The state of Karnataka is located in the southern part of India. In the year 2001, Karnataka had a literacy rate of 67.04%, with 76.29% of males and 57.45% of females being literate. Taking care of the education of the masses of Karnataka are boards like Central Board of Secondary Education, Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations and premier educational and research institutions of India like Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institute of Management, National Institute of Technology and National Law School of India University. Apart from these boards and institutions, Karnataka has several libraries, which serve as significant sources of information and wisdom for the students.

Libraries in Karnataka
Libraries in Karnataka involve numerous institutes which are complete with various sources of knowledge. They were established for providing services to the regional residents of this south Indian state. Some of them are owned by the State Government of Karnataka, while many others are privately-owned. Some of these libraries in Karnataka are Mysore University Library, Digital Library of India, Indian Institute of World Culture, Documentation Research and Training Centre, Oriental Research Institute and SDM Institute for Management Development Library.

Mysore University Library
Mysore University Library caters to the academic needs of the students of the University of Mysore. This library has the distinction of being the largest and the oldest library of Karnataka. From 2,311 volumes, the collection of this library expanded to nearly 7.5 lakh documents in its system. This library has a membership of about 5600 users. It is a storehouse of a collection of over 2,400 journal titles and 1 lakh volumes of journals. It also holds about 100,000 manuscripts, which were written on relatively fragile paper and palm leaves, some dating back to the eighth century.

Digital Library of India
Digital Library of India is located in the capital city of Karnataka, Bengaluru. This library is an online library. It is a part of the online services of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and is also a partner in a project called the Million Book Project. This library is known to provide free access to many books in English and Indian languages. As a result of the scanning of Indian language books, an opportunity for developing Indian language optical character recognition (OCR) software was created. The publications of this library are mainly in PDF or quick time format.

Indian Institute of World Culture
Indian Institute of World Culture was established on 11th August, 1945 by B. P. Wadia and his spouse, Sophia Wadia. This public institution is a home to a general library of over 40,000 books, a children`s library and a magazine section that subscribes to over 400 well regarded periodicals from around the world. The general library is a storehouse of many rare and old books. Majority of the books in this library are in English.

Documentation Research and Training Centre
Documentation Research and Training Centre or DRTC is a well-known research centre and it is equipped with a library which was constructed in April, 1962. This library was created under the patronage of Professor S.R. Ranganathan and also under the inspiration of P.C. Mahalanobis. This educational institution is said to be one of the very best research centre in the country in the spheres of information science and library science.

Oriental Research Institute
Oriental Research Institute of ORI is located in the city of Mysore. It serves as a home to books in Telugu, English and Tamil languages. This library also contains unique manuscripts in Kannada and Sanskrit languages. Originally, Oriental Research Institute was termed as the `Oriental Library` and was established in the year 1891 on the royal orders of the then ruler of Mysore, Chamarajendra Wadiyar X. In the year 1943, this library was referred to as the Oriental Research Institute.

SDM Institute for Management and Development Library
SDM Institute for Management Development Library is an important centre for learning and teaching and its unique e-library is quite useful in terms of alumni databases, summer projects and contemporary reports. This library possesses books of all kinds which serve to inculcate knowledge as per the changing requirements of the students and the alumni.