Renovation work of the branches of the historic Hardayal Municipal Library and digitisation of the resources will be initiated soon, North Delhi Mayor Ravinder Gupta today said.
Meeting of the Library's Management Committee was held here which was chaired by Gupta as its ex-officio chairman.
The renovation of its branches and digitisation of the library will be initiated soon, he said while assuring that an auditorium will also be developed on a plot nearby.
The Mayor also said the Hardayal Library is a historical building and steps would also be taken for its protection.
He also assured the committee members that issues related to pending salaries of staff will also be resolved soon.
Councillor and Library's Secretary Shobha Vijender Gupta said fresh recruitments for the library will be done on the basis of notified recruitment rules as in the municipal corporation for different posts.
The old historic library building in the walled city currently falls under the area of the North Delhi Municipal Corporation. But it also has branches spread across the city which come under South and East Corporations also.
One of the oldest public libraries of Delhi, it was set up in 1862 as the Lawrence Institute Library. In 1912, the then Viceroy of India Lord Hardinge escaped a bomb attack while passing by Chandni Chowk on an elephant. The library was shifted to a larger building by the British to commemorate Hardinge's survival and was renamed after him.
After independence, it was named Hardayal Library after freedom fighter Lala Hardayal who had led the bomb attack on Lord Hardinge. The library has over 1,70,000 books in Hindi, English, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Prakrit.
The oldest book in the library is 'Relation of Some Years' by Travaile Begvenne, written in 1634. It also has handwritten manuscripts of the Mahabharat and Ramayan translated in Persian and Arabic.
