S. R. Ranganathan, considered by librarians all over the world to be the father of library science, proposed five laws of library science. Most librarians accept them as the foundations of their philosophy:

These laws are:

  1. Books are for use.
  2. Every reader his or her book.
  3. Every book its reader.
  4. Save the time of the reader.
  5. A Library is a growing organism.

These laws may seem simplistic, but they are not so! They express a simple, crystal-clear vision of what librarianship ought to be. Nowadays, these laws are being mapped and reintepreted for the digital age.