Hyderabad: Research scholars and historians can now look forward to the State Central Library when it comes to browsing rare ancient books.
“Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Urdu and English books, dating back to the Nizam era, were digitalised. The books were getting damaged owing to wear and tear so the timely action will help,” said Mr G Srihari Shanker, gazetted librarian, State Central Library.
About 30,000 books, a few of them dating back to the mid 18th century, were recently digitised and can be accessed by the public. The books are now available in the DVD format and will soon be stored in the hard disk.
The process is underway with funds from the National Mission. “Books on history, architecture, governance and other subjects are part of the library collection,” he said.
Digitisation of the newspapers, including Telugu newspapers like Golkonda Patrika, Andhra Janata and Meezan, were completed. Digitisation of Urdu dailies dating back to the Nizam era — Paiyam, Subha E Deccan, Musheer- I- Deccan, Raiyat and Tanzeem — were also completed.
Visitors can refer to the e-books at the universal digital library section where 20 computers are kept for the purpose.
One can get the hard copy of the books by paying Rs 1 per page and a softcopy for 50 paisa per page.
Fearing legal wrangles, the authorities did not want to digitise thousands of books which are covered under the Copy Rights Act. As the authorities were facing difficulties in getting permission of authors and publishers, they dropped it.
