I had tears in my eyes. I was standing in the music section of the Anna Centenary Library in Chennai, and I had just spent the preceding few minutes looking over their books on music. I've never in my life seen so many books on music in one place. From Dvorak to Elgar to Haydn to the Beatles, Bob Marley, U2, Japanese Rock, Brazilian Music, chamber music, stage musicals, broadway, folk music, gospel music, prog rock, music theory, music philosophy, sheet music, music and religion, music criticism, music and society, jazz, blues, grunge, 80s rock, biographies, music software, recording techniques....i really and truly could go and an on. It was overwhelming. I wanted to hug someone, and jump up at down, and make a lot of noise.
It even had all my favourite slightly obscure music books including Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" and "Revolution in the Head" by Ian McDonald. Speaking of which, I think I spotted at least 20 books about the Beatles. There could well be more.
It even had all my favourite slightly obscure music books including Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" and "Revolution in the Head" by Ian McDonald. Speaking of which, I think I spotted at least 20 books about the Beatles. There could well be more.
And this was just one really small portion of this staggeringly enormous library. Standing in 8 acres of landscaped grounds, the library, rising up to 9 storeys, is spread over an area of 330,000 square feet (that's about 35 football fields!!). It has the capacity to house 1.2 million titles, and currently has in excess of half a million titles, and the collection is growing. Apparently they placed an order with the Cambridge University Press, which was the largest order in the history of the publisher. They ordered EVERY SINGLE TITLE in their catalogue, amounting to over 35,000 books, including 5000 books that had to be printed on demand, because they were out of print!
Add to all this the fact that it's centrally air-conditioned, has lots of space, and comfortable seating (including couches in the periodicals section), is well maintained, and costs you nothing to use, I really am considering living there. A quick look at the sections on art, architecture, design and photography revealed a similarly staggering collection of books, including a book that I could not find anywhere in India, and therefore had to order from Amazon (Light, Science and Magic). The periodicals section has a massive selection of magazines covering everything from horses to boats, to knitting, to guitar playing and iphone Apps. In fact, there's probably no section of this library that is not going to astonish regular Indian library users.
I didn't really check any of the 'serious' bits of the library like sociology and anthropology and economics, but if the fun bits are anything to go by, i'd imagine that these would be spectacular as well.
I have no doubt whatsoever that this has to be the finest library in the country, and once all their systems are in place (their cataloguing is still going on and their issue-and-return system is in the process of being implemented, so it's currently reference only), it will compare with the best libraries in the world. This is not to say that I have seen any libraries outside of India, but something tells me that it really can't get very much better than this!
