What You Can Learn About Fiction Writing from Ranganathan’s 5 Laws of Library Science
Sneak peek — you are writing for an audience
Who is Ranganathan and why would library science teach you anything about writing? Well, Ranganathan is a librarian from India who lived from the 1890s to the 1970s and is considered the father of library science. He is the reason why libraries are the entities you recognize today. You know how libraries have collections to appeal to broad audiences, loan out their book, and have cataloged organization? Yeah, that wasn’t always a thing.
But enough about me nerding out on library history, what does library science have to do about writing? That is, other than existing broadly in the same literary world and other than the fact that we can learn things from one field and apply it to another, no matter how distant sometimes.
Libraries and library science are about serving the readers, the information-seekers, and the library-users.
They know a lot about serving their audience; From libraries, writers can learn how to service their audience too.
First Law: Books are For Use
It may be hard for some of us who grew up in the time where the number of not only books but services that the…
