your contributions for ...

Fitting In: <i>Technology and Children’s Library Practice</i>

21Jan

By Sujata Noronha3 Comments

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...

Podcast: <i>How the Visually Impaired Read in India</i>

20Jan

By Krishna Warrier and Ketan Kothari1 Comment

Issue 4 – January 2018, Spotlight

Podcast: How the Visually Impaired Read in India

I never imagined that blind persons could be voracious readers till I met a visually impaired person who introduced me to DAISY. Now before you conjure up visions liked I did of DAISY being a beautiful young woman with a heart of gold, let me clarify that DAISY is not a human being. But wait, we are jumping the gun. My name is Krishna Warrier and I am chatting today with Ketan Kothari. Ketan is a first-class post graduate from Mumbai University who works for an organisation called Sightsavers, he is an avid reader, and happens to be blind. Krishna: Ketan, what exactly is DAISY? Ketan: DAISY is a digital system which is accessible to print disabled people so the acronym DAISY stands for Digitally Accessible System—rather, Digitally Accessible Information System and it enables us ...

20Jan

By Selvakumar Jaganathan7 Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

Memoir of a librarian

I love libraries. So it was no wonder that I graduated in Library Science. The time was the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new millennium. Information Technology slowly entered into the field of library and crawled into the domain of librarianship. My interest in the subject drove me to take up "short term industry oriented technology courses" from a CSIR institute – CDS / ISIS; a course on freely distributed software package by UNESCO, suited for Bibliographical applications and used as catalogues in libraries, and a similar course on "Information Technology for libraries." As a result of that, I joined a very prestigious institute in Bangalore as a Library Trainee without any difficulty. The institute used to take six candidates every year, exposing them during trai...

20Jan

By Manjula PadmanabhanNo Comments

Issue 4 – January 2018, Spotlight

Libraries

When I was eleven years old, one of my favourite places was the Nielson Hays Library in Bangkok, Thailand. It was a huge building, with tall ceilings and white-washed walls. On days when my Mother needed the car, the driver would collect me from school and leave me at the Library to spend an hour or two on my own. Nielson Hays Library, Bangkok (Photo: neilsonhayslibrary.com) That library had a special room just for children's books. It was a tiny building with wooden walls, tiled roof and polished-wood floor, surrounded by water, like a moat. You had to step across a little bridge to get inside. It was like being inside a castle made for books. I planned to read every book in there, in alphabetical order! But of course, I soon decided against that because I preferred some kinds of bo...

13Jan

By Tanvi DomadiaNo Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

Where Tech Meets Storytelling

Ramu and his friends sit huddled together around a computer screen, playing a game called “Rory’s Story Cubes.” Shaili hits the spacebar key and the 9 virtual dices roll. When it stops, the dice fall next to each other in this order: “I’ll go first,” says Ramu. His narration begins: “An arrow hits a boy playing on the streets.” Shyam looks at the second image of a footprint, pauses for a minute to think and adds, “The boy wonders what just hit him and sees footprints of an animal near him.” It’s Shaili’s turn next: “The boy called Ali follows the footsteps across the bridge.” Ramu excitedly cuts in: “Ali soon comes to a tree where the prints have mysteriously disappeared.” “He searches for the prints in all directions,” continues Shyam. “Ali hears a voice from below t...

Can You <strong>Snuggle </strong>up with <i>Your Kindle?</i>

12Jan

By Aarti Srinivasan2 Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

Can You Snuggle up with Your Kindle?

Young readers talk about Lane Smith's It's a Book. It is a commonplace on the part of Generation Y to lament that kids just don’t read these days. Most of the blame coalesce into one giant finger that points accusingly at the internet and the many, many gadgets that enable young kids to gambol freely among digital terrains. It’s a troubling thought indeed that right now, there is a whole wave of children who are more at home with Twitter and Snapchat than Tinkle and Superman. It is precisely these concerns that Lane Smith’s excellent It’s a Book speaks to. A simple (and hugely fun!) back-and-forth between a curious jackass and a reader monkey forms the content of Smith’s book. Without giving away the ending, we’d just like to say that the conclusion of this brief story will warm al...

Has Internet Done to <i>Poetry </i>What Spring Does to the Cherry Tree?

12Jan

By Rajashree GandhiNo Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

Has Internet Done to Poetry What Spring Does to the Cherry Tree?

Exploring poetry’s roller coaster journey into the digital world From rare yellowing anthologies waiting to be discovered in the last aisle of the library to backlit daily Instagram feed, poetry has travelled a long way. Unlike some successful Tumblr and Insta poets, the most celebrated poets of our world cannot claim to have gone “viral”. It fascinates me how the digital world has almost entirely altered how poetry is produced, shared and consumed. While each one of us millennials has strong opinions on how the internet has ruined/revolutionised parts of our life, we have yielded to its power and played along. Poetry readers are no different. There is a lot to celebrate about poetry on the internet along with legitimate concerns raised by the alert witnesses of this overhaul. Before...

