DEHRADUN: Teachers of Uttarakhand have brought to life a 60-year-old library located in Uttarkashi.
Inaugurated on Friday, the library has a collection of over 45,000 books. It can help students, aspirants of competitive exams, researchers, literature lovers and everyone who wants to read about anything ranging from astronomy to geography, history and math.
Uttarkashi district magistrate Mayur Dikshit is the man behind the idea. He says three more libraries lying dysfunctional would be revived in the state. Over three dozen teachers took three months to revive the library. The district administration allocated Rs 16 lakh for the work. “These days most of us are hooked on gadgets. Digitisation is a good thing, but we should not forget our good old friends -- books. Reading must be encouraged,” said the DM.
“Once I came to know about the library, I decided to renovate it. The team volunteered and worked hard to make this a reality,” says the IAS officer of 2012 batch. At present, the fourth and final phase is on to digitize the library completely with soft copies of the catalogue, internet connection and installation of computers in the premises. Akhlanand Bhatt, in charge of the library, said, “I have heard from elders that this library was a storehouse of books in the district, but with time and negligence, it lost its relevance.”
The library came into existence in the 1960s with sanctions from the Uttar Pradesh government. More than one lakh books covering almost every subject adorned the library. Dikshit says he came up with the idea to set up libraries since it is difficult to get a good network connection to access reading material in remote villages.