Historical Background
Sri Venkateswara University, named after the Lord of the Seven Hills, came into existence as a teaching and affiliating University on the 2nd September, 1954, for the encouragement of higher education and research in all branches of learning. It was intended to fulfil the long felt need of the people of Rayalaseema for their educational advancement.
Genesis :
The University Library was started in the year 1955 with a small collection of 6,700 books taken from the Sri Venkateswara College, Tirupati, administered by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams. Initially the library was housed in one portion of the college main building. Later, it was shifted to the present building which was declared open on 12thJuly 1964, by Late Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, the then President of India. He described it as “Taj Mahal of the South”.
The university library, centrally situated and easily accessible to all the departments on the campus has steadily grown over the years and it has 3,76,000 documents as on 31st December 2016. It includes textbooks, reference books, general books, gift books, reports, back volumes of Journals, M.Phil., and Ph.D. Dissertations and E-Documents. The library subscribes to about 300 print journals of National and International importance.
Objectives and Mission
• To support the educational, research and extension programmes ( present and anticipated ) of the Sri Venkateswara University by providing access to global information;
• To provide reading facility and services to the students for the success of all formal programmes of instruction;To provide need based information products and services to facilitate scholarly research in the fields of special interest to the University;To help the faculty members inorder to keep abreast of latest developments in their respective fields; and
• To co-operate with other libraries in Indian and abroad for resource sharing and networking.
Library Building
The plinth area of the library building is about 56,637 sq. ft. of which 19,558 sq.ft. is occupied by the Stack Area, 16,980 sq. ft. is reader’s area, 5,100 sq. ft. is the work space and the rest for miscellaneous use. The library has four reading halls with a seating capacity for 400 users at a time.
The library serves the information needs of the Students, Research Scholars, Teaching Faculty, Non-Teaching Staff and Deposit Borrowers numbering around 10,200 and it is the central facility for 4 constituent colleges of S V University including University College of Engineering.
