Till recently, an old district library, that was set up in 1987, was the only source of study resources for the students of the Una district in Himachal Pradesh. But now, they will have five new libraries to access reading materials for all kinds of competitive exams, one in each sub-division. This will especially help students living in remote areas as they will not have to travel long distance to reach a library.
District Collector of Una, Raghav Sharma, IAS, took this noble step to give more resources and a space to study to the students appearing for various competitive exams from this hilly district.
LIBRARIES IN ALL SUB-DIVISIONS
Speaking to Indian Masterminds, Mr. Raghav Sharma said, “As the old library is situated at the district headquarters, it is very difficult for the aspirants to travel to the library which has limited seats. Also, the books kept are not updated or up to the availability of what people require. This created a demand from the aspirants for providing more libraries to solve the issue of inaccessibility.”
The officer added that initially they thought of taking some other land to start an open library but later realised that this would not solve the main issue of providing a library near their places. “We then decided to start libraries in all five divisions of the district, which have colleges and many aspirants who are preparing for competitive exams.”
It was planned to provide all the resources and study material of competitive exams like UPSC, Army, Staff Commission, Banks, MBA, etc. under one roof. The initiative kicked off last year in April.
LATEST BOOKS AND STUDY MATERIAL
Each library is to have a seating capacity of 30 people which adds 150 more seats to the total count of the old library which had 120 seats. The second library by the name of Swami Vivekananda Smriti was opened at the District Institute of Education and Training, Dehlan, followed by the third one in Haroli, which was opened in June.
The fourth library was set up at the Gagret sub-division very recently on July 14. And the last one is under construction and will be soon up and running. Students have started coming to these libraries and soon, with more awareness, every library will see full capacity of aspirants preparing for various competitive exams, the officer said.
Government officers supported this cause by donating books among other things. Mr. Sharma said, “Many young officers who have been selected for the state service have supported in getting the best study material for the aspirants. Many have also donated books and others were procured from places like Chandigarh and Delhi. We have now created a corpus here where we have all the subscription of monthly newsletters and all updated books which aspirants need to study.”
This initiative has opened many doors for the youth of the district, as they now have access to latest resources for competitive exams at an arm’s length.
