The EMS Cooperative Library in Kakkanad, funded by the Ernakulam District Cooperative Bank, is seeing a surge in the number of its members eager to use its varied facilities including DELNET that links the library to over 5,000 other libraries in India and abroad.
The library membership has increased on an average of 800 to 850 a year, the numbers going up by about a thousand in some years, said a library official. He said that the number of members now stood at 12,034 and that about 75 per cent of them are children.
This is quite an achievement considering the humble beginnings when the library opened within the District Cooperative Bank headquarters in October 1999 with a hundred members and 5,000 titles in its collection.
Of late, one of the key attractions has been DELNET connectivity, which is open to the general public who are members of the library. DELNET, the resource sharing network among libraries, is otherwise accessible only to academics and students through libraries in their respective educational institutions, said the EMS Library official.
The network allows members to access documents, books, research papers and download e-books. It is a hit with students, who are the most frequent visitors to the library.
The library was shifted to its own building with substantial garden area, landscaped and lined with trees, in December 2003. The library houses a children’s theatre facility as well as an exclusive section for children.
The EMS Library also claims to be the only one now in South India to have a dedicated facility for the visually challenged members.
Students of journalism and English literature also find the library a rich source of books and other materials with one of the sections housing the books and journals that once belonged to noted critic M. Krishnan Nair. There is also a T.J.S. George Corner in the library that also houses issues of Asiaweek .
