KOCHI: On a rainy day, reading a book and treating yourself with a cup of tea, is the kind of nostalgic feeling only bookworms can now dream of.
The digital era brings a new phase of reading experience that leaves the smell of the paperbacks as a distant dream. Technology has revolutionised every facet of human life and now it has taken over reading too. As a part of this, libraries have been turning digital. In Kochi, the trend of digitising provides a technological driven reading experience which have began a few months back at St Pauls College, Kalammaserry.
The library has been transformed into a digital one providing a wide arena to find information on anything and everything for both students and the public. The college library was established in 1965 at the time of inception of the institution. From a humble beginning with a few hundred books, today it has a collection of 24,332 books and has been elevated to a first grade library. There are a number of rare and precious books in different subjects. It has a large section containing reference books on various languages and subjects, including the Britanica, Americana and Catholic encyclopedia. There are multiple copies of all essential text books. The library also subscribes to a number of national and international journals, reviews and magazines in addition to all leading periodicals and newspapers. The institution has revamped the library by introducing electronic media in the library hall. This was a stepping stone for the college to enter the world wide web.
As a part of the year-long silver jubliee celebrations which was inaugurated by CM Oommen Chandy, the institution introduced the digital library concepe here. This library was the result of the united efforts of the management, teachers, students and the benefactors. The CM inaugurated the “Digital library” which is now accessible to the teachers and students, and will be made available for public access soon. Digital library is a place where the collections are stored in a digital format and is accessible via computers. The electronic content may be stored locally or accessed remotely via computer network. It gets access to large amount of information and support multimedia content along with the text links for navigation. It also forwards free access to manuscripts, rare books, maps, photographs and other important cultured documents from all the countries. The college, which has been rendering service in the field of education for the last fifty years, has now revolutionised the functioning of a library. It has made a fruitful attempt for redesigning services and information needs of the user community. “Special care is taken in its infrastructure, digital collection, system functions and telecommunication faculty. This milestone encourages the college for taking up cooperative efforts by creating collaboration among educational institutions and thus taking a lead role in the dissemination of knowledge to the people and institutions in the surrounding area,” says Fr Felix Chackalackal, manager of the institution. The two-storied building of this library also has a book bank in its ground floor. It has a collection of about forty thousand books touching different subjects. The structure and ventilation of the building is such that it creates an atmosphere congenial to learning and innovation.
The scanning process of the book collection is on-going and once the process gets over the public too can enjoy the experience of the digital reading. The library will be open for students till 3:30pm and after the college working hours, the public will be allowed to use the library added Fr Felix.