All the research documents would be published on the website, which is also being refurbished.

Besides, the library - perhaps the largest specialised collection of books on international relations in India - is also going through a long process of bringing it into the 21st century. Among the 120,000 books, records and periodicals, the oldest tome is an account of Imperial Japan, Historia Imperii Japonica by a Swiss doctor, Johannes Casporus Scheuchzer - circa 1727.

Sapru House was named after eminent intellectual Tej Bahadur Sapru, who was founder-president of ICWA. The imposing red and white building was inaugurated in 1955 by India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

Sunlight streams into the air-conditioned long reading hall of the library, which is packed with students and researchers poring over pages of their opened books. A closed side-door from the reading hall leads to the library's major project - making a digital catalogue and tagging thousands of books with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips.

Then, about one million newspaper clippings of the last 60 years of all the major newspapers, now decaying in drawers, would be scanned and digitally archived.

There are also plans to buy 30 computers and form a cyber lounge.

'We are already half way through the project and it will be soon over. We are also upgrading the maintenance of the building, with a renovated canteen and better lawns,' ICWA deputy director general A.V.S. Ramesh Chandra, a serving Indian Foreign Service officer, told IANS.

The library membership has already swelled from 189 to over 600 members now in just about a year.

The next project would be the 380-seater auditorium, which will require the approval from the governing body which will be meeting this month.

'Within the six months, you will see a new ICWA,' he said.

(Devirupa Mitra can be contacted at devirupa.m@ians.in)