1. Special Libraries in Pakistan
Sadaf Rafiq
Mphil Scholar (PU)
Library & Information
Officer

2. Contents:








What is Special Library
Mission and vision of special libraries
History of Special Libraries
Types of Special Libraries
Special Library Association
Funding of Special Libraries
Services of Special Libraries
Special Librarianship

3. What is Special Library
• SLA defines “Special libraries as those libraries maintained
by corporate bodies or institutions, professional
association or special government agencies or
departments ”
• The term “Special Library” indicates the collection of
special kinds of documents, such as, braille books,
audiovisual material, books published in any language or it
may also means a library meant mainly for a group of
special readers, such as, Children’s library, Hospital library,
Prison library etc. (Sinha)

4. Mission and vision of special libraries
• Mission
The special libraries maintain collections and disseminate information in
their fields of specialty, and, in co-operation with the library network,
provide dynamic collection of information resources based on deep
understanding of clients needs and other information searches with
information management services.
• Vision
Special libraries are eligible co-operation partners both in their own field
of specialty and in the library network due to their special resources and
their expertise.

5. History of Special Libraries
 In 1947, Pakistan had 35 special libraries. But in 1974 , Pakistan had 242
special libraries.(Aslam,1977)
 According to another survey, In 1974, Pakistan had 178 special libraries
.In1989 there were 331 libraries, and Academic libraries in special subject
areas are not included in these statistics. (Anis, 1999)
 According to the country report 2008. Pakistan had 500 Special libraries.

6. Types of Special Libraries
Special libraries can be divided into various types. Some of them are
given below:
 Government libraries
 Research institute Libraries
 Industrial Libraries
 Prisoner Libraries
 Bank Libraries
 Hospital Libraries
 Libraries for Blind / Handicapped
 Media Libraries

7.  Government libraries
 Research institute Libraries

8.  Industrial Libraries
 Prisoner Libraries

9.  Bank Libraries
 Hospital Libraries
Shalimar Hospital Library Lahore

10.  Libraries for Blind / Handicapped
 Media Libraries
Ptv Station Library
Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation Library
Newspaper Archives

11. Special Library Association
 According the past, in 1968, a separate library association called
Pakistan Association of Special Libraries (PASLIB) was formed in
Karachi. PASLIB was, however, a short lived.
 During the short span of its activities, a maiden issue of its
newsletter was published in 1968 and few public lectures were also
arranged by mid1969.
 Currently there is no special library association worked in Pakistan
But Pakistan is the part of SLA Asian chapter.

12. Funding of Special Libraries
 In a survey of 51 agricultural libraries of Pakistan, it was found
that the percentage of the library budget is 0.03% to nearly
13.00% of the total institutional budget.
 In 30% of the institutions, there was no separate budgetary
allocation for libraries (Iqbal & Meer 1990).

13. Services of Special Libraries
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Translation services
Reproduction Facilities
Reference and discovery services
Abstracting and indexing services
Inter library loan
Publishing services (Newsletter)
Current Awareness Services

14. Special Librarianship
“Special librarians are information resource experts dedicated to
putting knowledge to work to attain the goals of their
organizations. They are employed most frequently by
corporations, private businesses, government agencies,
museums, colleges, hospitals, associations and information
management consulting firms”

15. Thanks