Bhubaneswar, June 21: The Odisha Sahitya Akademi has planned to upgrade the library on its premises to attract more readers.

To turn it into a multilingual one, the authorities have decided to include books belonging to various regional languages to the collection.

"The books will cater to the needs of bibliophiles and researchers. We are trying to include classics, theories and criticism, women's studies and cultural histories in languages that are prominently used in the country," said secretary of the akademi Ashwini Kumar Mishra.

A large number of books on spoken English, phonetics and linguistics will also be added along with tomes on philosophy, religion, art and culture.

"We want readers to come here more frequently. That will not be possible until we have a variety in our collection," said Mishra.

The academy has also planned to organise meets between writers and Odias living outside the state in order to promote the language in various places across the country.

The academy plans to conduct meets between readers and writers at the library so that more and more book lovers are attracted to it. "The initiative will let the readers, especially the young ones, build an awareness about Odia literature," said Mishra.

That apart, the academy also plans to publish a dictionary this year that they have been working on for the past 10 years. The dictionary will have simple Odia translation of words from a number of regional languages and dialects of the state.

"We have been researching on the project for a very long time. We wanted to provide simple meanings of the words so it is taking sometime to complete the work. We are hopeful that we will be able to come out with it shortly. It will be of great help not only to school and college students but also to professionals and litterateurs as well," said Mishra.

That apart, the akademi has set a target of publishing as many as 36 books by the next year and plans are also on to translate popular Odia novels into Hindi and Bengali. All these would be available at the library.

The state Sahitya Akademi was established in 1957 to work actively for the development of Odia literature and to set high literary standards.

In another development, the state culture department and the Raja Rammohan Roy Library Foundation will distribute books to 900 librares in the state.

Books worth above Rs 2 crores will be added to attract more readers to the regional libraries.