The Department of School Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India recently signed an MoU with the National Book Trust for creation of an institutional framework for the Digital Library Platform, Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya. Speaking on the occasion, K. Sanjay Murthy, secretary, Department of Higher Education, underscored the importance of non-academic books in the lives of children as it helps them in choosing their discipline of studies in future. He also urged the National Book Trust to invite faculty members of the academic institutes to write good books that can be included in the Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya.
While addressing the event, Sanjay Kumar, secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, emphasised on the importance of developing the habit of reading books. He said that the Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya will be available round-the-clock, irrespective of the geographic location of the readers, making the books more accessible to them.
He added that the problem of ‘last mile’ presence of a library for many states will be solved with Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya. He also emphasised on the role of the Content Enrichment Committee that will decide on the books to be included in the platform of Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya. In the coming 2-3 years, there will be over 10,000 books in more than 100 languages, he hoped.
A first-of-its-kind digital library, Rashtriya e-Pustakalya, will seek to instill a lifelong love of reading among Indian children and youth by offering over 1,000 non-academic books to children and adolescents published by over 40 reputed publishers in more than 22 languages besides English. It will be aimed at facilitating the availability of quality books across geographies, languages, genres, and levels and providing device-agnostic accessibility for children and adolescents in the country. The books will be categorized by four age groups, as per NEP 2020, for readers aged 3-8, 8-11, 11-14, and 14-18 years. Over 1000 books in 23 languages, including English, have already been added to the e-Pustakalaya.
The Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya app will be available for download on both Android and iOS devices. Other salient features of the Rashtriya e-Pustakalaya will include the availability of books in multiple genres, such as adventure and mystery, humour, literature and fiction, classics, non-fiction and self-help, history, biographies, comics, picture books, science, poetry, etc. Further, the books will foster cultural awareness, patriotism, and empathy with an intent to realise Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.
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