Chennai
After operating for more than twenty years, the city’s popular Eloor Library has decided to shut shop on February 28 owing to lack of continued patronage and dipping revenues, raising questions about the survival of libraries in times of Kindle and online book stores.
For activist Archana Sekar who grew up in the 90s, a visit to her favourite library was a weekly ritual. Dragging her friends along, she would head to Eloor in T-Nagar and spend hours browsing books and stocking up titles.
In a sense, the library was a rite of passage for her. She said, “My entire family reads and we have memberships of many libraries. My first sense of financial independence was at Eloor, where my parents would give me money to borrow books.”
Sekar added, “When I went to the library on my own as a child, the staff was kind and helpful. Now, after all these years, to hear that Eloor will never open its doors after February makes me emotional and nostalgic. I feel guilty. I wonder if there was something that I could have done to save it.”
Travel blogger and data scientist Karthik Murali and his friend would visit each other’s libraries when they were children. “Since my friend had an Eloor membership, I often visited the library. It has a great collection and good readership so I was surprised to hear that the library was shutting down and a closing sale was on,” he said.
Anup Luiz, the managing partner at Eloor Libraries, which his father P Luiz John started in 1994 in Chennai, said that declining readership and the operational cost forced them to shut shop. “Commuting between places have become difficult because of traffic congestion, so people hesitate to drive to the library. The internet and devices like Kindle have made reading easier and more affordable. This has had a negative impact on libraries,” he said.
In its struggle to survive, city libraries are reinventing themselves to reach out to readers. Bookworm’s Library in KK Nagar, which has a collection of 30,000 books, sends out a library-on-wheels to apartment complexes and corporate offices monthly, based on a schedule. “The mobile library, with its 4,000 books, visits all parts of the city where members can return or borrow books, without having to visit the library,” said Gopi Sampath, founder of the library, which has been around for 16 years.
“For traditional libraries to survive, we must look at providing an experience to the readers. We need to make our libraries a ‘happening’ place,” he added. The city’s readers and its book clubs too could play a crucial role, said Archana.
“With Chennai being a hub for readers, bibliophile groups can keep the neighbourhood libraries alive by bringing together book lovers at this spot. Literature outlives us, libraries should too,” she said.
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