The strikingly visible rust in the steel bookshelves at Goschen Library is partly the result of its location. The facility has an address in the coastal section of Chennai: Arunachalam Street in Chintadripet. It's also in part due to the severe damage the facility suffered in the 2015 floods.
“The library was out of use for a long time after the floods,” says librarian Susheela.
It obviously would have had to go through some restoration before being reopened for its readers. The restoration, one hopes, had been thoroughgoing. For, this library deserves it. If not for anything else, for the fact that it functions from a building that is 93 years old and
listed as a heritage building by the Justice E. Padmanabhan Committee. Named after Lady Goschen, wife of then Governor of Madras, George Joachim Goschen, the foundation for the building was laid in 1926.
There are more than 50,000 books in the library, says Susheela, who was posted here last year. “The library has more than 1,000 members but the number of active members is considerably lower. We are trying to get more members to use the facility,” she says.
In line with the instruction to all district branch libraries to promote reading among school students, every month, the librarian takes a few books and distributes them in the neighbouring schools. She collects them after 30 days and leaves a new set of books. “This is a practice followed in all the district branch libraries. I visit Kalyanam Higher Secondary School for Girls and Dhanakoti Middle School every month. We hope that this initiative will encourage the younger generation to read more and also attract them to the library,” she says.
For long-time members though, the sorry state of the library and the lack of new reading material have been a dampener. Says P. Mohan, a Chintadripet resident, who has been visiting the library for over 40 years, “Back then, libraries were our only access to any reading material, be it newspapers or novels. But the books here are old and worn out. These days, I just read the newspapers. If the library wants more patronage, it must at least paint the building and get some more books.”
However, Elango Chandrakumar, district library officer, says that the building can’t be restored without the permission of the heritage conservation committee of the Public Works Department. “Since the building is listed as a heritage structure, any repair or renovation can be carried out only with the approval of PWD’s heritage conservation committee. We have written to the committee concerned to restore the building soon. More books will also be added,” he says.
