UGC sets up National Digital Library of India for students

This knowledge base will be available to students across the country for free.

Students will now be able to read lakhs of books free of cost in a single window. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has created a National Digital Library (NDL) of India to provide a knowledge base for students. The library, set up with the help of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, is accessible at ndl.iitkgp.ac.in.

NDL will integrate existing digitised and digital content  from different institutions. The portal will serve as a single window for students from primary schools up to post-graduation level. Students simply need to register on the online portal with their e-mail and confirm the same, following which all material will be freely accessible.

The library has more than seven lakhs books by three lakh authors, in 70 languages, covering subject domains, such as technology, science, agriculture and humanities. These learning resources are available in audio, video and PDF forms. The library also has over 95000 theses by researchers from various Indian institutes.

The archive will help students prepare for various entrance and competitive exams, such as IELTS, TOEFL and GRE. Researchers can explore multiple resources from different inter-linked sources. Students will be able to download technical reports, monographs, technical manuals, albums, law and order documents, videos and even software, for free.

UGC has instructed universities and other institutes to digitise the books and study material in their collections so that they can be added to the National Digital Library, and made accessible to all students across the country.

Considering that huge volumes of material are available in a single place, it will help students save the time, which they would have otherwise wasted in going through multiple websites to get the required resources. Also, it will be the largest national knowledge depository, accessible to everyone without any charge.