About Library

The Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) is an All India Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Training in the Social Sciences, established in 1972 to create a blend of field-oriented empirical research and advances in social science theories leading to better public policy formulation.

The ISEC Library named after Dr. V K R V Rao is one of the major social science resources in India and it serves the students, research scholars, members of the faculty and non- teaching staff of the institute. The library functions Monday through Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Reprographic and photocopying facilities, E-Journals access service, Internet access service, E-mail service and CD-ROM Journals Databases access service are provided to the Students, Research scholars and Faculty. The Library has a collection of over 1,21,000 documents including Books, Bound Back-Volumes of Journals, Reports, etc. The Library has 250 Theses, 300 current print journals (Foreign Journals 180 and Indian Journals 120) and E-Journals in various subjects have been subscribed for the calendar year 2009. It is recongnised by the World Bank as a depository library and has a donated collection of Bharat Ratna Sir M Visvesvaraya, builder of modern Mysore. It also has an impressive collection of pamphlets and documents from foreign and Indian organisations.

Dewey Decimal Classification scheme is adopted for the processing of documents. The housekeeping operations and catalogue is computerized using Libsys integrated library software. Web based Online Public Access Catalogue search is provided to readers. Searches can be made by author, title, subject, class number, publisher or by words in title and Boolean search. The newly accessioned books and working papers are displayed on a monthly basis.

Library subscribes to online databases viz., EconLit, JSTOR, Prowess-CMIE, ISID, etc. Additionally, the library provides full text of 80 journals as online information on intranet to the reader community. Library has good number of collection on different social and economic aspects from various renowned organizations/ publishers across the world in CD-ROM. The Library has built an Articles Database with the coverage of journal articles published in the journals subscribed by ISEC library and it has about 65,000 articles index. A notable treasure of the library is the collection of valuable books as a bequest from Sir M. Visveswaraya and Dr V K R V Rao Collections. The library is maintaining an exchange programme of publications with a number of national and international institutions. ISEC Library is considered to be one of the best reference libraries in social sciences in southern India.

Library Layout

The main entrance of the library is at the ground floor is facing west. There are two staircases in the library leading to first floor.