Lighthouse Journalism came across a few pictures being shared on Twitter. The pictures were from a library, it was being claimed along with these pictures that the US has built the world’s largest library in the name of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. The post had over 5K views since 16th December.
Through digital investigation we found that the pictures are actually from a library in China.
Claim:
Twitter user Vandana Sonkar posted the pictures on her profile along with the viral claim.
There are other users too who are sharing the pictures with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by a simple reverse image search on all the pictures one by one.
We found the first picture on a website in a blog, titled: Looking at Libraries: Tianjin Binhai Library, China
We also ran a reverse image search on other pictures on the post.
We found the exact same images on various websites.
The articles were published in the year 2017.
One of the articles mentioned: MVRDV has completed a Library in Tianjin, China that forms part of a larger cultural master plan developed by GMP Architekten. The building is dramatically shaped around a luminous spherical auditorium, which is referred to as ‘the eye’. Surrounding this focal point, terraced bookshelves echo the form of the orb, resulting in a topographical landscape of contours that wraps around the entirety of the interior. With each level doubling up as a louver, the stepped bookshelves are also represented externally. The building can accommodate a total of 1.2 million books.
We did not find any news reports about the US opening a library in the memory of Dr Ambedkar.
However we found a news report that mentioned: The tallest statue of BR Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, was inaugurated outside India in the United States’ Washington.
Conclusion: Viral pictures shared online claimed to be from a library opened in the US in the memory of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar are actually from a library in Tianjin, China. Viral claim is false.
