Nearly seven decades ago, a public library in a small provincial town in India surprised a world famous English writer with its immense collection of books and quality of service rendered to a society yearning for knowledge.Amazed by seeing the wide collection of world classics and continental literature, including his own works there, the writer scribbled in the visitors’ book that he was ‘pleased and flattered’.The house of knowledge to receive the honour was the Trivandrum Public Library, considered a landmark in Kerala's culturescape, and the writer was William Somerset Maugham.Known as “Trivadrum People’s Library” then, the book house had been a repository of unique set of titles and periodicals including some very old foreign books not available elsewhere.According to state Librarian P Suprabha, the library has such rare books which are out of print like the English version of the 16th century French work “Successors of Alexander” by Thomas Stocker.“This is the oldest book preserved in the library as a prized preserve”, Suprabha toldNow the library has 3.5 lakh titles. It subscribes around 25 newspapers -- 13 in Malayalam, seven English, four Tamil and one Hindi besides around 460 different periodicals.This was also the first fully computerised state library in the country offering facilities like online book reservation and renewal, internet access, self-check-in, check-out and book dropper, Suprabha said.It has taken up a project to digitize old and rare books. “Fully air-conditioned reference section, internet browsing centre with lots of computers are also peculiarities of the Trivandrum Public Library. Members can use the computers at a meagre charge,” Suprabha said.Maugham was in Trivandrum -- as the capital of the Travancore princely state was known before it became Thiruvananthapuram -- in January, 1938 as a state guest. He was taken to the library at the instruction of the then Diwan and renowned scholar Sir C P Ramaswamy Iyer.A highly impressed Maugham jotted down in the visitors’ book, “An author naturally finds himself at home in a library and when he finds in that library a few of his own he cannot but be pleased and flattered.”According to its official history, the Library was ordered to be set up in 1829 by the royal ruler Swathi Tirunal and renamed as State Central Library in 1958.Interestingly, he took the initiative to build one of the first public libraries in India, before even the Imperial Library of Calcutta was established.Coincidentally, the task of organising the library was assigned to Col Edward Cadogan, the then British Resident, grand son of Sir Hans Sloan, the founder of British Museum.Col. Cadogan was also the first President of the Library (managing) committee. "During the early period, the admission to the library was restricted to the privileged sections, who were invitees to the royal Durbar of the Maharaja. So, the membership of the public library was considered a symbol of prestige and power," according to journalist and local historian Malayinkil Gopalakrishnan.In 1894, the Public Library Association was registered as a joint stock company and three years later, under an agreement, the entire property was handed over to the government on condition that it would be made a free public library and housed in a suitable building.The library was shifted to the present building in 1900 under the reign of Sri Moolam Thirunal, who built a structure of architectural beauty in the Gothic style in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.While the Public Library was handed over to University of Travancore in 1938, it was taken over by the government in 1948 by a resolution passed by State Legislature.The Library has received exceptional collection of books donated by eminent personalities like freedom fighter and former defence minister V. K. Krishna Menon, leading academic Prof. Nandan Menon, writer and Sanskrit scholar Prof. N. Gopala Pillai and Sreerangam Vikraman Nair, who were frequent visitors of the library.Facility to preserve old books and shortage of staff were some of the problems faced the Library.