Student winners of competition organised by the State Public Libraries Department will get a free trip to Europe, Singapore and All India as prizes, Thangam Thennarasu, School Education Minister announced here on Saturday.
Participating in the National Library Week celebrations, Mr.Thennarasu said that the Department would organise district and state-level oratorical, painting and slogan writing competitions in January annually. During the competition to be held in 2011 the top three winners would get this prize, he said.
Under this programme this year the students who have enrolled in the public libraries were eligible to participate in the competitions. The first three winners at the State-level would be offered a first prize of a free trip to Singapore, All India trip to the second prize winners and State trip to third prize winners. The competitions would be held in January next year.
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Explaining the eligibility for the competitions to be held in 2011, Mr.Thennarasu said those students should have been a member in a public library for over a year and they should have visited the library at least five to six times in a month, he said.
In the last three years a total of 514 new libraries have been started and 244 libraries, which were functioning as part-time ones have been upgraded. A new digital library is coming up at Erode Sampath Nagar at a cost of Rs.1.5 crore, he said.
Similarly, a total of 8,890 books in Tamil titles and 3,850 English titles were added to the libraries in the State during this period. While the Government had spent Rs.31.5 crore for buying Tamil titles, for the English titles the Department had spent Rs.4.13 crore, he added.
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Tamil Nadu was the first State in the country to introduce library cess nearly 60 years ago, said M.Kutralingam, principal secretary, School Education Department.
On the occasion the Minister distributed best librarian awards.