School Education Dept. plans to launch mobile library in Chennai, India

The School Education Department of Chennai (India) is planning to launch a mobile library for about 10 corporation schools in north Chennai to encourage reading habits among students.

While speaking at the inaugural function of the upgraded library of Madras University, School Education Minister Thangam Thennarasu stated that the mobile library will have about 3,000 children's books and computer and educational compact discs to screen programmes for the youngsters. The state government is also planning 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. The state government is also setting up a INR 100 crore worth digital library in the city.The library has a collection of about 5.21 lakh books and it has acquired six additional facilities worth INR 55 lakh, including an e-resource centre networked with 24 computers, online public access catalogue and computerisation of library operations.