UNCERTAINTY ERODES A CREATIVE SPIRIT

Sitting just behind the striking Lahore Museum on Mall Road there is another impressive building of equal importance. Established in 1884, Punjab Public Library is the city’s oldest library. In fact, it is the country’s first public library and the largest.

This library is home to a forgotten treasure of books, archived official reports going as far back as the 1890s and a wholesome repository of newspapers and other publications including the Civil-Military Gazette where Rudyard Kipling, an English journalist, worked during his time in Lahore.

Over its history of 135 years, this library has played host to multiple generations of students and scholars from all walks of life, giving them access to knowledge and a place to study.

However, an establishment as old as this, it is still struggling to comprehend its role in the new era of digital media and an ever-growing population of young adults.

With its floors filled with shelves holding thousands of ignored books, caked in dust and victim to decades of heat and humidity, the library is currently functioning mostly as a place for studying or borrowing newer books in circulation.

The library needs young professionals that are invested in its future and want to make a positive change for the betterment of all.

Regrettably, those who wish to see this library returned to its glory days are facing an uphill battle. One such case is of Ayesha Mushtaq, a young librarian, who is one of two female professionals on the staff. A soft-spoken person with a confident demeanor, Mushtaq has the air of a determined individual with a passion for her work.

Despite her nearly three years of employment at the Library and a Masters in Information Systems with a gold medal, she is still unclear of her future. In October of this year, her employment contract will expire. She has no idea whether she will be offered a permanent position before that occurs or her contract will be renewed.

Her repeated queries about her application status to the chief librarian and by extension, the managing committee of the library have gone unanswered for over six months. The library currently has six professional vacancies, so having an esteemed team member with an unclear future sounds like an unnaturally cruel predicament.

During her tenure, she has spearheaded the development and deployment of the e-Library systems and the launch of the revamped Computer Lab which is a whole project and a half. Along with this, she was also made in charge of the ‘Archives’ department which overlooks the newspaper and annual report records.

In the archives department, using her knowledge and expertise, she ensured all stored publications are properly cataloged and their indexes are digitized to ensure easier referencing for visiting scholars. The department also undertook the provision of high-quality digital scans of reference books on request, for anyone who requires digital copies for a nominal fee.

However, because of her impressive track record over a period of two and a half years, she is mostly treated as a band-aid, being shifted back and forth between departments, to whichever needs the most attention.

‘I was not ready to leave Archives, because I had put a lot of time and effort into bringing it up to speed and making it efficient, and knew it would not continue down the same path after I left’, she told me during our conversation.

In fact, she actually proposed to the administration that she can look over both projects, and was declined. For all intents and purposes, it appears that she is a firefighter, going from one fire to the other, fixing problems and moved to the next complication in line.

‘May I show you something?’ she says to me halfway through our conversation. I nod in the affirmative and she produces a folder. In it, is a detailed proposal for an overhauled Children’s section for the library, complete with up to date technology and a modern approach.

The detailed plan includes not only a list of updated books but also floor plans for the new section, a list of equipment required and their cost. It was so impressive that I told her it could be on par with any international library.

‘Why isn’t this in the works?’ I asked her.

Mushtaq told me that she designed the proposal on her own time and delivered a presentation to the committee one year ago, and they have yet to greenlight it or pay it serious attention. The total cost she quoted for the project to the committee was 2 lakh rupees only.

Two hundred thousand rupees for a revitalized children’s section which would ignite the passion of learning and reading in a new generation of children, who will grow up to be responsible citizens. Unfortunately, her proposal only exists on paper, despite her efforts.

It is common knowledge that women in professional workspaces have to deal with a glass ceiling, which restricts their career advancement.

It requires extra time and effort from them to make their mark in a given field. This is especially true for a country like Pakistan where women are still grossly underrepresented in the office space and face a whole set of issues (both logistic and culture related) to even make it to the workplace in the first place. The ‘pink tax’, then takes a toll on the female workforce and is a drain on their morale and quality of their work.

According to research done by Hive, not only ‘women work 10% harder than men, but they are also assigned more non-promotable menial tasks than their male counterparts. In such an environment, each case of women advancement becomes a small victory.

This is so much true in Mushtaq’s case. When Mushtaq joined the library two years ago, it was a group of five colleagues who signed up together. Since they were all hired on contracts that would expire after three years, almost all of them left to pursue more lucrative and secure positions in the private sector. Only she remained.

She believes that this library has an important role to play as the conscience of the city. She said that someone has to invest in it for the dividends to show through. This has also led her to further pursue an MPhil in library informatics, which she is attending as evening classes after work.

Before ending the interview, I asked her what changes she would like to see in her workplace. She said that along with transportation for female employees, and reduced politics in the office, the thing she would like to see most implemented is better management of projects.

‘Each new project should have set goals, date of completion and budget so every team member knows their role and deadlines,’ Mushtaq said.

A team is only as good as the sum of its members. If the library administration and the managing committee continue to ignore their already very limited female staff, do not provide these women with a means of rising through the ranks and acknowledging their worth by hiring them as a government employee on a permanent seat, they will end up losing a competent librarian who has her heart set in the right place.

Mushtaq deserves to have a clear idea about her future, so she can have peace of mind and focus 100% on her work and invest in the future of the library. We need to ensure that women like her are seen and heard, and are given a chance to make a difference for our society.