Read India Initiative: Karnataka Launches Project To Take Public Libraries Digital

Since the number of people heading to public libraries has been dwindling in the era of e-books and audio books, Karnataka has decided to take its libraries to people the digital way.

Karnataka has a vast network of public libraries, all of which will now go digital. A total of 272 public libraries will now be armed with technology and digital facilities, each provided with two desktops, four tablets and wifi-connectivity.

Over one lakh publications have been hosted on a cloud-based software and can be accessed both online as well as through the ‘e-Sarvajanika Granthalaya’ app.

According to the Department of Education, “This is a first of its kind project in the country where a state-level initiative has been taken to digitise and provide access for learning on such a large scale”.

Aimed at turning these spaces into digital learning hubs, the libraries also provide study materials for competitive exams as well as e-books of school curriculum of different boards.

The platform will also provide options for students to experience digital simulations of experiments that students may not be able to carry out in physical labs.

In a bid to provide students with material across streams, the library has around 5,000 titles in arts and humanities, over 8,000 titles in science and technology, around 7,000 titles of classics and literary works, and around 500 magazines and newspapers, and much more material in five languages — Kannada, English, Hindi, Urdu and Marathi.

While the total number of titles on the platform is around one lakh, English accounts for the highest with 93,737 titles.

A total of 26 city central libraries, 30 district libraries and 216 Taluk libraries across Karnataka will be covered under this scheme that will also provide quality learning material to 10 lakh government school and pre-university college students across the state.