Down the Memory Lane

By Sabitha Venkatesan, Librarian & Documentation Officer, ICA AP

I joined ICA Regional Office for Asia & Pacific in August 1989. Early on, I realized that education, training and information for sustainable development of co-operatives and cooperation among co-operatives, set co-operatives apart from other economic institution and that these unique principles necessitated the need for a clearing house for cooperative knowledge besides the exchange of information among co-operatives. I also felt there was need and wide scope for managing the clearing house of co-operative knowledge and facilitating dissemination of information and communicating for international cooperation. I remember that in 1997 Dr. Ian Macpherson, the Canadian historian and a supporter of the co-operative movement visited Bonow House, where the former library was housed, where he drafted the 7th principle “concern for the community” using the references that were available at that time. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to provide him with necessary available references.

The ICA Domus Trust Library and Information Centre co-operative library was established in 1960. Since then it has been providing information and authentic references in matters related to the co-operative movement worldwide, including the ICA member organizations. Over the years the library resources and services grew every year and it has been serving as the Information and Documentation centre for co-operatives. The centre is one of the largest in the region and advanced in terms of service to readers, infrastructure and technology applications. The library houses more than 25,000 volumes on co-operatives and allied subjects, journals, newsletters and literature related to all sectors of co-operatives. In 2012, the library received about 5,000 publications from ICA Geneva library on all sectors of cooperatives in English language and additional 2,000 publications in other foreign languages (namely French, Italian, Spanish and German). In a way ICA-AP library has become a clearing house of global co-operative knowledge.

I have completed 18 years of active service from 1989 to 2003 and 2012 to 2016, working with ICA-ROAP and ICA Domus Trust. From 2010 to March 2012, I worked as librarian at the National Co-operative Union of India. In April 2012, I was asked to join the ICA AP library once again. I have been fortunate to work under different Regional Directors from different regions which provided me capacity building inputs for serving as a custodian of library and documentation centre. The year 2016 has been a significant one for me because of Regional Assembly meet at New Delhi, India, which allowed me to introspect at the end of my career on the role and scope of co-operatives and I thank the present Regional Director, Balasubramanian Iyer for giving me an opportunity to express my views through this medium.

Mrs. Sabitha Venkatesan retired from the ICA-AP as librarian on 31 December 2016. She can be reached at sabitha.venkatesan@yahoo.co.in.