The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Mobile library to help promote reading habits among students

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 03, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Mobile library to help promote reading habits among students

Staff Reporter

About 12,400 new rural libraries within five years

CHENNAI: A mobile library is set to be launched for about 10 corporation schools in north Chennai to encourage reading habits among students.

Participating in the inaugural function of the upgraded library of Madras University here recently, School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu said the mobile library would have about 3,000 children’s books and computer and educational compact discs to screen programmes for the youngsters.

The Minister said the public library system in the State had one central library, 32 district and 1,640 branch libraries.

He also underlined the State Government’s proposal to set up about 12,400 rural libraries within the next five years under the scheme ‘Anaithu Grama Anna Marumalarchi Thittam’ to benefit the rural population.

Detailing the Rs.100-crore digital library planned in the city, Mr. Thennarasu said the project to construct the nine-storeyed library would be completed in about 18 months.

Book park planned

There were also plans to open a book park, spread across four acres, near the digital library to facilitate the public to obtain books under a single roof system.

University of Madras Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran highlighted the history of the University Library, that was established in 1907.

The library has a collection of about 5.21 lakh books and is used by about 600 visitors. It has acquired six additional facilities worth Rs.55 lakh, including an e-resource centre networked with 24 computers, online public access catalogue and computerisation of library operations, he said.

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