Franklin Book Programs, Inc., a private non-profit corporation, was established in 1952 and continued until 1978 as a joint-venture between the American Library Association's International Relations Committee and publishers from the American Book Publishers Council Foreign Trade Committee. The expressed purpose of the initiative was to "assist developing countries in the creation, production, distribution, and use of books and other educational materials" ("Gift Aids Center For the Book," News from the Library of Congress Press Release, January 10, 1979). The program involved approximately fifteen countries and as many languages. Over the course of more than two decades, Franklin Book Programs helped facilitate the publication of approximately 3,000 titles in languages such as Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Chinese, English, Hausa, Igbo, Indonesian, Malay, Persian, Pushtu, Urdu, and Yoruba.

The Bengali Franklin Books Program established its Dhaka field office in 1955 in then-East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) under the directorship of Al-Haj A. T. M. Abdul Mateen. There are 331 Bengali books from the Franklin Book Program. Books from this collection were published in Dhaka and Mymensingh through the combined effort of approximately 40 local publishing houses. Titles from the Bengali collection represent a variety of topics and subjects including science, math, technology, literature, economics, political science, sociology, history, and education. The Franklin Book Program operated in Dhaka for 23 years before the program's end in 1978.

Field Office Leadership

Starting in 1955 the Bengali Franklin Books Program in Dhaka was directed by Al-Haj A. T. M. Abdul Mateen. Prior to his appointment with Franklin Books, Mateen received an Masters degree in Economics from Aligarh Muslim University in 1949 and taught as a Lecturer in economics and history at Ahsanullah Engineering College in Dhaka. In 1952 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship by the United States government to study international economics at Cornell University, from which he received an Masters degree in 1953. The title "Al-Haj" commemorates his achievement of completing the pilgrimage to Mecca. Mateen served as the Director of the Dhaka field office until 1965.

From 1965 to 1967 M. A. Azam served as managing director of the Dhaka office in East Pakistan. A distinguished Pakistani civil servant, U.S.-trained plastics engineer, and UN/ILO expert at the Regional Center for Community Development for the Arab States in Egypt, Azam began his career in 1933 teaching college chemistry in Calcutta. He later held posts as the Director of Industries for the East Wing of Pakistan, as Director of Dacca Technical Institute, and as advisor to the UN. He received an Masters of Science degree from Oklahoma State University and published works in both Bengali and English, contributing to such publications as the Encyclopedia Britannica and the Americana Yearbook.

From 1967 to 1970 the Dhaka office was directed by Nurul Alam, former instructor and Chief of Publications and Library Division of the Pakistan National Institute of Public Administration. Holding Bachelor of Arts and Masters degrees in Political Science from the University of Dhaka, Alam began his career with the East Pakistan branch of Oxford University Press in 1954. He later organized and conducted the initial stages of Voice of America's Bengali Program for East Pakistan, served as a cultural affairs specialist for the United States Information Service in Dhaka, and held the position of assistant administrative officer to the British Council in Dhaka. Previously he had served as deputy director of the Dhaka office for the Franklin program during the years of 1961-62.

From March 1970 to the program's end in 1978, the Franklin office in Dhaka was directed by Abdul Mannan Chowdhury. Holding an MA degree in political science, Chowdhury worked previously as the secretary for the Dhaka field office from the years 1955 to 1970.

Special Projects and Additional Activities

While the primary focus of the Franklin Program in Dhaka was the translation of American educational books into Bengali, it also engaged in a number of special projects, especially during the latter years of its operation including:

School-to-School Book Program: The School-to-School Library Program was an effort by Franklin Books to enlist the help of American primary and secondary school children in raising money to establish small libraries for schools in developing countries, including Bangladesh. Underlying this program was the need to ensure that children in areas of the developing world had access to supplementary reading materials in their own language beyond the few textbooks that might already be available. A national advisory committee was appointed by Mr. Kabir Chowdhury, former Secretary of Education, to select appropriate titles for each library, choose recipient Bangladeshi schools, and oversee the program.

In the United States, the project was directed by Mrs. Susan Cramer, educational consultant to Franklin Books who delivered a series of presentations to a dozen schools in the New York City area, discussing the importance of education and books in Bangladesh and collecting donations. Under this program at least 89 secondary schools in Bangladesh each received collections of 200 Franklin Bengali books. In addition, a series of three-day library orientation workshops were organized by Ahmad Husain, the first librarian of the Central Public Library in Dhaka, in four cities across Bangladesh to train secondary school teachers in basic book handling procedures.

Bengali Encyclopedia Project: In 1961, after two years of planning, the Franklin office in Dhaka began the process of editing and producing a Bengali language encyclopedia, based on the Columbia-Viking Desk Encyclopedia. What initially started as a two-volume project eventually became a four-volume publication due to considerations of time required for printing and the thickness of the volumes. The project faced numerous difficulties outside of the Franklin office's control, including delays in manufacturing and disruptions during and after the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. The Chief Editor for the project was Khan Bahadur Abdul Hakim, an eminent scholar who was a life member of the Bangla Academy and later served as President of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh in 1982.

In the summer of 2021, the Asian Division's Junior Fellows Bennett Comerford and Daniel Ng worked on a project to identify and inventory the Franklin Book Program's Bengali titles. You can read about some research conducted with this collection in Bennett's post on the Library's 4 Corners of the World blog: Exploring the Place of Religion in Bengali Publications from the Franklin Book Program. In addition, please see Bennett and Daniel's video for more information on the junior fellowship project.

All Bengali materials including the items listed here may be accessed in the Asian Reading Room.

Multiple copies of a book may be available. Please check the catalog record or holding division for information about a particular title.