One of the oldest libraries of the steel city will undergo a digital transformation in the next 15 months with state food and civil supplies minister Saryu Roy laying the foundation stone of the Rs 13-crore project on Saturday.

Work on Dinshaw Memorial Municipal Library (DMM Library) in Sakchi will be undertaken by Ranchi’s M/s Prasad Construction and Company under the supervision of Jharkhand Urban Infrastructure Development Company (Juidco), a wing of the state urban development department.

“The upgrade will fulfil a longstanding demand of residents to have a world-class digital library. I hope the state government constitutes a proper body to run the library. Charges should be nominal to benefit many people,” said Roy, also Jamshedpur West MLA. He hoped the five-storey building would be over within the stipulated 15 months.

Each floor of the proposed building will be 800sqm in area. The ground floor will have lifts, parking space, commercial space for shops and ATMs. While the first floor will have a reading hall, newspaper stand, book stacking area, and librarian’s room, the second floor will host a digital library room, reprographics library, reading and stacking space. The third floor will have space for offices and the fourth will have a 400sq metre hall to host meets. Each floor will have toilets.

“The library will have ACs and Wi-Fi and be connected with online book stores and the National Digital Library and other portals,” said Juidco project manager Dhananjay Kumar.

DMM Library has over 4,000 members with records maintained manually so far. It over 15,000 books in English, Hindi and Bengali, but poor upkeep has damaged many.