The Library acts as a central athenaeum for all the educational establishments connected with the Vidya Dan Trust, including the new Vidya Mandir Public School. It combines the three libraries functioning within the City Palace complex: the Maharana Mewar Public School Library, the Maharana Mewar Charitable Foundation Library, and the Shiv Shakti Peeth Library. In this way, the Maharana Mewra Special Library will be a unique facility in the intellectual and cultural life of Udaipur City, providing facilities that no other pedagogic institution in Rajasthan can match.

(We have, in order to give you a glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the task of building the Library, put together a few photographs of what the catacombs used to look like before being transformed into a state-of-the-art Library. They are interspersed in pairs of "before and after" throughout this page.)
 

BEFORE	AFTER
WELL-APPOINTED READING AREAS

The design space for the Library goes beyond these immediate utilitarian requirements to provide a well-lit and well-ventilated storage for books. The rudimentary structure of the space was three long parallel vaults, interspersed by cross passages. The space, devoid of any decoration was powerful and dramatic in its dimensions. (The vaults are over 20 feet high and the interspersed walls are 10 feet thick.) The design of this regenerated space retains the structure and visual romance through an impressionable combination of both natural and artificial lighting.
 

BEFORE	AFTER
THE ENTRANCE TO THE LIBRARY AND THE INFORMATION DESK

The twin Library functions of reading and storing of books has been amalgamated. Reading bays where one can read either alone or in-groups of four or eight, are scattered throughout the Library space.  The problem of ventilation and humidity control is also sensitively adapted in this difficult conversion. Air-conditioning the entire space was ruled out to due a variety of reasons. Instead, air ducts concealed under the floor remove the stale air and fresh air is brought in through specially designed ducts near the doorways. The system is designed to ensure the requisite four complete air changes per hour.
 

BEFORE	AFTER
THE EXTERIOR OF THE LIBRARY (ON THE WAY FROM BADA CHOWK)

The Library is located below Bada Chowk, the forecourt in front of the Mardana Mahal. This subterraneous space used to be an erstwhile store in times of siege, for horse and elephant fodder, and grain for humans. Being partially underground, with only one facet available for ventilation and light, the space was originally dark and humid. Considerable technical ingenuity and aesthetic sensibility has transformed this space without altering the character of the historic Palace. The new Library exemplifies creative conservation of a historic structure. It will provide an excellent example of the determination to make best possible use of available space to suit current needs. To make the Library one of the best of its kind, the latest electronic technology has been adopted.

The Library will regularly publish catalogues of its collections which will be mailed to Universities and Special Libraries all over the world to keep academicians and researchers informed about documented material available at the Library. The Trust intends to keep procuring books and materials that complement the subject interest of the Library to make it as holistic in nature as possible, to reach out to as many scholars as possible. The Library may have been built with the treasures of the past, in a space half a millennium old, but it has been thought of and designed to meet the needs of the present, and undeniably of the vast, unknown future.
 

BEFORE	AFTER
A VIEW OF THE CUBICLES CREATED FOR SCHOLARS AND STUDENTS

The building is 500 years old, it was formerly used to store fodder for horses and elephants, and grains and general provisions for the people within the Palace during times of siege. They were walled up for more than a century since Mewar had shrugged off sieges. They were opened now, the light of the sun falling in warm and bright. As the Maharana Mewar Special Library, would these catacombs offer fodder for the human mind in the years to come?

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