GOOD OFFICE COMMITTEE

The Good Offices Committee is a voluntary organization formed to establish uniform terms of book supplies to libraries, and to ensure a fair working margin to booksellers and an efficient service to the libraries. The Committee meets at regular intervals and after taking into consideration the fluctuations in the currency rates decides on the rates of conversion governing sale of books and periodicals. These rates are widely circulated amongst the libraries all over India either directly or through booksellers. This helped to dispense with the need for a cumbersome procedure of inviting tenders for a diverse product like Books. It has not only facilitated procurement of books by libraries but has also helped book lovers and others to meet their requirement of books smoothly.

The Good Offices Committee has been in existence for more than 30 years and a pattern for fixing exchange rates of currencies from time to time has been in existence all through. However, difficulty arose in working of the Good Offices Committee when a new team of office bearers of Indian Library Association (ILA) took over from April 2000. Since then, the Federation has been making all possible efforts to sort out the problem faced.

Considering that revival of the GOC is necessary being in the interest of both the librarians and the book trade, the Federation recently took initiative once again and organized a meeting on 18th August 2007 at New Delhi at which 5 representatives from Indian Library Association and 5 representatives from the Federation side were present and discussed the GOC problem to find a way to resolve it. At the end of the meeting, it was agreed that, as a first step, either side would prepare a list of points in connection with revival of the GOC and intimate to the other side. As follow up, while the Federation communicated list of points from their side to President, ILA , list of points from ILA is awaited by us. It is hoped that the process initiated would lead to building up a happy relationship between the librarians and the book trade and pave the way for revival of the GOC.

Pending resolution of the problem with the librarians, the Federation, in consultation with affiliated Associations as also important members of the trade, are presently announcing every month the Book industry’s own conversion rates.