This article is by guest author, Devin Smith*
For over a decade, famed Indian librarian S.R. Ranganathan’s 1931 book The Five Laws of Library Science has been one of HathiTrust’s top ten most-accessed items, with its digitized copies courtesy of the University of California and the University of Michigan. As you might expect, the majority of web traffic for this book comes from India, but its reach is truly global: Between September and December 2024, it was accessed a total of 11,382 times, from 115 countries spanning every continent, excluding Antarctica. (Sorry not sorry, Antarctica.)
If you’re not a librarian, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of The Five Laws. And even if you are, there’s a good chance you’ve only encountered it in second-hand digest form, likely from a western author in the late ’90s or early 2000s. Many of these digest versions address only the book’s first-principles content, glossing over its significant political and experimental material. There are a ton of interesting things about this book, but this post focuses mainly on its writing style, which is under-discussed and, frankly, completely bananas.
S.R. Ranganathan was a 32-year-old math professor who more-or-less stumbled into an appointment as the University of Madras Librarian in 1924. As part of the gig, he was sent to England, where he attended the University College London’s new library school; apprenticed at the Croydon Public Library with W. C. Berwick Sayers; and toured over a hundred libraries throughout the U.K., comparing and contrasting their operations. He returned home fully dedicated to the notion that libraries have the power to change the world. But imagine for a moment that you’re living in a country without a public library system, and you want to write a book arguing that it’s worth creating one. How would you go about this? What kind of book would you write?
The answer, in Ranganahtan’s case, is a wild pastiche of styles, content, and a surprisingly casual delivery. From the get-go, The Five Laws proudly wears its interdisciplinarity on its sleeve, with Ranganathan comparing the simplicity of his First Law (Books are for use) to the first Upanishadic Law of Conduct, Satyam Vada (Speak the truth). Throughout this book, you’ll encounter a parade of goofy anecdotes, draft legislation, a lengthy lit review, Hindu scripture (in both translation and the original), plenty of slang, three short plays (one of which includes a song), and EXCLAIMED, ALL-CAPS PASSAGES! His prose sometimes veers into straight-up romanticism; this technicolor description of Lisbon’s Garden Library is a particular favorite:
On the flank of one its Seven Hills, overlooking the blue surface of the Tagus, there is a sunny little public garden with a marble basin in the centre round which flowers riot in rain-bow tints and children shout and run in joyous ecstasy.
At the far end, there is a giant Cedar-Tree spreading like an umbrella defying sun and rain. Inside its intense shadow deep silence prevails; and you find a line of chairs encircling an enchanting collection of volumes in a lovely bookcase. Students in their flowing cloaks, workmen white with lime-dust, raw rustics with timid and listless eyes, office and shop employees munching their lunch, soldiers, printers, electricians, sailors and dock-hands, all share the contents of this unique Library, unhampered by any formality but aided by the nimble, sweet-faced Librarian who flutters from end to end with her beaming smile.
Convinced that open education was a critical component to an independent, democratic India, Ranganathan’s aim was to reach well-resourced, English-educated Indians, who could step in to establish and support libraries where the colonial government would not. Throughout The Five Laws, he plays both hype man and gadfly, pointing to the positive effects of the UK’s library system on political enfranchisement and Carnegie’s role in building it, while throwing shade at his English-educated peers, who “have developed an abnormal short-sight which disables them from seeing beyond their nose, at any rate, beyond their privileged circle.”
The plays — plays! — likewise allow subtle political commentary to slip under the radar of the British, who had a nasty habit of banning publications overtly critical of the colonial administration. In the section on the Second Law (Every reader his book), we get a fourteen-page play formatted as a roundtable discussion between representatives of groups like the illiterate, the blind, sailors, the infirm, and the incarcerated. Notable in that last group is a discussion of political prisoners from civil disobedience campaigns, the “Sunday-players and Salt-law-breakers” who “are usually the tallest intellectuals of a community” and “would like to have more serious books.”
