Alt Shift

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...