Bangalore: As part of the project to digitise major Kannada literary works, scanning of more than 1.7 lakh pages from 9,000 Kannada books has been completed.

The task of digitising one lakh Kannada books has been taken up by the State Department of Libraries, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University of the U.S., under its Universal Digital Library Project. The Indian part of the project looks at digitising close to ten lakh works from twelve major Indian languages.

Kannada's share will be one lakh books and the result will be a collection titled "Suvarna Kannada Digital Library."

According to officials of the Department of Public Libraries, letters have been sent to Kannada authors for digitising their works and most of them have responded positively. The authors will be paid royalty and information collected about them to create an online Kannada writers' directory. The digital version of the books is to be made available to readers at the City Central Library in Cubbon Park.

The university has sent ten scanners, each costing around Rs. 18 lakh. A dedicated digital lab has been set up at the RPC layout Central Library and the Union Government has appointed trained personnel to scan pages from the selected books. The experience in other countries has been that digital versions available online have boosted the sales of printed books. This is because it is difficult for any person to read the pages on computer screens for a long period. Book lovers have been found to mostly look at pages on the web to know more about a book and then buy it in its printed form.

The impact on Kannada publishing is expected to be good and books that are out of print will be available to the new-generation readers. Kannada Sahitya Parishat president Chandrasekhar Patil has said that a change in reading habits could be the result.

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