Libraries in India during COVID-19 Pandemic and Post-pandemic Years: Trend Analysis of the Published News Reports of Three English Dailies for Four Years

Three English dailies (i.e. The Times of India, The Pioneer and The Telegraph) over a period of four years (i.e. 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023) were searched online to find published news reports on Indian libraries. Altogether 638 news reports were found. These reports were analysed to assess trends of libraries in India during COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic years. Subject-wise analysis of these reports showed that only the subject ’Demand for library services or Extension of library services’ showed positive trend (i.e. a positive second-order polynomial curve) over the years but other top ranking subjects showed a negative trend (i.e. a negative second-order polynomial curve). Library-operations wise analysis of these reports showed that 81.66% news reports were of manually operated libraries, 7.21% were of digital libraries, 6.11% were of e-libraries and 5.01% were of mobile libraries. By analysing these reports on the types of libraries, it was observed that 55.32% reports were of public libraries, 25.39% were of academic libraries, 8.15% were of special libraries, 3.29% were of national libraries and 4.70% were of no specific type. By analysing the trends of these reports on libraries, it is found that the trend line of the total published news reports on Indian libraries in three English dailies during COVID-19 Pandemic and Post-Pandemic years is a negative second-order polynomial curve.