Today, the world has been like a village thanks to the advanced communication system. Other sectors are also making dramatic progress due to inventions and innovations.
The globalization process has become acceptable to every country because no country in the world wants to be isolated from the international community. And every country has come to work hard to keep abreast of other countries. It has been common knowledge that natural resources alone are not enough to make a nation industrialized, and the process also calls for development of human resources.
Only with human resource development will it be possible for a nation to enjoy development by applying effectively the intellectual power, knowledge and innovative power of its people along with advanced technologies.
A nation with no human resource development will lag behind other nations in development in this Knowledge Age. That point forces the world nations to pay a serious attention to human resource development. Human resource development means educational improvement and application of advanced technologies.
With this concept, the Ministry of Education is now taking responsibilities for raising the education standard of the younger generations in order that their education standard can be on a par with that of the youth in developed countries in the 21st Century. As a result, there have been human resource development and golden opportunities for the youth to catch up with their fellow youths of other nations.
In Myanmar, rural population makes up more than 70 per cent. Therefore, it is required to expand the horizons of rural folks to achieve human resource development. Development of a nation rests largely on high living standard and human resource development of rural people of that nation. The Ministry of Information is playing an important role in the plans for human resource development necessary for national development. It has set up selfreliant libraries in the villages in rural areas for improving the knowledge and reasoning power of local people.
The ministry is building more and more sub-printing houses, TV re-transmitting stations, and self-reliant libraries in states and divisions with the aim of enabling the people to know what is going on in the world. The Information Division of the Information and Broadcasting Department was reconstituted into the Information and Public Relations Department on 24 January 1991. So far, the IPRD has opened 389 libraries and 55,755 self-reliant libraries throughout the nation since 2004-2005.
An important role is played by the knowledge bank libraries, schools of practical life and libraries or window of the world in relaying knowledge to others. So, ensuring sustainable progress of the self-reliant libraries is a priority.
In this regard, it is needed to cooperate and coordinate with local authorities, social organizations for the processes — helping rural people cultivate the good habit of reading, keeping the publications and raising the funds, practrising the borrowing system, setting up separate library buildings on separate plots, providing the facilities with reasonable furniture, and appointing librarians.
The plan also needs contributions of four communities—local authorities, social organizations, wellwishers and local people, and IPRD staff. Members of the committees of the libraries concerned have to work hard in collaboration with relevant organizations for making sure that every village has a library, and sustainable development of the libraries so as to develop human resources.