The dynamism of ranganathan’s five laws in the changing environment of librarianship: With reference to electronic resources

Five laws of library science proposed by Dr. S.R. Ranganathan are the basic foundation to the librarianship. These laws are applicable to all areas of librarianship; understanding of library science is incomplete without the knowledge of five laws. These laws constitute the scientific, empirical, and philosophical basis for library services. Though, these laws emerged in the non-electronic environment and when print resources were in vogue. The advent of ICT changed the perspective of users towards information access and retrieval. Thus, the role of librarian changed drastically in collection building and in providing information services to a different category of users on-demand instantaneously. Subscription of electronic resources helps to reduce the burden of library staff in providing multiple points of access to multiple users simultaneously which saves their time. Hence, e-resources are playing a very significant role in the acceleration of academic, research and development activities. However, the basic motive of five laws has become the guiding principle of librarianship; five laws are interpreted in different contexts to address the user needs and library objectives efficiently. With this backdrop, this study provides a concise overview of usability and significance of electronic resources in the light of S. R. Ranganathan's five laws of library science in present electronic era. Electronic resource variants appropriated are discussed in this paper to know - How to make all e-resources accessible for use? How will every reader get his/her e-information? How to universalize e-resources availability to all categories of users? How to save the time of the user? How to balance the growth and use of vast electronic information resources? Hence, e-resources in the library are significant to provide ‘right information to the right user at the right time’ principle.