I had been wanting to visit the Anna Centenary Library for a while now and finally got to visit the library this week. I had heard that the facilities and the collection of books there was world class and saw it myself that it was no exaggeration. The library has seven floors of books on various subjects including children’s books,
engineering, medicine, history, arts and humanities. As the books have not been given out for lending so far, they are still new. While books on differential calculus scared me to death and made me wonder how I managed to pass those papers in school and college, I was comfortable and happy in the history section. I
spent a while reading books on Indian history especially the 1857 revolution.
The library’s building and the interiors are well maintained and we could see the housekeeping staff at work mopping floors. As there is no lending facility available yet, I was not able to gauge if the number of librarians were sufficient.
When planning to visit the library, I suggest that you decide on the topic before hand so that sufficient time could be spent reading books. It is not a good idea to generally walk around seeing all floors as the library is huge. Overall, the library is very impressive and should be counted among the landmarks of Chennai.
