What Indian Parliament discusses on Library? An Exploratory Analysis of Questions and Answers in Indian Parliament

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to map library related issues raised in both houses of Indian Parliament. Parliament Questions and Answers (Q&As) are downloaded from Digital Sansad web portal (both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha) using the word “Library” occurs on the title of Q&As. The paper analyses year wise, session wise number of Q&As and the type of questions asked in the both houses of Indian Parliament. It further uses topic modelling tool for word frequency analysis to find the most frequently occurring key words, sentiments of words, major themes and historical evolution of library related issues in the Parliament. The study has observed almost similar trends in number of questions asked. The sentiment analysis shows the ‘positive’ is the most prominent type of sentiment. The LDA topic model extracted 10 latent thematic clusters. The topics shows that the debates are strongly oriented toward institutional growth, governance, funding, and modernization of libraries in India. Time-based thematic analysis is done using a gap of twenty-year period. In time-based thematic grouping there are consistent theme on public & national libraries. This indicated that these institutes were always highlighted in the parliament discourse. However, there are four types of shifts occurred during the period. First is the evolution of 'Library' concept second is the ‘Personnel’, third is the ‘Technology’ and fourth focus is more ‘National’ themes, for example, 'national mission'. This study will be useful for researcher, historian of libraries, and also for policy and decision makers.