Banaras Hindu University Library and Information System: From a Century of Scholarly Heritage to an Integrated Knowledge Infrastructure

Banaras Hindu University (BHU), one of India’s oldest and largest multidisciplinary universities, possesses an exceptionally rich scholarly and cultural heritage accumulated over more than a century. While significant progress has been made in library automation, digitization, and electronic resource management, the University’s intellectual assets-including books, manuscripts, theses, research publications, institutional records, and digital collections-remain distributed across multiple repositories and library systems. This paper presents a preliminary study that examines the existing BHU library system, including its organizational structure, collections, digital resources, automation status, online services, and the specialized libraries of major constituent institutions such as the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, and the Institute of Medical Sciences. The study identifies the strengths and integration gaps within the current information environment and establishes the foundation for developing an Integrated Digital Library and Knowledge Infrastructure (IDLKI). The study suggests that a knowledge infrastructure to be developed for BHU needs to be envisioned as a standards-based, interoperable, and Artificial aintelligence (AI)-enabled digital ecosystem that unifies the University’s diverse knowledge resources, strengthens long-term preservation, enhances research visibility, promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, improves institutional governance, and positions BHU as a national leader in digital knowledge management and scholarly communication.