Renowned technocrat and former advisor to late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Prabhakar S Deodhar has called for libraries to work on innovative steps to increase footfall and develop reading habit among youths.
Stating that the reading habit among youths was meagre, he said libraries should create a conducive atmosphere and cater to the needs of young minds.
Deodhar was speaking at the 121st anniversary of the Thane Marathi Grantha Sangrahalya here recently.
He suggested setting up a display shelf of all new arrivals and recent publications and a facility to scan through the books and read them.
There is dire need to educate elders about the use of computers and this task could be done by libraries by organising classes for it, he said.
The libraries should initiate steps to increase footfall, especially of the youths and developing reading habits in them, he stressed.
Sangrahalaya's secretary Vidhyadhar Walavalkar informed that they were in the process of going in for an e-library and taking to cloud computing.
Several thousands of books in electronic format would be made available to the readers at the library, he said.
