News, updates and musings about the library, reading and the wider community from members, volunteers and staff
By Priyanka Sancheti When I first started volunteering at the Community Library in June last year, what struck me was how the library emphasised on telling stories through multiple mediums; books were of course the obvious and immediate points of access but there were so many other ways to encounter the fascinating of stories. I […]
This summer, for the second year, The Community Library Project ran an intensive summer reading camp for children in the Khirki Extension/Jagdamba Camp/Sheikh Sarai area. The morning session for 8-12 year olds was run in collaboration with the NGO Swechha and was held at their Khirki Extension offices. The afternoon session for 12-15 year olds […]
The Community Library Project is dedicated to the idea that all people should have access to libraries and books. Observations and reading fluency assessment data collected over the past two years indicates that although most of our younger members can read, few can read very well, even in their native language, Hindi. (The following paragraphs […]
A Read Aloud session is one of the foundational programmes of our community library project. Read Alouds focus not just on reading a story out loud to the children present but also to engage everyone in creatively engaging with, and discussing the various dimensions of the story. Read Alouds enhance one’s ability to read and […]
The community library came to me unexpectedly in 2016. I was in the metro with my friend and asked him if there were any free libraries near us because I was fed up of reading books on my phone. I didn’t have money to enroll as a member in a paid library or buy every […]
By Annie Zaidi Of the people, by the people, and for the people -- it’s the simplest, cleanest, easiest-to-remember definition of democracy. These days, I often think back to my school civics book. On the first page was printed the preamble to the Constitution. I have to confess here that I often feel guilty for […]
What is the Community Library’s Core Team? The Community Library Project’s Core Team has six members—five of them are from the library community, and one is a volunteer. The Core Team was formed recently, modeled on an idea of Mridula Koshy. She brought us all together to carry out a very important responsibility. Our library’s […]
The Community Library Project at Deepalaya has been serving more than 1400 members since 2015. The numbers (no matter how gratifying they look) aren't enough when we compare them with the number of citizens who have no access to a functioning library of their own. There is an urgency involved in building more libraries. We, […]
Although our libraries are situated inside communities, engagement with members’ families has so far been at a minimum. Our Community Organizer, Mridula says, “Our library members and their families and the many thousands of others who live in the mostly informal settlements in and around our library have every reason to be wary of institutions. […]