There’s also some sly anticolonial material tucked into the book’s literature review. For example, he selects a pointed quote from the Carnegie Library Commission regarding the library situation in South Africa:
“The South African [colonist] is willing — perhaps has no other way out — for the native to cook his food, care for his children, keep his household in order, serve him in a personal way, carry his books to and from the library, but he would feel that an end of his regime were at hand if this same servant were permitted to open these books and read therein.”
And in the previous chapter, Ranganathan tells us that
When a library school was inaugurated at Moscow in 1913, the following question was asked in the national Duma by the leader of the extreme right: “How can the government tolerate library courses, which would pave the way for revolution.”
India’s Library Movement during this period was more-or-less an outgrowth of the Indian National Congress [INC], and there was significant overlap between the INC and various Library Associations’ leadership and membership. Ranganathan was a co-founder of the Madras Library Association [MALA], which exemplified this dynamic, and whose initial membership was about half lawyers. MALA produced many of the conferences and classes Ranganathan used to polish The Five Laws’ raw material, and the organization published the book when it was completed. Ranganathan donated his author royalties from The Five Laws and several other key texts to MALA, further supporting its mission of open education as a pathway to independence.
The sheer amount of stuff Ranganathan was involved in from his 1924 University of Madras appointment to his 1972 death is mind-boggling, and a complete list is better left to other authors. But a few highlights bear mentioning. He engaged with almost every major Indian and international library organization, and many critical educational organizations as well. All-told, he published 65 monographs and over 1,000 articles (Satija & Sharma, 1986) — though some sources double this estimate by including (e.g.) technical reports. (His 84 items in HathiTrust will give you an idea of his breadth. His two other most-known works are much more technical: Colon Classification and the Prolegomena.) FunFact! He appears on a 1951 Folkways recording, reciting passages from the Ramayana and Brahma’s Hymns.
The legacy of The Five Laws is both overt and subtle: India’s Library Movement was fighting an uphill battle during the British Raj, but after its 1947 independence, the dedication of its advocates was rewarded: The draft bills Ranganathan produced served as the basis for India’s first Public Library Act in 1948. (Ranganathan & Kaula, 1992) The declining citation rates of Ranganathan work in the 1960s–80s masks his deep and continuing impact on systems like Dewey Decimal Classification. (Camaromi, 1992; Cochrane, 1992) The happy coincidence of the 1992 centennial of his birth with the rise of digital systems (for which his classification theories were ideally-suited) led to a spate of events and publications that brought him back into the academic consciousness (Satija, 1993; Sing, 1994) — but unfortunately, much of this modern work often presents The Five Laws sadly denuded of its political heft and experimental potency.
But thanks to the HathiTrust, the full text is right here — ready and waiting! — whenever you’re ready.
*About the author: Devin Smith is an application programmer on CDL’s Publishing, Archives, and Digitization (PAD) team. He is currently drafting a short monograph about "The Five Laws of Library Science" and its fascinating socio-political context. This post was adapted by the author from his award-winning presentation, Wild Literary Choices in Ranganathan’s Five Laws; or, forget APA and Change the World, at the 2025 College of Information, Data & Society conference. Feel free to drop him a line at devin.smith.work@gmail.com
References
Camaromi, J. (1992). Ranganathan’s influence on American Librarianship. In Sharma, R.N. (Ed.). S.R. Ranganathan and the West. Sterling. 812071475x.
Cochrane, P.A. (1992). The influence of Ranganathan upon library and information science, library education, and me. In Sharma, R.N. (Ed.). S.R. Ranganathan and the West. Sterling. 812071475x.
Ranganathan, S.R., & Kaula, P.N. (1992). A librarian looks back: An autobiography of Dr. S.R. Ranganathan, appended with an evaluation of his life and work by P.N. Kaula.
Satija, M.P., & Sharma, R.N. (1986). S.R. Ranganathan: The Crusader. Libri, 36(2).
Satija, M. P. (1993). Birth centenary literature on Ranganathan: A review. World Libraries, 4(1). https://worldlibraries.dom.edu/index.php/worldlib/article/view/270
Sing, S. (1994). S R Ranganathan: A review of centenary celebration events and literature. Annals of Library Science and Documentation, 41(4). https://nopr.niscpr.res.in/bitstream/123456789/27624/1/ALIS%2041(4)%20142-151.pdf