A meeting of Maulana Azad Library, AMU, was held in the Cultural Hall of Library to discuss various issues pertaining to its smooth functioning on March 14. The meeting was presided over by the AMU Vice Chancellor, Prof. PK Abdul Azis.
Prof. Azis said the Library, with its mammoth collection of 13.5 lakh print and 2 lakh e-books is regarded as the second largest university library of Asia. The library is particularly known for its oriental collection, including 16000 manuscripts, a large number of which belong to rarest of the rare category.
He said a fragment of the Holy Qur’ān in the oriental section written in ‘Khat-e-Kufi’ on parchment is claimed to be inscribed by Caliph Ali 1400 years ago. Several royal decrees of Mughal Emperors namely Babar, Akbar, Shahjahan, Aurangzeb, Shah Alam, etc. and translations of Sanskrit works like Mahapuran, Bhagwad Geeta, Mahabharta and Leelawati in Persian by Abul Fazal Faizi, a scholar of eminence in the court of Mughal Emperor Akbar, form the core of this all important National Asset, available in the Library.
Earlier, in his introductory remarks, the Librarian, Prof. Shabahat Husain informed that the library has undergone major changes during the last three years to keep pace with the latest developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This includes CCTV, automated security gate, a digital resource centre, campus wide online catalogue and almost all internationally available online full text databases like Web of Science and Science Direct etc.
Prof. Husain said that the library is now working to connect the entire 100 departmental libraries as well as the libraries of Murshidabad and Mallapuram Centres with Maulana Azad Library under a network, named as ‘AMULIBNET’. Besides technological changes, the ongoing process of reorganization of manuscripts division has revealed a hidden treasure in the form of some museum pieces that include a sword of Emperor Aurangzeb on which a couplet in Persian is engraved in gold indicating that the same was presented to Aurangzeb. Another piece is a pen stand made of sapphire gifted by the King Nadirshah of Afganistan to the then Vice-Chancellor of AMU in 1933. Such pieces along with 350 recently discovered manuscripts and an equal number of manuscripts dating between 1602 – 1800 AD were put on display. The Vice Chancellor appreciated the technological changes brought about in the library and also the efforts made to retrieve such museum pieces and manuscripts.