Nadarajah Selvarajah

Who is Nadarajah Selvarajah?

Nadarajah Selvarajah is a Srilankan librarian, writer and bibliographer. Selvarajah has written more than 28 books until January 2009. So far he has compiled 5 volumes of Nool thettam - a bibliography of Sri Lankan Tamil books. He has also compiled a bibliography of Tamil publications in Malaysia and Singapore. He also in the processing of compiling Noolthettam in English, which contains English publications of Sri Lankan Tamils.

Selvarajah was born in Dandugama in Colombo District in 1954, and moved to Anaikoddai in Jaffna in his early 16's. He had his early education in Negombo, Vivekananda Maha Vidyalayam and St. Mary's College. His career began in 1976 as a librarian at Ramanathan College, Chunnakam in Sri Lanka. And then served as the Central Librarian for the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in the Jaffna District. During 1981-82 he served for a year in Indonesia under the United Nations Development Programme, where he organised a Model Rural Community Library System for that country in the Village Marengmang near the provincial capital, Bandung, in the Island of Java. In 1983 he became the Chief Librarian at the Evelyn Rutnam Institute for Inter-Cultural Studies affiliated to the Jaffna College. In 1990 he became an advisor to the Department of Hindu Culture under the Ministry of Cultural Affairs in Sri Lanka. Since 1991 Mr. Selvarajah is a consultant to the Jaffna Public Library.