Making headway in the direction of modernisation of libraries, the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan (KVS) has made it mandatory for all schools to digitise their libraries. In these digitised libraries, all the books, journals, reference books and all relevant material would be readily available to the students at the click of mouse.
To digitise libraries, the schools are using library automation software ‘e-Granthalaya’ which is developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Delhi. The software is developed by a team of library science and communications experts and software engineers.
Giving details of the scheme to digitise the libraries, SS Chauhan, deputy Director of KVS regional office, Dehradun told The Pioneer that all the books of the school library are provided a bar code printer which makes bar codes and with the help of bar code reader the librarian can trace the book. He said that all the 46 schools of the KVS of the region have accomplished this task.
H S Sharma, Principal of KV Birpur, Dehradun said that the library computer immediately tells the status of the book, weather it is in the library or it has been issued, the software also informs the librarians the exact location of book in the library and the inventory status.
DS Negi the Principal of KV, Oil and Natural Gas Commission, Dehradun told The Pioneer that with the help of this software the reading tendencies and the interest areas of the students could also be known. Esha Srivastava, librarian of KV Birpur said that the automation has made life easy for her as she can track the book in a matter of seconds; she said that her school has 8,376 books and all of them have been bar coded.