Mangalore: The National Librabry Week celebrations took off on Thursday morning in the city at the Light House Hill area where Karnad Sadashiva Rao memorial Centrtal Library is situated and hundreds of readers of books, magazines and daily newspapers converge everyday (except Monday) to gather knowledge, information and go through visuals.
The Week was inaugurated by K. Santosh Bhandary, ZP Chief and N. Yogish Bhat, who came late, was the Chief Guest  of the day.

Speaking on the occasion, Bhandary hoped that such library facilities would be made available in rural areas through Gram Panchayats. The rural people are full of excitement for new events and newspapers to read. They would be eager to know more on any subject or event if only they had a library around them to cater to their appetite of fresh knowledge. Often the rural people seem to know more on a subject than city dwellers, he remarked and news travels faster.

Mayor Rajani Dugganna presided over the function and was happy to note that the readers coming to the Central Library and regional libraries open all over the city are increasing, either because they want to  catch up with the latest developments, or because they need guidance in employment soon after studies, or even a change of job and so on.

MLA Yogish Bhat, corporator Ranganath Kini, KP Sucharitha Shetty, former ZP Chief, Dr. Amrut Someshwar, well known scholar, Ismail (Principal of Badria College), K.V Raghavendra (Deputy Director of Libraries Authority in Mangalore) Venkatesh (Chief Librarian, District Library) and many other scholars were in the audience.

K.V Raghavendra welcomed the guests and librarian Mamatha conducted the proceedings of the day. Crowded programmes are drawn up from 14th Nov. upto 20th Nov. programmes are also held in 8 other library branches in city, with competitions held among students in those areas. On 19th a seminar in books is arranged at the central library hall at 3 pm with scholars participating.