The University of Delhi, on June 6, sanctioned a fund of Rs 110 crore for the expansion of its central library. The construction work pertaining to the same will commence soon. DU Vice-Chancellor, Yogesh Singh made the announcement at the launch of The Centenary E-Book Collection and Digital Archive.

VC Singh said that libraries play a very important role in the life of universities. Now, a big change has come in the form of e-resources. Today, students find it very comfortable to read e-books and supplement it with their reading of printed books; so we have to change our mindsets, he noted.

Asserting that the internet has brought a lot of changes in work practices in the last 20-30 years, Singh said, "India has emerged as the leading country in the world in UPI transactions."

Things have to be changed in the system, similarly so that the library resources are accessible from anywhere. When the concept of e-journals came, many educationists were not comfortable with it but now the mindset has changed, he said, adding that there is no difference between e-journals and printed journals.

The university has made financial provisions for e-resources and also sanctioned a fund of Rs 110 crore for the expansion and construction works of the library, the construction work of which will start soon, Singh added.

Rajesh Singh, Librarian, University of Delhi pointed out that the Delhi University Library System (DULS) is a distributed system of resources and services spread across both the campuses -- north and south.

It has a collection of over 17 lakh documents consisting of books, print periodicals, monographs, theses and other resources, he said. The librarian said the DULS has acquired subject collections from nine reputed publishers of the world this year and more than 83,000 e-books and digital archives have been added as centenary collections to strengthen the digital library services of the varsity.

The university has acquired subject collections and digital archives from publishers such as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Bloomberg, SAGE Publishing, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier, Springer Nature and Wiley Online Books, he said.