Goa State Best Library and Best Librarian Award(GSBLBLA)

Overview

About GSBLBLA

The Goa State Best Library and Best Librarian Award is not a scholarship. No student applies, and nothing is paid towards a course or a degree.

It is the Government of Goa's yearly honour for a library and a librarian working in Government or Government-aided libraries in the state, with cash, a memento, a citation and a certificate for each. Entry is by recommendation on a printed form, and much of the test is counted in years: 15 years of existence for a library, and 10 years of continuous service for a librarian (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023, Directorate of Art and Culture).

The Directorate of Art and Culture owns the award, and the Krishnadas Shama Goa State Central Library at Patto, Panaji runs it: the nomination forms are printed on the Central Library's letterhead, and the Directorate names the Central Library's Curator as the officer to contact (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023, Directorate of Art and Culture). The rules provide for one library prize and one librarian prize a year, open to public, academic, special and research libraries alike.

The guidelines call it the Goa State Best Library and Best Librarian Award Scheme-2014 and say it exists to reward library managements and librarians who promote reading "at the grassroots level" (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines). The Central Library's own roll of winners reaches back further, to the 2010-2011 award year.

That roll shows how wide "Government or Government-aided" runs in practice. The library prize has gone to the Goa Engineering College Library at Farmagudi, the Government College of Arts, Science and Commerce at Sankhali, St. Xavier's College at Mapusa, the Village Panchayat Library at Savoi Verem, and reading rooms such as Nutan Vachanalay in Bicholim and Shree Saraswati Vachanalay at Madel, Tivim. Librarians have been honoured from Goa University, the Goa College of Home Science, the Dempo College of Commerce, NIO at Dona Paula and the DFLG District Library at Navelim (Krishnadas Shama Goa State Central Library, award roll).

Who runs it

Provider

At a glance

Key details

Calendar

Important dates

The rules fix no calendar. Each round opens with a newspaper advertisement, and the 2026-27 forms already posted on the Directorate's scheme page carry no last date of their own. Past ceremonies show how loosely the prize follows its award year, as the Central Library's roll records them.

Read against the award years, the wait has run from inside the same year (the 2023-2024 prize, presented in December 2023) to four years after the award year closed (the 2010-2011 prize, presented in April 2015), so a nomination made now may be honoured well after the year it names.

Who can apply

Eligibility criteria

The library and the librarian are judged on separate tests, and each nomination is for one or the other. For a library, the tests reward age, steady use and a real collection, but the Best Library form collects proof of only some of them: the society or library registration number with its date, the establishment date, the floor area in square metres, and a short note on the collection, with nothing asked about membership (Best Library Award form 2026-27). A library that cannot show 15 years of existence, 100 registered members over the last five years, 2,500 readable books and periodicals and 40 square metres of floor space is not eligible (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023).

For a librarian, the tests are roots and tenure. The Best Librarian form checks them through a date of birth, the number of years as a librarian, a yes-or-no tick for 15 years' residence in Goa, and a mandatory birth proof (Best Librarian Award form 2026-27).

Read the two librarian clauses together. The 10 years of continuous service can be in any "reputed" library in Goa, but the award is conferred on a librarian "serving in any Government, Government-aided" library, so the current post appears to need to be in one of those (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023). The guidelines set no minimum or maximum age.

Who cannot apply

Exclusions

An unaided private library sits outside the scheme, because the guidelines cover Government and Government-aided libraries only. The clause on death and retirement shuts one door and leaves another open. A librarian who has died is not honoured unless the Award Committee had already recommended the name, yet illustrious service stays in consideration for up to one year after retirement or death, so a librarian who retired within the past year can still be put forward (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines).

A year can also pass with no winner, since no award is made when no library or librarian of the desired standard is found. The Central Library's roll has no library winner for 2012-2013, 2013-2014, 2016-2017, 2019-2020, 2020-2021 or 2022-2023, and it does not say why (Krishnadas Shama Goa State Central Library, award roll).

Continuation

Renewal conditions

Nothing carries over from one award year to the next, and the guidelines neither bar a past winner from being recommended again nor say it may be. So far no library and no librarian appears twice on the Central Library's roll of winners (Krishnadas Shama Goa State Central Library, award roll).

What you get

Award & benefits

The library's cash prize is twice the librarian's: Rs 50,000 against Rs 25,000, each with a memento, a citation and a certificate (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023).

The official announcement of the 2021-22 winners kept those sums but described the rest differently. Naming that year's winners, the state's Department of Information and Publicity listed a cash purse of Rs 50,000 with a certificate and shrifal for the Best Library, and Rs 25,000 with a certificate, shawl and shrifal for the Best Librarian award (Department of Information and Publicity, Goa).

