MADURAI: A new section for IAS aspirants has been thrown open for the public at the district central library in Madurai on Wednesday.
The internet-enabled civil service aspirants section, inaugurated by collector Anshul Mishra at the library premises in Simmakkal would have a whopping 25,000 books on varied disciplines. The section has diversified collection to enable students to prepare for preliminary exams for UPSC, railway board exams, bank officers selection exam, teacher recruitment board exams, State-Level Eligibility Test (SLET) and National Eligibility Test (NET) for college faculty and books for various other competitive exams.
The section would also have encyclopaedia, dictionary for several laguages. "These books are specifically chosen to meet the requirements of the aspirants. Students should make optimum use of the books," Mishra said.
Nearly 1.5 lakh books of the total 1.87 lakh books in the district central library in Madurai have been bar-coded for online tracking and renewal by borrowers while the work is on to barcode the remaining books also. "After the completion of barcoding, readers can easily renew the date for return of borrowed books online," said librarian Krishnaveni. She said that browsing will be introduced very soon in the library.
The foundation stone for the district central library functioning in two floors was laid by then chief minister M Bakthavachalam in 1965 and was inaugurated in 1970. On an average, about 500 readers visit the library everyday. "There are no sufficient chairs when a number of readers visit the library in the evenings and weekends. We want more chairs," said a reader Shanmugam from Goripalayam.
"There are two vacancies in the library for office assistants. The vacancies are not filled up for a long time," an employee there said.
