‘Athena’ to make knowledge accessible

KOCHI: The pandemic has disintegrated physical barriers and made way for what was on the cards. While the arrival of kindle and e-books may have sounded the death knell of physical libraries, they continued to thrive until the outbreak. As digital libraries become the norm at colleges and universities to allow remote access, St Teresa’s College (Autonomous), Ernakulam, has followed suit and launched their first e-library. To provide better access for the disadvantaged, encourage the reading habit and move towards digital, the NSS Unit 41 and Golden Jubilee Memorial Library of St Teresa’s College, Ernakulam, have collaborated to create ‘Athena’. 

“Though we’ve always had online course material and research links, resources were more or less scattered. The primary objective of ‘Athena’ was to compile all such reserves and make the same available on one platform. Also, the project is dedicated to our librarian Mariya D’Silva (Sr Ashritha), who is retiring this year,” said Jency Treesa, assistant professor at the Commerce Department and NSS programme officer who coordinated the project along with Sr Divina Rosiline D’Silva. 

With classes having transitioned to online, it was imperative to have accessibility to digital textbooks. “Simultaneously, we have a range of fiction to develop reading habits. The e-library was created by a bunch of highly creative children who took on the responsibility themselves sans external help,” she said.The staff coordinators of the project include Elizabeth Kuruvilla, professor.

Student coordinators, comprising editor Aleena Jomon, co-editor Boon Mourin and designer Maria Elsa of ‘Athena’, played an important role in the completion of the initiative.‘Athena’ comprises open access journals, e-books, virtual labs, audiobooks, blogs, podcasts, video content for learning, open access theses and dissertation, and current affairs and guidance including fiction.

Outreach programmes

As with everything online, ‘Athena’ will also be updated every week. “As a follow up, we plan to introduce new books every week. Also, as part of TROUP (Teresian Rural Outreach Programme), panchayats are designated to each department. The initiative can also be implemented in such panchayats. Our cloth bag-making programmes have earlier been extended to such groups wherein teachers have imparted skills to panchayats,” added Jency.