THIS is apropos of Zubeida Mustafa’s article ‘Librarians as teachers’ (Oct 24). It sent me down the memory lane about my encounter with some of the wonderful librarians she has mentioned, viz., Prof Moinuddin Khan, Dr Anis Khursheed and Prof Malahat Kareem.

Prof Khan had been my teacher at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro. He served there as a librarian-cum-teacher. Besides being an excellent librarian, he was an avid reader.

He would put very tiny pencil marks as he read along. This I found in almost all the books on library and information science at the seminar library of the department of library and information science, University of Sindh.

There were over 1,000 books in the seminar library in the mid-80s. He had not only read all the seminar library books, but also many books from the central library at the University, especially those from the rare books section.

Moinuddin Khan had an excellent command over English. His sterling qualities which made him such a fine librarian, as well as a great teacher, would be hard to find in most librarians working in Pakistan today.

Dr Anis Khursheed was another excellent teacher who taught in the Department. of Library and Information Science at Karachi University.

I remember sharing duties with him as a co-teacher in a couple of British Council training programmes way back in the 1980s.

He was a prolific writer and wrote a number of books and articles on library and information science. He kept on writing right till the very end, right till the last moments of his life.

He was one of the early trailblazers in librarianship and his contributions in this field were immense.

One of his students, Malahat Sherwani, who now heads the Department of Library and Information Science at Karachi University, is also a go-getter, and her co-curricular activities are boundless. She has been involved in many library projects.

Unfortunately, she is not keeping good health these days which has thrown a spanner in her research work.

There are other stalwarts like Dr Nasim Fatima, Dr Ghaniul Akram Sabzwari, Dr Jalaluddin Haider and Dr Samdani in this profession from Karachi University who have been my good friends and colleagues. I wish them the very best and may they continue to work for the betterment of librarianship.

DR RAFIA AHMED SHEIKH University of Sindh                         Jamshoro