Due to lack of proper preservation, century old 'puthis' and manuscripts, rare books, newspapers and periodicals printed in Bangladesh during the last century, have been decaying at the Dhaka University Central Library.
About 300 rare manuscripts and at least 600-microfilmed newspapers have already been damaged, although there is a supervisory committee to look into this.
Another 500 hundred 'puthis' and newspapers are going to face the same fate if preventive steps are not taken, said sources at the library.
The university library has a collection of more than 30,000 such books and manuscripts, dating back to the medieval period, written on palm and banana leaves, barks, stone slabs and handmade papers in Sanskrit, Bangla, Arabic, Pali, Urdu, Persian, Maithili, Uriya, Hindi and a few other dialects.
Click here to read this article from the National News Agency of Bangladesh