E-Pustakalaya is OLE Nepal's education-focused electronic library, which contains full-text documents, images, videos, audio clips, and software relevant to the teaching-learning process.
E-Pustakalaya has a simple interface where children can easily navigate, search, and link to relevant materials in literature, course-related materials, reference books, teaching aids, newspapers, and magazines. It is designed specifically with school aged kids in mind, but holds materials that can be used by teachers, general readers, and researchers alike. Readers can choose to read the books online or download books for off-line use. E-Pustakalaya has many other educational and reference sections, and materials like informative videos and an online Nepali dictionary. The library is accessible through the OLE Nepal school network and on the Internet to other users at http://www.pustakalaya.org.
Although, online and ready to be used, E-Pustakalaya is a constant work in progress: there is ongoing effort to add content through agreements with various authors and publishers. As of now organizations like Room to Read, Rato Bangala Foundation, Madan Puraskar Library, Save the Children, World Education, E-Learning for Kids and Azim Premji Foundation have provided materials for E-Pustakalaya. OLE Nepal is also working with other relevant organizations to acquire educational and other materials that would be useful for children’s education. We are also in the process of adding government and other textbooks to the library.
E-Pustakalaya is also working on archiving Nepali classical literature as well as some contemporary literature. Contemporary authors have agreed to put some of their books on E-Pustakalaya so more people have access to them and so a reading culture is inculcated amongst young Nepali children.
Currently, a copy of E-Pustakalaya has been hosted in each of the school servers so that students and teachers at the pilot schools can access the materials through the school network. They can also download the books to their laptops and read them when they are away from school. During the teacher training program, teachers were trained on how to access and use E-Pustakalaya as well as on how to integrate it in their daily teaching process, so as to enhance learning.
