By Viju Mangalore for Daijiworld News Network - Mangalore

Mangalore, Mar 22: It is not an overstatement that Corporation Bank is a household name in the undivided Dakshina Kannada district. The then South Kanara, a region tucked away on the West Coast of India, is a distinct land of variety of colour. The region has been in the forefront of education and thus Corporation Bank has dedicated a state-of-the-art modern library to the citizens of Mangalore.

The bank obtained land adjoining Mangala Stadium on lease from the district sports committee, Mangalore and has set up a modern library.
 
The library has three floors with a total area of about 3,700 ft to 4000 ft in each floor. While the basement has internet and video conferencing facility, the ground floor houses the newspaper and periodicals/reference section. Also housed in this floor is a numismatic center. The books are stacked in the first floor. This apart the administrative wing and a multipurpose hall is also housed in the first floor.

Features

• Computerised lending and retrieval operations
• Renewal facility over phone, fax or e-mail
• Facility for borrowing from other libraries
• Facility to photocopy part of the journal/books
• Library has various sections
• Reference section
• Newspaper and periodicals section
• Children’s section
• Lending section
• Internet section
• Video conferencing facility

In order to establish the library a team of bank officials visited over 15 best libraries of India including libraries in New Delhi, Bangalore, Tumkur, informed general manager of the bank on Wednesday, March 22, 2006.

A distinct feature of the library is that special care has been taken to enable library facilities for persons with disabilities.

The bank offers access to over 2,000 e- journals and e- books, 400 CDs/DVDs and about 4000 books. Access to online resources is free of cost for a maximum of 30 minutes at any given time. The library has also facility to photocopy the material subject to copyright restrictions at a nominal fee per exposure.

The present stock of books cover the areas such as literature (Kannada, English, Hindi), management banking and finance, law, self development, IT and Computers, religions and philosophy, children oriented, fictions and non fiction etc.

Annual membership fee is Rs 600. However students are given a concession of 50 per cent.