Vol. 5, Issue 2, Part A (2023)

Rich heritage of the culture and civilization has been preserved in the libraries since olden times. Especially the university libraries are educative in their nature. This task has become more important with Information Explosion. Human knowledge is increasing very fast. Therefore, to access to information pin pointedly exhaustively and expeditiously organized university library services have become essential. This paper reviews the growth and development of Indian university libraries in Ancient, Medieval and British period. Paper also discusses growth & development of university libraries in the Pre-independence and Post-independence period of time. For a long time a library was not considered an essential unit of the campus. Soon after 1857, the British government set up India’s first three universities in the three presidency cities of the country. Reports and recommendations of various committee and commission and their impact on the growth of university libraries has been reviewed through the literature. The paper concludes that there has been considerable quantitative growth in the number of university libraries over the period especially after independence. The UGC has played an important role to propagated library consciousness in academic community to a long way. University library services have been mainly revolutionized on the recommendations of Dr. S.R. Ranganathan pioneer library scientist of the century.