In an attempt to make its manuscripts, lithographs and books accessible to a larger section of people, the governing body of the library has decided to digitalise them. A meeting in this regard was held recently.

Lucknow division commissioner and chairman of the library, Vijay Shankar Pandey, said: “About 1.45 lakh pages of rare historic manuscripts will be digitalised in the first phase.”

Pandey added that the Awadh section of the library will also be strengthened.

The governing body meeting decided that the National Informatics Centre (NIC) will develop a comprehensive website for the library.

Sources said a team from the Human Resource Development Ministry will visit the library soon to give further suggestions on its upgradation.

“We have about 7,000 life members and hundreds of research scholars, academicians and students as our regular visitors. They can now take advantage of digitalised manuscripts,” said Librarian Nusrat Nahid of Amiruddaula Public Library.

She added, “We’ll suitably charge for our online membership.”

Nahid said the library has already begun work on computerised catalogues and 65,000 entries have been registered so far. According to officials, the library has thousands of rare manuscripts in Sanskrit, Arabi, Urdu, Persian, Pali and Burmese languages.

Precious lithographs, painting and gazettes are also there.