07 January 2018: Libraries are places of quiet excitement—the anticipation of finding your next read, the thrill of chancing upon a book that you’ve been waiting for, and the exultation in the process of discovery.

I was a member of 5 libraries in Chennai many years ago, and discover that I still am (except that one of these is now a digital membership). I was happy with all of these memberships but Eloor was always the best.

I loved taking the MTC bus from Thiruvanmiyur to T Nagar to get there. I’d never watched Four Weddings and A Funeral. I read the screenplay of the book (with pictures from the movie) from Eloor instead. I found The Road by Wole Soyinka here. I introduced myself to Vikram Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay at Eloor Library.

Everybody I know has memories from here. Karishma Mahbubani, my friend and colleague, loved the Young Adults section of the library. She enrolled as a member in 1996 and spent hours combing through the books.

But this was 21 years ago. The city moved on. E-books, Amazon, the Metro Rail construction, one-ways in and around T Nagar—all of this came into the picture. Like Karishma and I, many patrons of Eloor Library moved on. We became too busy to visit, too comfortable with ordering books on our phones to take the effort to drop by.

And slowly we forgot about the library.

This is a challenge that businesses face all the time: how to stay relevant in the face of change.

Here are some ideas for libraries: Move and pay less rent. Downsize. Sell dead stock. Stop taking a deposit because these will be hard to return when one is facing closure. Collaborate. Organise events for patrons. Generate goodwill. Give thanks.

At The ilovereadin’ Library, we give thanks every day. Our members have the comfort of walking into a physical space stocked with books and the convenience of getting their books home-delivered. We organise events regularly: book readings, storytelling and shadow puppetry sessions, and literary cosplay parties. We rely on word-of-mouth marketing. We listen to our members on things that we can do better and do our best to execute them.

We faced the threat of closure three years ago. As a last resort, we appealed to our members and they came through. We ruthlessly streamlined operations from there on: cutting down the number of employees, customising our software to make it more efficient, buying books that we knew would get borrowed out, and getting rid of old stock. Our every move was guided by economy.

We're not the biggest library in town. But we're thought leaders in the space because of two fundamental reasons - (a) Because we have read a lot and (b) Because our own poverty has taught us what is important and what is luxury. We started the library with 40 books, and roughly 40K. That's it. We built the library brick by brick, book by book, from there on.

Today, The ilovereadin’ Library has 10,000 books and is a part of a growing concern that works in publishing, printing, distribution, curation, retail, theatre, and storytelling.

We love reading, and we want to do more get books in more hands. Libraries close down, but libraries also survive.

If you’re an existing member of Eloor Library, please use the code ELOOR27179 to get a discount on a 3-month membership with The ilovereadin’ Library. Feel free to give us a call on 9940668512 or visit us at our book-space in Adyar.

Our doors are always open.

- Karthika



Read related: Why did the Hippocampus Library close down?