Digitisation of over 10,000 rare books, documents and palm leaf scripts of century-old Daniel Poor Memorial Library of the American College began here on Friday.
The work, under Tamil Nadu Digital Library project of the State Government, is expected to be completed by a team of experts, led by Madurai District Library and Information Officer Yasodha by the next two months.
Speaking at the inaugural function on the college premises, Principal M. Davamani Christober said that after having digitised the rare books in Anna Centenary Library, Madurai Kamaraj University library and Senthamil College in Madurai, the work on books and palm scripts of American College library has been taken up.
“Daniel Poor Memorial Library was set up after an American missionary in 1915.It has got over 1.55 lakh books,” the Principal said. Among them would be The Holy Bible in Hebrew belonging to 1720.
Stating that the younger generation, that is addicted to electronic gadgets, were not coming to libraries any more to read books, he said the digitisation would take all rare books to them through their mobile phones and laptops and make them read.
Besides two senior faculty members from the college, Daniel Rubaraj and Justine Manohar would coordinate with the team. A separate hall has been provided with scanner facility on the college premises to take up the project.
The digitised books would be uploaded through American College website so that people across the world can access them.
