Anna Centenary Library

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The Anna Centenary Library (ACL) is a public library run by the government of Tamil Nadu in Chennai, India. It sits in Kotturpuram on eight acres of land and opened on 15 September 2010. The building, nine stories tall, was built at a cost of about ₹172 crore and is named after C. N. Annadurai, a former chief minister.

ACL aims to be a major knowledge hub. It holds hundreds of thousands of items and can store up to 1.2 million books, journals, magazines, braille books and manuscripts from leading publishers worldwide. The library uses modern technology for lending and management, including automated issue and return, smart cards and RFID, with self-check counters.

The library can welcome about 1,250 people at a time. Its facilities include a 50,000 square feet auditorium that seats around 1,280, a terrace amphitheatre for more than 800 people, and two conference halls. There is a dedicated children’s section of about 15,000 square feet with themed reading areas and multimedia kits. A special section serves the visually impaired with talking books and Braille displays.

Parking for about 420 cars and 1,030 two-wheelers is available. The building has its own 32 kV power substation and 493 CCTV cameras. A food court can serve around 180 people at once. The design by architect C. N. Raghavendran features a 5-foot bronze statue of C. N. Annadurai at the entrance. The reading areas are designed to let in plenty of daylight, with a large seven-story atrium.

ACL employs about 200 staff and holds roughly 550,000 books (along with other items). It attracts thousands of visitors daily, with around 2,700 people visiting each day in its early years.

In 2010 the library earned a LEED Gold rating from IGBC, the first library in Asia to reach this level. That year it also began placing large orders for books from Cambridge University Press, and later received a major order from Springer. Hillary Clinton praised the library during her 2011 visit to Chennai.

In 2011 there was a plan to convert the building into a pediatric hospital, which sparked protests from educators, writers and students. The government stayed the plan after court intervention, and the library remained a library.