The cash goes by bank transfer. Both forms end in a bank-details block "for ECS Clearance" (ECS is the Electronic Clearing Service), and the library form asks for the account holder's name, the IFSC and MICR codes and a PAN (Best Library Award form 2026-27). The librarian's version also asks for a TAN and the bank's phone number (Best Librarian Award form 2026-27).

• Nature and Quantum of Assistance
• Goa State Best Library Award
• A cash prize of ₹ 50,000/-, a Memento, a Citation and a Certificate.
• Goa State Best Librarian Award
• A cash prize of ₹ 25,000/-, a Memento, a Citation and a Certificate.
• Every year one Library and one Librarian will be selected for the award.

What to prepare

Documents required

The two forms ask for quite different papers, and the librarian's list is the longer one: the scheme listing's single line, "Contribution of Librarian", expands on the 2026-27 form into six mandatory attachments. The comparison below is taken from the two forms.

Step by step

How to apply

Nominations run on paper, and the person who fills the form is the recommender, not necessarily the library or librarian being put forward. The sequence below follows the scheme guidelines and the 2026-27 forms.

1. Watch for the call. The Directorate invites recommendations from library managements and from librarians through advertisements in local newspapers (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines).
2. Take the right form. There is one form for the library prize and another for the librarian prize, both on the Directorate's scheme page under Download.
3. Fill in the recommender's block. A library nomination names the chairman, president or sarpanch with an address and contact number; a librarian nomination carries the recommender's own details and a note on the librarian's contribution in about 100 characters (Best Library Award form 2026-27; Best Librarian Award form 2026-27).
4. Attach the papers in the table above and hand the form in with its Rs 10 form charge, for which the form carries a receipt slip (Best Library Award form 2026-27).

The Directorate can also ask any individual or institution in the field to suggest names, and the Government or the committee can take up an eligible library or librarian on its own, so a name the newspaper call missed can still reach the committee (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines).

Following Up Once the Form Is In

A nomination gets no application number. The only numbering is the "Form No." blank at the top of each form, repeated on the receipt slips on its last page, so the receipt the receiving officer signs is the recommender's one proof that the form went in (Best Librarian Award form 2026-27). myScheme lists no application link for the scheme (myScheme), so a question about a nomination goes to the Curator of the Goa State Central Library, on 0832-2437947 or lib-cent.goa@nic.in (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023). Results show up in two public places: the Directorate's news and events page, where ceremony notices are posted, and the Central Library's award roll. Payment, when it comes, is by ECS to the account written on the form.

How winners are picked

Selection process

Scrutiny, selection and the final recommendation belong to an Award Committee that the Government constitutes from "distinguished personalities" (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines). The order published on the Central Library's site put the Secretary (Art and Culture) in the chair and the Director of Art and Culture as member secretary, with three further members: a former Curator of the Central Library who teaches in Goa University's library department, a Sahitya Akademi award winner, and the Central Library's serving Curator. Its term ran for the year from 12 June 2023 and can be extended with Government approval (Goa State Central Library, award selection committee).

No marking scheme or weightage is published. The guidelines set the eligibility tests and leave the choice among eligible names to the committee.

Fine print

Terms & conditions

Two of the closing clauses matter most for a borderline nomination. The relaxation clause lets the Government set aside any condition "in genuine cases for sanction of the award", which on its plain words would reach a library a little short of the age or floor-area test; the scheme page does not say whether it has ever been used. And the words a recommender is most likely to argue over, a "reputed" library for the librarian's service or a "well stacked" library for the prize, are the Government's to read, since any question of interpretation lies with it. A complaint about how the award is run is heard by the Minister for Art and Culture (Directorate of Art and Culture, scheme guidelines).

Get help

Contact

The named officer is the Curator, Goa State Central Library, Patto, Panaji, on 0832-2437947 and at lib-cent.goa@nic.in (Citizen's Charter 2022-2023). The forms give the Central Library's postal address as P.B. No. 22, Sanskruti Bhavan, Patto, Panaji, Goa 403 001 (Best Library Award form 2026-27).

Source

Official links

Frequently asked questions

From the official scheme FAQ (myScheme)

Read this

Disclaimer

Disclaimer

Scheme details are compiled from myScheme, the Government of India’s official scheme-discovery platform, and are reproduced without alteration. Amounts, deadlines and eligibility change between cycles, so always confirm on the official links above before applying. Expertie does not process applications or charge fees.

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References

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