Coordinates: 9.929355°N 78.

132073°E

Daniel Poor Memorial Library in Madurai

Daniel Poor Memorial Library often abbreviated as DPM
Daniel Poor Memorial
Library is a century old college central library of The American
College, Madurai, Tamil Nadu in India that officially began its
functions on June 28, 1915.

Contents
History
Vision Established 28 June 1915
Mission Location Madurai, Tamil Nadu,
Later Developments India
Visitors
Collections
See also
References

History
Daniel Poor was one of the pioneer missionaries of the American Board who started the American
Ceylon Mission in Jaffna in 1816. He was also one of the founders for the American Madura Mission
established in Madurai (then Madura) in 1835. Samuel A Morman, the granddaughter of Dr. Daniel Poor,
was the key person to build the library building by donating $25,000 to the American Board of
Missionaries on January 26, 1926.[1] Between 1914 and 1920, J. A. Sanders worked as its first librarian,
establishing the college library. This building was originally planned for a ground floor that would house
a stack room for about 50,000 volumes, a small museum, and a teacher's room. The first floor was to
house a library study room and two lecture rooms. Presently this building houses a stack room, a
reference section, a reading room, technical section and a computerized student access catalog system.
Stack room at the library houses more than 76,000 volumes.[2]

Vision
“Provides services to a variety of clientele diverse in skills, expectations and creates an atmosphere of
trust, support and encouragement among all members in the American College”.

Mission
“To provide the collections, services and physical environment to satisfy intellectual curiosity and
information needs of the users in the American College”.

Later Developments
The first floor houses the current periodicals, back volumes of periodicals, and a small rare book
collection. The only structural addition in the building is the mezzanine floor built during 1987–1988.
This facility doubled the space for shelving books and helped expand the reading room space, Internet
Browsing Center, Talking Book Library for Visually Challenged Students, Readers' Club, Fully Wi-Fi
enabled and CCTV protected.

Visitors
Famous visitors to the DPM Library include
Rabindranath Tagore,
Robert A. Millikan,(Robert A. Millikan was an American experimental physicist honored with the
Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for his measurement of the elementary electronic charge and for his
work on the photoelectric effect)
S.R. Ranganathan,
Khan Sahib,
C. N. Annadurai,
V.V. Giri,
M. Karunanithi,
Poet Subramaniya Bharati and many others....

Collections
The library boast's rare antiques, archaeological
artifacts and ancient coins of Pandyan Dynasty,
Cholas as well. Many ancient palm leaf script copies
A palm leaf manuscript with ancient Tamil text in
like Tiruvacakam, Manimekalai etc. are preserved DPM
here under rare archives section.[3]

Important letter correspondence between the Indian Government and The American Missionaries are
preserved here, wood carvings from Nayak period, five metal bronze statues of Vishnu and other Hindu
gods, Indonesian wood carvings and wooden statues dated more than 1000 years etc. are few among the
collection.[4]

Proper documentation of all this collection is not done and many of the artifacts seems to mishandled and
some are missing.[5]

See also
Daniel Poor
American College, Madurai

References
1. "Archived copy" (https://web.archive.org/web/20110613162341/http://www.americancollege.
edu/Lib_History.aspx). Archived from the original (http://www.americancollege.edu/Lib_Histo
ry.aspx) on 2011-06-13. Retrieved 2010-09-18.
2. Singh, J.; Seṭhī, Ā.; Indian Library Association (1985). Indian Library Directory (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=3V_oAAAAMAAJ). Indian Library Association. Retrieved
 2015-04-05.
3. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/history-of-a-100yearold-library-in-
madurai/article7582873.ece
4. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/history-of-a-100yearold-library-in-
madurai/article7582873.ece
5. http://www.thehindu.com/features/metroplus/society/history-of-a-100yearold-library-in-
madurai/article7582873.ece

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This page was last edited on 29 September 2019, at 17:15 (UTC).

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