Plans are on to make the country's largest library, the Tribhuvan University Central Library, a paperless one. A strategy has already been formulated and it is estimated to cost almost $400,000. The financial crunch at the moment is holding it up and as soon as money is made available the project will be implemented.
The Central Library was established 40 years ago with 1,200 books and 1 cupboard. Two years later it was merged with the Central Library in Lal Durbar and was re-named the Central Library, TU. Currently it has a collection of almost 235,000 books.
The library does not have a complete list of all the people who have borrowed books from the library and not returned them. According to sources, among them are many prominent people of the country. A partial list is given below: Prakash Lohani, Kamal Chitrakar, UB Pradhanang, Ram DCO Singh, Mangal Raj Joshi, Krishna Mohan Shrestha, Yam Bahadur Ale, Suresh Acharya, Rajendra Acharya, Ambar B Dangi, Tara B Karki, Jeevan Chandra Koirala, Yogesh Krishna Kharel, Nava Raj Gurung, Kamala Pant, Raju Nepal, Shambhu Narayan Pradhan, Ramji P Poudel, Hari Bhakta Pathak, Rajan Pant, Harihar Dahal, Prabin Pathak, Mohan B Basnet, Mukunda Baral, Bijay Baniya, Uday Nath Poudel, Chandra Shah, Uttam Bhakta Wagle, Sudip Kumar Pathak, Ganesh Rai, Sri Krishna Shrestha and Krishna Malla.