12Jan

By Beena Choksi1 Comment

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

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. Picturing the journey: Print to digital Long before research was undertaken to establish the significant role pictorial representations play in developing literacy, language, and a host of cognitive skills in young children, picture books occupied a distinct place in the world of children’s publishing. So much so that since 1937 picture books became award-worthy starting with the Cald...

Book Feels For Broke Bibliophiles: Exploring <i>Bookishness </i>in <strong>New Media</strong>

12Jan

By Alia Sinha2 Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

Book Feels For Broke Bibliophiles: Exploring Bookishness in New Media

On the social media behemoth Facebook exists a group known as 'Book Deals for Broke Bibliophiles' — a vibrant online community of self-identified book-lovers who spend as much time on this forum discussing and discovering new books, favorite authors, short stories, book-photography and other bookish things as they do reading, presumably. As per the description given — and as indicated by the name —"This Group is intended to suggest curated online book deals in India. The objective is to make you spend bare minimum to buy your favourite books." It was started in December 2014 by a person who prefers to keep their identity anonymous, originally going by the name "Broke Bibliophile." A fascinating figure, this person is charismatic, polite, responsive to other members and always, alway...

3Jan

By Dileep Sharma8 Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

कहानी और “और एक कहानी”

सिरोही जिले के आबू रोड ब्लॉक में अर्ली लिटरेसी प्रोजेक्ट के तहत 10 राजकीय विद्यालयों की प्राथमिक कक्षाओं में बच्चों के साथ लाइब्रेरी कार्य करने के दौरान टैबलेट आधारित ई-पुस्तकों के संकलन (ई-रीडर) का अनुप्रयोग हुआ l इस प्रोजेक्ट, जिसको “और एक कहानी” नाम दिया गया, के साथ काम करने के दौरान बच्चों ने जो प्रतिक्रियाएं दी, उससे कई सवाल मेरे मन में घर कर गए l टैबलेट जैसे उपकरण पर बच्चों ने पहली बार जब अपनी नन्ही उंगलिंयां फिराते हुए अपनी दुनिया के बारे में खोजना शुरू किया तो उनके चेहरे पर उत्सुकता एवं आनंद के भाव बिखरे देख बहुत अच्छा लगा l बोलती किताबों और पात्रो की गतिशील रंगीनीयत ने बच्चों को अपनी ओर तुरंत व सहज ही आकर्षित कर लिया और सबसे पहला सवाल मन में खड़ा हुआ - क्या किताबें पहली बार में ऐसा कर पाती ? टैबलेट पर कुछ महीने अंगुलियां फिराते-फिराते बच्चों ने कहानियों की ई-किताबों से दोस्त...

A Virtual Quest: <i>Rare books and a Recreation of Childhood</i>

2Jan

By Siddhartha SarmaNo Comments

Axis, Issue 4 – January 2018

A Virtual Quest: Rare books and a Recreation of Childhood

I come from a place and a time where the experience of seeking books was a mixed one. On the one hand, I met the last representatives of a generation for whom the public library was of tremendous significance. Some of these people had even collaborated to set up the first public libraries in my part of the world. On the other, I grew up at a time when reading had been compartmentalized into syllabi and mandated material, and books (read: textbooks) were keys to employment. Within my own generation, public libraries withered away. My school encouraged borrowing from the library, and in my neighbourhood was the biggest library in the Northeast, so these were valuable resources for me. We also had, in our city, a rare bird — the only library meant exclusively for children. It had children’...

30Dec

By Sohail Akbar4 Comments

Axis, Issue 4 – January 2018

In My Father’s Library

In the age of the digital when most reading is done off the screen, the sensory appeal of paper as the reading material has its own charm. A room full of books plays on our senses in so many ways. The smell, texture and rustle of paper draws any ardent reader into an immersion that is not worthy of any comparison with reading off a screen. Ask any voracious reader and she will say that we all prefer paper. Possessing books is as valuable for readers as collecting jewelry is for many. My father Ziaul Haq is one such person. He has a vast personal collection of books that he has slowly nurtured and built over a period of seventy years. At 97 years of age, he sits proudly amongst the books he loves so much. Allahabad, the city where he resides had the reputation of being a hub of the li...

30Dec

By Neha YadavNo Comments

Axis, Issue 4 – January 2018

Preface to Issue 4

Dear Torchlighters, Technology is everywhere. Inventions that would have been unthinkable just a few decades ago are essential components of everyday life now. Libraries and readers too have been swept up in its all-encompassing embrace; Kindle screens wink at us from bedside tables, archives become digitally available, and writers tweet out stories in real time to a breathless audience of millions. As with all other change, this too has its share of nay-sayers. Some worries and complaints – about elitism and privilege, shortened attention spans and lost nuances, digital isolation – are entirely legitimate and, to varying degrees, already apparent. The need of the hour seems to be platforms where a multiplicity of voices from all walks of life can think through, at some leisure, the ramif...

30Dec

By Alia SinhaNo Comments

Alt Shift, Issue 4 – January 2018

A Technical Readerly Problem