6 lakh books collected on Republic Day
Six lakh books collected in 7 hoursCoimbatore: Responding to the call by the Vice-Chancellor of Bharathiar University, the students of the colleges affiliated to it have collected nearly six lakh used books on a single day on Republic Day.
The books collected in just seven hours would be distributed among the 234 rural libraries of Coimbatore, Erode and Nilgiris districts by January 31 after segregating them topic-wise and coding them, sources in the university said.
Being a community service, the project was titled 'Padithathai Pirarukku Padikka Koduppom' (give to others for reading after we finish reading), with nearly one lakh students engaging themselves by moving door-to-door to collect the books.
Leading from the front was Vice-Chancellor G Thiruvasagam himself, who received books from Coimbatore District Collector Neeraj Mittal. As against the personal target of collecting 5,000 books, Thiruvasagam was able to collect about 7,500 books, including a few new ones, the sources said.
At the end of the day, the collection reached six lakh, including literature, non-academic and academic, astrology and medicinal, majority of them being in Tamil.
Students were strictly asked not to accept money. The names of the donors, along with the books, were recorded.
Saying that a committee would decide on the distribution of the books, the sources said the collection would be handed over to President A P J Abdul Kalam, visiting Coimbatore on February 24, who in turn would distribute them to libraries as part of the silver jubilee celebrations of the university.
Source:Chennai Online (Agencies)
