#mozparty

We, Ganesh and Deepu, set off for Panamattom National Library in Kottayam on Saturday, 23 Jun 2012. It was raining heavily and Kottayam was at its scenic best with its greenery and high range drives. Panamattom is a remote village, 38 km away from Kottayam town. We took the morning train from Trivandrum to Kottayam, took a bus from there to Ponkunnam, the nearest town and then an auto-rickshaw to the library.

It is the third visit to Desaposhini Public Library from SPACE, a 75 year old library in the outskirts of the city of Kozhikode, Kerala. This time it was me, Nikhil and Indu. The library is important historically, for it had a major role in the growth of Malayalam theatre. In an age when men donned the role of female characters on stage, Desaposhini Library began staging plays which had women play the female characters. Some of the actors later became successful in cinema as well.

SPACE has been working with the public libraries of Kerala in India since 2011 with the object of strengthening their role in the digital era. One of the planned activities was to develop web content creators among the steady volunteers of the library. In the summer of 2012 (April-May), we started conducting workshops for student volunteers from three libraries in Kerala. We jointly decided the scope of the website, themes to be covered and sources of information. For a month, volunteers of the library went about collecting content for the website.