COIMBATORE: After Madurai, the Coimbatore central prison has introduced a digital library for inmates to improve their reading and listening habits. The facility was inaugurated on Tuesday. Prison authorities have started broadcasting the contents of books in audio and visual formats through television and a central audio system.
The department of prisons and correctional services of Tamil Nadu introduced the digital library in Madurai last week. The department has been receiving book donations from the public and based on the demand and response, it started to set up stalls at all book fairs across the state under the banner of Koondukkul Vaanam (Sky in the cage).
People who can read books can directly take books from the prison library and read them and arrangements have been made for those who cannot read. According to a senior official from the Coimbatore prison, “We have collected several graphic novels, audio books and speeches of writers for the people who cannot read. We broadcast moral stories, Tamil literature, and speeches of famous writers in both audio and video form for 30 minutes from 6.30 -7 twice a day through the central audio system and around 80 televisions available in the prison.”
“We broadcast the audio book of Ponniyin Selvan on Tuesday and on Wednesday we broadcast speeches of Suki Sivam. We plan to broadcast audio books of Thirukkural with explanations from Thursday,” he said.
G Shanmugasundaram, DIG of Prisons (Coimbatore Range) said, “There are 2,500 inmates and over 10,000 books are available in the prison library as of now. We have set up a stall in our fuel outlet in Gandhipuram to receive book donations from the public.”