Kerala Agricultural University - [KAU]

The Kerala Agricultural University Library and Information System (KAULIS) was established in 1995 as per provisions of the KAU Act 1971. It was formally inaugurated by the Hon`ble Minister for Agriculture Sri. Krishnan Kaniyamparambil on 24.12.1998.

With the changing scenario of library and information service environment, the mandate of KAULIS will be to

The headquarters of the Library and Information Services Unit is at the University Library Building. The unit has also established an Electronic Library and information technology lab, and IT training facilities at the headquarters which are housed in the university library building.

An Information Technology Lab with facilities for customising library and information service packages, database development and for generating information products according to the requirement of users functions under this unit.

An Electronic Library has already been developed by the unit with the support of various national and international institutions. This is the first electronic library for agriculture envisaged in India under any SAU or ICAR research Institute.

For sophisticated library equipment that need high power protection UPS back ups for twenty four hours are available. A back up generator is also available for the library when it is not used by the nearby auditorium.

The University Central Library functions in the Headquarters. It serves as the main library for the colleges and stations in the main campus. All costly reference books, foreign journals and other documents which are required for more than one station will be acquired and maintained by University Library for common use and to avoid duplication.

There are seven college libraries coming under the unit. All of them have required minimum infrastructure like building, equipments and collections of print and non print documents. Library at College of Agriculture Vellayani was automated with a college library LAN and information resources in EM to serve the campus and nearby stations. Equipments for automation had already been acquired for the College of Fisheries, Panangad, College of Agricultural Engineering, Tavanur etc. Library modernisation programs are on the anvil in other colleges. College of Agriculture Library, Vellayani, Trivandrum forms one of the major subsystems of KAULIS. It has a collection of about 25000 books, 6500 back volumes of journals and 3500+ PG and Doctoral Dissertations. The complete database of these collections are computerised and a LAN also has been implemented here for online information retrieval. Internet facility is also provided at his library for searching world wide databases on agriculture and allied areas.