New Delhi, July 27 - Nita Sinha, 79, is a voracious reader but was afraid that her two grandchildren would forget books in their craze for computers. She came across a community library near her home and is now able to share her passion for books with them.

'We earlier used to think that children would soon be lost in the world of computers and leave reading behind. But now I see my grandchildren, along with their friends, going to the community library and feel reassured that the interest is still there,' said Sinha, a resident of Sector 14 in Noida and member of the local community library.

Like her, others too are becoming members of community libraries surfacing in many residential neighbourhoods like south Delhi's Vasant Kunj, R.K. Puram and the Noida suburbs.

While most of these libraries charge no membership fees, some like the Sector 15 library in Noida charge an annual maintenance fee of Rs.250 plus a one time security deposit of Rs.550.

Ranjana Bhatnagar, former director of the American Information Resource Center, feels that though still few in number, these libraries can provide the required encouragement to children as well as adults to inculcate the reading habit.

Bhatnagar told IANS: 'There aren't too many of these libraries around but they definitely help encourage reading habits. I feel that these libraries are of great help as unlike the public libraries their timings are convenient -- open for students when they are done with school, accessible to housewives as well as the nine to five office-goers.'

The library users also feel that since the library belongs to the community, members have a say in what books are chosen.

Sakshi Shrivastava, 16, a member of the Sector 15 Noida community library, said: 'I like the library because, unlike the school library, it has a larger variety of books and novels for teenagers.'

Noida's Sector 14 library even has a collection of rare books contributed by members like Rudyard Kipling's 'Verses' (first edition, 1898), Walt Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', M.M. Kaye's 'The Golden Calm'.

Another member of the same library is Ankita Pal, 35, a housewife, who was worried that her 11-year-old son shied away from books. So she was pleasantly surprised when her son proposed that they join the library.