It is good news for Bibliophiles as they can access around 1.7 crore books, journals, research papers and periodicals in a single app. Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur has developed the National Digital Library app through which one can access an exhaustive knowledge. Anyone who uses a smartphone can download this app and enter into the world of knowledge. Union HRD Minister, Mr. Prakash Javadekar has launched the app on June 21, 2018.
Earlier, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) had given the responsibility of setting up the National Digital Library to Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The National Digital Library started as a pilot project in the year 2015 and now, it has become the largest library repository of India. The library is inclusive and it is open to anyone who registers. One can access the library free of cost.
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Now, the app is available for download only to Android users and will be available for iPhone users soon. The launching of the beta version of the app took place some months ago and it has been downloaded by 35 lakh users from Google Play Store . The app received a tremendous and positive response from the users.
Apart from books, research papers and journals, one can access the NCERT textbooks of eight state education boards, UPSC, GATE and JEE question papers, publications of IISERs and IIMs, thesis from Indian Institutes of Technology (only nine), Indian Statistical Institute and Indian Institute of Science and much more.
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The National Digital library app has various features like browse, search, filter, comment, tag and view metadata. The desktop or laptop version of National Digital Library is also available. Currently, it has nine lakh registered users. The speciality of desktop or laptop version is that it is enabled with an ‘Advanced Search’ feature.