105-year-old library gets new building in heart of Mysuru

Mysuru: The 105-year-old Mysuru City Central Library got its new building at the heart of the city on Friday. The new building for the library built at the cost of Rs 499.30 lakh, at the People's Park in Mysuru was inaugurated by Mysuru district minister S T Somashekar on Friday.

Mysuru city central library was started during the reign of Maharaja of Mysuru, Sri Nalwadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar in 1915. It was handed over to the state government in 1965 when the Public Library Act was passed. The library was originally housed inside a heritage structure in Sayyaji Roa road in Mysuru.

The building has been designed with attractive architecture to match other heritage buildings of the city. The design of new City Central Library resembles heritage structure Crawford Hall. According to heritage expert Eechanur Kumar, Crawford Hall was built with Indian and gothic style of architecture.

The library is a treasure trove of more than 36,000 books, including a superb collection of literary works of popular writers. It has over 60,000 books for children, including school text books. The library also has a huge collection of books for competitive exams housed in a separate wing within the new building. The library gets 31 daily newspapers and 51 magazines. The old newspapers have been archived since the past one year.

The new two-floored library building is spacious in an expansive land spread over 1,819.07 square meters. The library has separate wings for women, children, senior citizens and especially physically challenged.

"The new library has a Braille section. We plan to house over 1,000 braille books for visually challenged. We have also come up with digital library section, where one can have access to digital library (with over one lakh books). It has been created by directorate of department of public libraries," Manjunath B, deputy director, department of public libraries told The Hans India

"We plan to preserve the original library at the heritage building on Sayyaji rao, as referral library by housing books of popular Kannada writers. We have 35 branches in the city," Manjunath added.