Zakir Azad, Cumilla

Students are not interested in Cumilla University Library and they complain that they are not satisfied with the central library even after 18 years of establishment.

The students said, "They are averse to the library due to lack of academic reference books, non-availability of photocopy machine." Besides, there is no provision for the students with special needs of the university to go to the library.

The central library of the university is located in two small rooms on the east side of the fifth floor of the five-storied administrative building. According to the information obtained from the library sources, currently the number of seats in the library is only 100 against 6924 students of the university. The total number of books in the universe is about 30 thousand.

20 daily newspapers, 1,380 journals and reports, 5 magazines, 4 thousand e-books. Of these, 3500 are from Wiley Publications and 500 from TStore, Research for Life sites.

However, students claim that books and other facilities are insufficient compared to students. Rakibul Hasan Sohag, a student of the university's mass communication and journalism department, said, 'After coming to the university, I was interested in the central library. But I was disappointed to see the library on the fifth floor.

After that, one has to search for academic reference books and return empty-handed, because there are no books. Moreover, there is no photocopying facility in the library. So far I have gone to the need reading several times but have been disappointed every time. So the desire to sit in the library has decreased.
In this regard, Latiful Marjan, a student of the 2022-23 session of the Department of Anthropology, said, 'There is a shortage of books in the library, some books cannot be found. Library opening hours should also be extended.

The number of department wise books is also very less, the number of seats is very less. Seats are not available when exam stress starts.

The administration should solve these problems.

Tanmoy Sarkar, a student of the 2020-21 academic year of the university's anthropology department, lamenting the various problems in the library, said, 'Our teachers also give us the academic books. Also we can read from their PDF. But actually I prefer fiction or thriller type books, but this type of book is not available in the library.

As a result, I go to the library in the middle of the day with my friends but I don't get much interest in going to the library.'

Deputy librarian in general. Muhyuddin Alam said, 'We could not reach any of the facilities required by a public university library. There is shortage of books, we get depositions from departments every financial year. Even if you want, you can't buy all the books available in the deposit.

That's why scarcity actually remains. This time I got thirty six lakh taka. The budget for buying books is around 20 lakh taka. Departments do not have the authority to purchase books outside of deposit. And if students demand any books then we can buy those books. However, if such demands do not come from the students, we will take appropriate initiatives.

In this regard, the vice-chancellor of the university, Dr. Masuda Kamal said, 'I know the limitations of the library. We will move to the new campus in December 2025, a big library building has been built in the new campus, there will be a lot of seating capacity, number of books.

Hopefully there will be no problem then. For now we will work to reduce the shortage of books. I have made a committee regarding this. In fact, in this small campus of 50 acres, not much can be done.