Library Services in the Realm of Social Responsibility: Three-DimensionalLibraries (3DL) in sustaining the information ‘life’ in the Jaffna District, Sri Lanka

Abstract

It has been considerably a long time since the war in the Jaffna Peninsula was ended, thus, the normalcy of life has been steadily restored through different levels of developmental activities. In this regard, libraries’ roles are perceived crucial to retain and improve social knowledge and education. This paper is based on the experiences from experiments on three-dimensional library services and aims at the extent and outcomes of such services set up in the university library, school libraries and public libraries in Jaffna District, Sri Lanka. This was an innovative service commenced by the librarian of the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Therefore, the paper looks into the potentiality of the services across the District and possibility of sustaining the reading habit of the user community. Further, it elaborates as to how this unique service could be of great importance to the society that was war-torn for the past three decades. In addition, the authors recommend such beneficial practice to be spread across the nation to enhance the reading habit and information seeking behavior of the people who were struck by the war and Tsunami. Further it proposes that this venture could be extended to the digital library services where the three-dimensional objects could be digitized.