Free National Digital Library with 1.70 cr books opened

Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday dedicated to the nation a digital library which offers access to a total of 1.70 crore books, periodicals, journals and thesis to learners of all ages, free of cost.

The National Digital Library of India also offers thousands of books, manuscripts and other digital educational content pertaining to various religions, including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Zoroastrianism. Nearly 1.85 lakh items are uploaded to the digital library, which includes Hindu scriptures like Vedas and Upanishads.

This massive repository of knowledge, created by a team of experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur on the direction of the HRD Ministry in 2015, makes multi-media digital educational resources available in various subject domains from more than 160 sources, including World e-book library and South Asia Archive of the South Asia Research Foundation.

It also contains question banks of at least 20 different competitive examinations, including the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) conducted for admission to IITs, NITs and other centrally-funded technical institutes.

“We are dedicating this digital library to the nation today. Until now, only students, teachers and institutions had access to the library. Now, we are making it accessible to everyone. Anybody can use it. It is absolutely free of cost,” Javadekar said.

The NDL has already attracted 35 lakh users so far, most of whom are educational institutions, students, teachers and researchers registered on the NDL website. “Our target is to increase the number of users to three crores in a year. We will do it,” he added

Register now

To access the NDL, a user is required to register on its website.

To enable people to access the digital library on their mobile phones and other Android-based devices, the NDL team has developed an application which can be downloaded from Google Play and other platforms.

More than 106 educational institutions, 12 secondary school examination boards, including that of Karnataka, have contributed to the creation of NDL by providing digital content from their respective libraries.

The University of Mysore, Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore, several IITs, NITs, Indian National Academy of Science, New Delhi, Bombay High Court Judges Library, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and Union Public Service Commission have also provided content.