Looking into the Thoughts of Parliamentarians on Libraries: An Analysis of Discussions During the 10th to 18th Lok Sabhas

The role of libraries and information centres has been crucial to the growth and progress of a developing nation like India, since information serves as the fuel of modern society. The Government of India is the highest authority for making decisions regarding various facets of development in the nation, and so the discussions in the Parliament of India–the legislative organ–have much value as they reflect the demands of the citizens of India and how the government responds to them The research focuses on analyzing the discussions on the topic of libraries during the period of the 10th to 18th Lok Sabhas (1991-Present). The documented discussions have been collected from the Parliament Digital Library (https://eparlib.sansad.in/), which serves as the primary repository of parliamentary documents. Primary data related to the discussions, such as the questions on libraries and the answers to them, the Lok Sabha members (MPs) asking and answering those questions, the political parties they are affiliated with, etc., have been collected and organized. A comprehensive Lok Sabha-wise and summarized data carpentry-based general analysis of the corpora have been done using OpenRefine. The text of the questions and answers has been analyzed using text analysis tools, namely Voyant and Distant Reader. Also, the Llama 3.1 8 billion (instant) Large Language Model (LLM) has been suitably prompted to categorise the discussions under respective logical themes. It has been observed that the average lengths of questions and answers increased with each successive Lok Sabha. As categorised by the LLM, the themes of the discussions were observed, and they covered a broad spectrum of focus, including government libraries, library science, etc. The Bharatiya Janata Party was involved in most of the discussions related to libraries during these Lok Sabhas, and MPs, namely Dr. Sukanta Majumder and Kumari Selja respectively asked and answered the highest number of questions. The current research may serve as a cornerstone for understanding what the parliamentarians discuss about libraries, because of the insights it provides. This research is open-ended, as the Indian legislative sessions continue to address national development and libraries are likely to remain a focus of deliberations given their societal value.